Crocodile tears now for chutney

THE EDITOR: Suddenly, those who have made a very good living from hawking nonsense chutney music, which has not moved beyond cheap bootleg melodies, banal, tawdry lyrics which say nothing except, "Beat your dulahin with a bilna and bring rum in a bottle, a glass or a tub," for everything under the sun, are now crying as they perceive the once vibrant artform is slowly dying.

Mr chutney singer, after making millions year after year, you are now crying for chutney? These tears are really for the view that there is no more money to be made.

They are right to cry.

Those who enjoyed listening to chutney at one time are sick of it and these singers. The image these singers project is basically that of a rum bottle. They celebrate infidelity, bawdy, unbecoming conduct and domestic abuse.

Every single video that comes out of the chutney arena is recorded at a river or a standpipe and features a young, intoxicated, emasculated East Indian male attacking his wife or significant other.

It glorifies wife-beating and rum drinking. Women are being shown beaten on bridges, fleeing in the roadway with another man, hiding out in strip bars or running through canals and tunnels for a tryst with the artiste.

This now is the depth of chutney.

If chutney music is dying, it's because it was being poisoned slowly for decades. Most East Indians would not allow that kind of smut in their homes.

Here's a question for these weeping chutney singers: when last did you hear a chutney song on a non-Indian-formatted radio station?

But lo and behold, Indo-centric radio stations are filled with a variety of different kinds of music, including soca, hip-hop, soul and even dancehall. News flash – chutney is dead.

LINDA CAPILDEO

St James