The Harvard Bhangra Team, led by Apurva K. Patel ’03, has been displaying their contemporary brand of the traditional Punjabi dance for years, but this is the first semester in which a slim majority of the members have no Indian roots.

While Patel says he is “excited” about the group’s sudden diversity, he says he’s concerned about the widening gap between the traditional form of Bhangra and the team’s modern interpretation. Not one of the 12 members is from the area of India where the dance originated, and none can speak Punjabi, the native language of Bhangra songs.

“There definitely is that danger of losing something,” Patel says. “You don’t want it not to be Bhangra anymore.”

Within the group, there is division over the issue, Patel says. Some have pushed for more conventional forms for “ideological reasons, like maintaining the purity of Punjabi culture,” and others consider the adaptation to other cultures a necessary element.

Patel says that gradual changes to the dance are necessary to keep it relevant in today’s society, but says “there are indeed Punjabi cultural values, and we should be careful not to lose sight of those as the dance evolves.”

Watching from Outside

But more than internal tensions, Patel says one of the biggest challenges cultural groups face is dealing with audiences whose expectations are not met.

While Bhangra is affected on a relatively small scale—Patel says people outside the group often casually joke about the dearth of non-Punjabi South Asians on the team—other groups say the problem arises at nearly every show.

One Kuumba singer says people frequently joke, “there are no black people in Kuumba.”

But sometimes the questions are more personal.

Massa says she’s frequently asked to explain her participation in Kuumba.

“People often want you explain why you’re choosing to perform in a group that focuses on a culture different from your own,” she says. “You sometimes feel that you have to justify your decision.”

Bishop says she had similar confrontations with her peers after joining the Asian American Dance Troupe (AADT).

“People usually are really taken aback by it,” she says. “I think some of them think there might be something wrong with me.”

Bishop says she suspects that behind the bewildered looks may show a deeper bias against ethnic groups that defy popular expectations of homogeneity.