Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The rhythms of the har­mo­ni­um, dho­lak and dhan­tal are set to echo through Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day as Dutch artiste Dewinder­s­ingh Sew­nath makes his high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Trinidad de­but with his full band.

Known across the In­do-Caribbean di­as­po­ra as the “Li­on of Baithak Gana,” Sew­nath will head­line the An­nu­al Moth­er’s Day Spec­tac­u­lar at the Cen­tre Point Mall Au­di­to­ri­um, bring­ing a genre deeply root­ed in the tra­di­tions of Suri­name and Guyana to a wider lo­cal au­di­ence.

Baithak Gana, which trans­lates to “sit­ting song,” is tra­di­tion­al­ly per­formed in in­ti­mate set­tings such as homes and re­li­gious gath­er­ings. Blend­ing In­di­an clas­si­cal in­flu­ences with Caribbean rhythms, the genre has long been a sta­ple with­in In­do-Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties, and Sew­nath’s ar­rival sig­nals a re­newed spot­light on its en­dur­ing ap­peal.

Born in the Nether­lands to Suri­namese par­ents, Sew­nath’s mu­si­cal jour­ney be­gan at an ear­ly age un­der the in­flu­ence of his fa­ther. He quick­ly de­vel­oped an ad­mi­ra­tion for leg­endary singer Ramdew Chaitoe, even shar­ing a stage with him at just sev­en years old.

He lat­er trained un­der In­do-Dutch mu­si­cian Ron­nie Kol­hoe, learn­ing to play the dho­lak and even­tu­al­ly join­ing Kol­hoe’s band as a teenag­er. That ex­pe­ri­ence helped shape his path as both a vo­cal­ist and in­stru­men­tal­ist.

In 2004, Sew­nath formed the Baithak Gana Group Swasti­ka and re­leased his first al­bum. Since then, he has pro­duced 18 CDs, earn­ing recog­ni­tion for his abil­i­ty to fuse tra­di­tion­al Baithak Gana with con­tem­po­rary in­flu­ences. His reper­toire in­cludes orig­i­nal songs such as Fly But­ter­fly and Shirley Gyul, as well as pop­u­lar Bol­ly­wood cov­ers like Oh Mere Hum­rahi, which have res­onat­ed strong­ly with Trinida­di­an au­di­ences.

Pro­mot­er Rafi Mo­hammed said Sew­nath’s pow­er­ful vo­cals and dy­nam­ic band bring a fresh di­men­sion to tra­di­tion­al mu­sic, while his ver­sa­til­i­ty—par­tic­u­lar­ly in rein­ter­pret­ing Bol­ly­wood clas­sics—has broad­ened his ap­peal.

Sew­nath will be joined by a line­up of lo­cal per­form­ers, in­clud­ing Dubraj Per­sad, Devashish Ram­dath, Sat­nar­ine Ra­goo and Cyn­tra Sookoo.