Indo-Caribbean Music of Guyana

The arrival of the Indian music with the settlers from South Asia originally includes the traditional music played with table, sitar, dhantal, harmonium and dholak, later including tassa drums. Music was mainly Hindu songs known as bhajans, as well as filmi. The tan singing pattern is special to the Indian community in Guyana and Suriname.

The famous Indo-Caribbean music started with the Surinamese star Ramdew Chaitoe in the late 1950s with his song, the Star Melodies of Ramdew Chaitoe, and accelerated with that country’s dropati and later Trinidad’s Sundar Popo. It was not until the late 1970s, though, that Neisha Benjamin, the major Indo-Guyanese performer, started producing hits like O’ Maninga. She often addressed political issues like the socialist policies which were perceived as oppression of the Indian community because of the constraint of flour and dall (splitpeas) by Forbes Burham’s of the people National congressin reality these policies were hard against all Guyanese. Nneisha was mainly a singer of love songs.