Chapter 04
Geet-Gawai, Bhojpuri Song and Multilingual Mauritius
5 min
A wedding begins before the public ceremony
Geet-Gawai takes place in the days before a Bhojpuri Mauritian wedding. Women from family and neighbourhood gather at the bride's or groom's home, traditionally seated in a semicircle. Prayer, ritual action, song, dance and comic drama prepare both household and couple for the transition.
The sequence once extended across much of a week; today it is often concentrated into one or two days. Compression changes the event but does not empty it. Experienced women know which song belongs with turmeric, blessing, teasing or another stage of preparation.
Snacks, ginger drink, paan and soaked chickpeas are part of hospitality. The music does not occur beside the ritual. It helps the ritual move.
The National Heritage Fund and Mauritius Film Development Corporation's 2015 public film of a Geet-Gawai ceremony is the clearest first sequence. It shows song, household objects, gesture and collective timing in relation rather than extracting one chorus as a studio track. The film documents one performed sequence, not a universal script for every family.
Women's memory is the primary archive
Many Geet-Gawai songs travelled without a printed score. Women learned by joining elders, repeating lines and observing when each item belonged. A strong participant holds melody, words, gesture and social timing together.
Recording can preserve a version, but a wedding group may change a verse for the family in front of them. Mauritian Bhojpuri and Creole can meet. Laughter signals that everyone understood a reference a catalogue could never explain.
The heritage inscription in 2016 recognised this collective expertise. Women emerge here as creators and teachers, not anonymous bearers surrounding the bride.
Geet, Gawai, Jhumar and Gamat name different emphases
Geet means song; gawai points toward the act and occasion of singing. Jhumar names a lively song-and-dance form within the broader Bhojpuri field. Gamat can refer to staged entertainment and public performance where Bhojpuri music, comedy and dance meet.
The terms overlap in actual programmes, but they are not interchangeable labels for any Bhojpuri track. A recorded comic song made for broadcast solves a different problem from a ritual song timed to a wedding action.
An ear for the distinctions begins with language, chorus structure and percussion. Then ask whether the available credit identifies wedding, stage or studio context.
Named radio recordings widen the route
Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation's public catalogue gives exact singers and titles. Kishore Kumar Ramessur performs Kiring Karang. Dharmawtee Mungar sings Ghar Ke Bahua. Gunness Kamla offers Bhojpuri Mithaas. Ragini Sowaruth's Aaj Ke Zamana and Jwala Beejadhun's Sona Ke Gehna provide further points of comparison.
Biswanee Deepooa brings the route into the present as singer, writer, producer and director of her own Bhojpuri work. Zumba turns an exercise craze into a humorous dance song that continued to circulate at wedding gatherings in 2025. Its subject is contemporary everyday Mauritius; its language and direct address keep it inside a local Bhojpuri public rather than a borrowed film-song category.
These recordings matter because they stop Bhojpuri Mauritius from appearing only as ceremony described by an institution. A listener can follow individual voice, lyric shape and popular arrangement.
Play three singers consecutively. Notice whether chorus is present, how percussion is mixed and how much space the melody receives. There is no need to decide which sounds most authentic.
Indenture changed more than the population ledger
After slavery was abolished, large numbers of indentured labourers arrived from India, many through the immigration depot now known as Aapravasi Ghat. Contracts, plantation labour and restricted lives created another history of coercion and adaptation.
People carried languages, deities, wedding practices, instruments and theatrical forms. On Mauritius these were reorganised through new villages, inter-community contact and colonial institutions. Hindi film music and Indian broadcasting later offered additional repertories, but they did not replace local Bhojpuri creation.
The useful musical history follows what Mauritian performers did with inherited resources. It does not use India as a timeless source box.
Devotional and Mandarin recordings widen the audible map
Mauritius supports Muslim qawwali, Hindu bhajan and temple music, Christian hymnody and other religious sound. A concrete recent selection is Bam Bam Mahadev, created for Maha Shivratri in 2025 by a young Mauritian team including Rudra Ramkisoon, Radhika Bungsy, Avnish Gopala, Bhavesh Lochooa and Pravesh Davedeen. The project revisits prayer and Geet-Gawai memory through a deliberately current arrangement. It should be heard as a public devotional release, not as a replacement for worship.
Sino-Mauritian singer Tracy Lin offers another distinct public through the Mandarin album Love Collection (2017). Her version of The Moon Represents My Heart is a cover, and that fact is part of the story: a Mauritian singer can build local cultural visibility through a transnational Mandarin standard without the song becoming an indigenous island composition.
Indian classical schools, Chinese associations, churches, mosques and temples contain many more musical lives than two recordings can represent. These named performances do something modest but necessary: they prevent multilingual and religious Mauritius from remaining only a list of communities.
Multilingual does not mean every track must mix languages
Mauritian artists may sing in Creole, Bhojpuri, French, English or several languages across a career. Code-switching can reflect audience, rhyme, identity or commercial route. A song in one language remains part of a multilingual country.
Kaya's Creole did political work precisely because it placed everyday Mauritian speech at the centre of roots music. Geet-Gawai sustains Bhojpuri through repeated domestic use. A French-language jazz song or English-language reggae chorus enters another public.
The national sound lies partly in coexistence. Mixture is only one possible result.
