D?Bhuyaa Saaj performs at GD Birla Sabhagar on Wednesday. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Their forefathers were shipped to far-off lands by a cruel regime, as indentured labourers. About 150 years later, their descendants, although free from shackles, have not forgotten the pain and humiliation of slavery. But their music is a celebration of life.

D?Bhuyaa Saaj is a group of musicians from Trinidad and Tobago, part of the Indian community in the West Indian island nation. Their ancestors, originally from Bihar, were taken to the islands by the British to work in the sugarcane fields. Although they don?t speak Bhojpuri anymore, they have kept alive the folk music from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

On Wednesday evening, the nine-member troupe performed in Calcutta as part of the Remembered Rhythms festival. Through February, the American Institute of Indian Studies, with support from Ford Foundation, enabled three groups of Indian diaspora tour seven cities in the country, doing over 20 concerts. Each performance was accompanied by a talk on the history and evolution of the people and their art form. Earlier were Rivers of Babylon, a group of Jewish people of Indian descent, and Sidi Goma, members of the African-Indian community in Gujarat.

D?Bhuyaa Saaj?s performance, the last in the series, was a unique Chutney ? as the style of music is referred to ? of Bhojpuri and calypso, sung in Bhojpuri and English, of their past and their present, performing devotional and irreverently humorous songs. Here?s a sample: ?Aage aage nana chale/Nani go behind/Nana drinking white rum/Nani drinking wine... Nana smoking tobacco/Nani smoking cigarette/The rain starts to fall/And both of them get wet.?

At the end, the audience were on their feet, some even on stage, dancing to their hearts? content. There were wolf-whistles and applause aplenty. Some enthusiastic youngsters even had a lesson in the steel pan, a calypso instrument, after the concert. The mixed strains of Bhojpuri and Central American sounds seemed to do the trick.

?We don?t speak Bhojpuri any more, so all that we sing is by the ear. But we love this form of music and we perform quite often,? said Ajeet Praimsingh, leader of the group.