Chutney music is a form indigenous to the southern Caribbean, popular in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, and other parts of the Caribbean. It is also popular in Fiji, Mauritius, and South Africa. Chutney Music is a mixture of Bhojpuri music with influences from traditional genres such as calypso, soca and Bollywood filmi songs.
Chutney music emerged mid-20th century and reached a peak of popularity during the 1980s. Initially lyrics were religious in nature and typically sung by females but as time progressed the males started to dominate the scene. Chutney music was established in the 1940s within temples, wedding houses, and cane fields of the Indo-Caribbean.
There were no recordings until 1968, when Ramdew Chaitoe of Suriname, recorded an early rendition of chutney music. The album was entitled King of Suriname and all of the songs were religious in nature. However, Chaitoe soon became a household name with East Indians not just in Suriname but throughout the Caribbean. Although the songs were religious, they had a dance vibe throughout each track. For the first time Indo-Caribbeans had music that spoke to them and was not specifically Indian or European/American in style. This was a breakthrough for East Indian Caribbean music, but the fame was short lived.
Chutney music exploded again in 1968 with the female singer Dropati, who released an album entitled Let’s Sing & Dance, made up of traditional wedding songs. These songs became huge hits within the East Indian Caribbean community. The album gained recognition for chutney music as a legitimate form and united East Indians, regardless of their birthplace.
1969 was a turning point for chutney music when record producer Moean Mohammed recorded Sundar Popo with Harry Mahabir’s BWIA Orchestra. Sundar Popo modernized the music by including western guitars and early electronics into his music. Although Popo became known as the “King of Chutney,” the art of singing songs in
“Chutney” style was introduced by a singer named Lakhan Kariya, from the town of Felicity, Chaguanas who preceded Sundar Popo. Other artists, such as Sam Boodram, followed in his footsteps by adding new modern instrumentation into their music. Chutney music until then remained a local music in Trinidad, Guyana & Suriname.
Chutney Music also got its first big impact commercially in live concert performances during the 1980s when the music was presented by Rohit Jagessar in large stadiums and cricket fields in selected countries around the world. The 1985 revenue from these concerts surpassed US$1 million for the first time in the history of the genre and Jagessar signed Kanchan to a contract with Johnson & Johnson to produce and promote the popular brand in a most memorable television commercial that very same year.
The modern chutney artist writes lyrics in either Caribbean Hindustani or English, then lays them over beats derived from Indian dholak beats mixed with the soca beat. Chutney is an uptempo song, accompanied by bass guitar, drum machine, electric guitar, synthesizer, dholak, harmonium, and dhantal, tassa played in rhythms imported from filmi, calypso or soca.
The nature of current chutney songs are simple. They speak about life and love for many things, whether for a significant other or for an object of possession. Some chutney songs favor the topic of food or drink; however, like most West Indian music, there can be a hidden message found in the song if you read between the lines.
The origin of chutney being in the Caribbean has meant that it’s been in close contact with different peoples, traditions, and other musical styles since its inception. This has allowed chutney to fuse with other genres and/or implement new instruments into its own style, creating an array of syncretic subgenres including ragga chutney, chutney-bhangra, chutney hip-hop, soca-bhangra, and chutney soca.
Chutney soca is the most notable of these, as it has become virtually indistinguishable from what is considered normal chutney in recent years. 
In Guyana, one of the most popular chutney singers was Nisha Benjamin who was considered as the mother of chutney music. Benjamin, who died in 2010, sprang to fame in the 1970s and became the first major Indo-Guyanese performer. She became popular around the same time Trinidad’s Sundar Popo emerged with “Nana and Nani” and held claim to being the Chutney King.
Sadly, Nisha Benjamin’s sterling contribution to the very beginning of Chutney music and its evolution in Guyana has not been recognised locally, according to many in the industry. In the late 1970s, Nisha Benjamin came out with her most memorable song “Benjie Darling,” a beautiful love song to her second husband “Benjie.” She thought of the words for the song while on a ferry in the Essequibo River.
She was born on the island of Leguan in the Essequibo River.Among her other hits were Dharmat Karo, Na Manu Na Manu, O’Maninja, Sandrowta, Romeo, and Loving Darling.
In O’Maninja, she described the hardships of a woman working and living on a sugar estate. Subtly, she told the story of the political and economic situation in Guyana. She was also the first artiste to record a song with her father, Eaton Drepaul. So popular is Nisha’s Benjamin’s “Benjie Darling” that a clue on the popular game show Jeopardy was based on the song.
(Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
