“Indian Arrival Day is about remembering how we preserve and propagate the culture that has been handed down to us over the years. It’s been 177 years.
“What they brought with them in their knapsacks or what we call the jahagi bundles? They brought all their customs, traditions, their songs, in their heads they brought music, they brought dance, seeds to grow all different kinds of crops. All these things were brought here, even the language, though there might seem to be a little barrier now and then, we were able to overcome that.
“I feel if you really want to maintain your identity, whether you are African, Indian, Chinese, you have to know about your traditions, your culture,” Rukminee Holass-Beepath said in a Sunday Guardian interview.
Holass-Beepath knows all too well about preserving the legacy of her ancestors. The second of seven children, she comes from a family of East Indian cultural singers and musicians.
The 69-year-old singer, composer and former primary school teacher is well known for her singing and meticulous compilations and compositions of Indian folk and classical songs, having received numerous awards. On June 25, she will become the first Sangeet Acharya or teacher of music in Trinidad and Tobago, a title to be bestowed upon her by the Kathak Kala Sangam Institute of Fine Arts of T&T headed by cultural stalwart Dr Sat Balkaransingh under the patronage of Mayor of Chaguanas HW Faaiq Mohammed.
Holass-Beepath’s rich legacy in East Indian music and culture began in Granville, Cedros, where she spent her earliest years with her parents and siblings at the house where her maternal grandparents lived. From age three until age five, she lived with her paternal grandmother in Chatham. Passing the then-scholarship exam while a pupil of Granville RC, she attended Point Fortin College from age 11 or 12 and her family moved to Chatham as transport for school would be easier.
Holass-Beepath’s parents were her first teachers of East Indian arts, which they had learnt from their parents, who had come to this country as indentured labourers.
Songs for Kartik Snaan and Ganga Darshahara Festival by Holass-Beepath.
“On evenings, my parents used to put us all in a semicircle and teach us the songs. By the end of the week, you learnt about four or five songs. My mother, her parents came on the Fatel Rozack and my father, and his parents came on the Fatel Rozack. My father, all his parents’ songs and customs and traditions, he imbibed from their oral traditions.
“My mother also, she could only sign her name, but all that she learnt was from her parents which they brought with them from India; all their customs, traditions, what they could do, what they couldn’t do and all these songs,” Holass-Beepath recalled. Responding to a question, she traced further back, informing that her paternal grandparents had only one name. Her grandfather was Holass and her grandmother was Jankie, and she believes they originated from Bihar in eastern India.
“They came on the Fatel Rozack and while they were coming, one of their sons got sick and died, and they threw him overboard. He was a baby when they left, and they had no choice after he died. She came here with two children which are my father’s brother and his sister and then my father was born here, my father and his other brother were born here.”
Mangree and Sookhoo Dewajit from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India were her maternal grandparents.
“On my mother’s side, I think one child came on the boat with them and three others were born here,” Holass-Beepath said.
Recounting her childhood, she said it was not long before her parents, she and all her siblings formed a group called Amar Sangeet. With her eldest brother as the drummer, Holass-Beepath and another brother Budram, who would go on to become an international singer and local cultural icon, sang while the other sisters played the percussion.
Rukminee Holass-Beepath, fourth from left, her parents and siblings pose with former president of T&T Noor Hassanali and his wife.
Though providing for a family of nine was difficult for her labourer father Harry Holass, they managed to supplement their food supply with fish from the nearby sea, and fruits and ground provisions from a garden her mother, Samdaye, planted. Her father would also sell some of his catch. They performed throughout the villages and in towns like Cap-de-Ville in Point Fortin, mostly free of charge. The children were happy and contented learning from their parents and her father was proud of them.
“In those days, it wasn’t money that you performed for. It was really to assist people when they had prayers or little celebrations. We performed with our parents, but we were learning at the same time.”
One of those performances would be for the former president of Trinidad and Tobago, Noor Hassanali and his wife at President’s house in St Ann’s–a major high point for Holass-Beepath.
“My father said he had one dream: never let your culture fall. Always learn and promote, learn and propagate your culture, so it would live on to the next generation. He said, ‘I am teaching you all this now, but the only way it would live on is when you teach your children the same thing,’” she recalled.
Not wanting the songs to be lost, Holass-Beepath heeded her father’s advice, sat her parents down one day and started compiling various genres of Indian songs as they dictated them to her.
Most of the songs were written in Bhojpuri, a main Hindi dialect spoken in places like western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh and changed as it passed through generations of Caribbean speakers. Holass-Beepath was able to translate the songs because of her knowledge of Hindi from secondary school and the National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST) and the fact that Bhojpuri and Hindi have similarities, Holass-Beepath pointed out. She would obtain a diploma in Drama and Theatre Arts in Education from UWI and be trained vocally by Mungal Patasar and at The Caribbean School of Indian Music.
To date, Holass-Beepath has written six books of songs, according to the stages of life of a Hindu. For birthdays, she documented chutneys and barhis in her book, Janama Geet,
Vivaaha Geet showcases the Hindu wedding ceremony and songs, and Ganga Darshanam are songs for Kartik Snaan and Ganga Darshahara Festival where devotees seek spiritual purification and renewal by bathing in holy rivers, and seas. She also has a book of songs for death and cremation, 140 Bhajans for Antyesthi Sanskaar. She also translated and archived 108 classical songs, dividing them into 19 categories. The songs come with CD recordings to make learning them easier.
She sought help from physician Dr Visham Bhimull, who is knowledgeable in Caribbean Indian dialects, in translating Urdu (spoken by Muslims of Northern India) and some Bhojpuri songs.
Over the years, the active singer has picked up a few notes on the organ-like harmonium and learnt to play the dhantal with its steel rod and percussive sounds.
Hard-pressed to afford some instruments, improvisation was often the order of the day back in her childhood days. Her father incorporated the shac shac or maracas, a non-East Indian instrument, he would make by filling scooped out calabashes with channa grains. For a manjeera–a pair of small hand cymbals–he would knock two bicycle bells together and a coil spring from a car, and a thin piece of steel would make a good-enough dhantal.
Her education at Point Fortin College completed, Holass-Beepath had to work to help her family. Feeling miserably mismatched with her first job crunching numbers at the government treasury, she turned to a friend who helped her get into the teaching service where she would serve for 40 years.
Janama Geet Holass-Beepath’s book and CD of birthday songs.
She passed on her traditions to her students as well as to her three children. Her daughter is a professional dancer and teaches music and dance at Saraswati Girls’ Hindu College. She was also happy about the achievements of her sister Pulwaty in seeking to establish the first Hindu temple in Tobago and finally having the sod-turning ceremony in February.
Keeping the culture alive has also meant starting the Beepath Ranch and Cultural Centre in Caparo with her husband and children. There they enlist other volunteers to help them educate the public free of charge in wrapping of saris, dhotis, headwear, pottery, painting, rangoli (making designs for celebrations using coloured rice, sand), mehendi, sewing jhandis (Hindu flags), paper decorations, making malas or garlands and in making Indian delicacies.
Under a Ministry of Culture project, Holass-Beepath conducted classes in singing traditional East Indian songs across the country until 2015. In 1996 she was among 100 women recognised as agents of change by the Network of NGOs.
The talented cultural proponent who has composed songs for singers like her brother and chutney soca artists like Marva Mc Kenzie, Kenneth Seepersad and Navin Prabhoo, as well as for radio stations and schools, has her own band Sangeet Milan formed since 1980 along with her husband. Its eight members have now become five, and she has only made a few appearances in the last two years. Although she has lost two volunteers at the ranch to COVID and her husband suffered two strokes and is bedridden, Holass-Beepath still plans to fully resume activities of the band and ranch. In fact, she has been busy since activities reopened in the country, performing at Divali Nagar activities, and appearing at radio stations during this Indian Heritage month. She has an appearance tomorrow.
The grandmother of four who believes in making use of one’s limited time on this earth and making your own life interesting and impactful, is also a registered farmer, who exercises, does her own housework and learned Zoom to deliver virtual classes locally and abroad during the pandemic, she proudly announced.
