The raunchy Bhojpuri music album arrived as a shocking phenomenon. The risqué song titles and audacious album art were blatantly perverse. The songs, in rustic folk woman voices, proclaimed forbidden desire.

Bordering on the vulgar and defiantly crass, these albums escaped being x-rated by crudely concealing their frank sexual expression in double entendres and suggestive imagery.

It all began with “cassette culture” (a term attributed to ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel) in the 1980s: cheap and portable audio cassettes and players made recorded music a mass culture. A number of small recording companies sprang up, publishing local content catering to regional markets. By the 1990s, music labels, large and small, were publishing a flood of regional titles catering not only to the vast hinterland audience, but also, increasingly, to the growing market of migrant populations in the cities.



In the early 1990s, as the Indian economy opened to the world, bringing sudden prosperity to the urban regions of the country. This led to a spurt in migrations from the hinterland. The number of workers from Bhojpuri-speaking regions (Bihar and Uttar Pradesh) swelled in the rapidly growing urban centres, as they searched for employment opportunities.

Mostly comprised of young males, discovering new liberties in the city, away from their homes and families, they became the prime target audience for the Bhojpuri music industry.

Of the vast folk repertoire, it was the songs of love, longing and desire that became the popular city genre. This spawned a series of titles, and religious fault lines. Urban migration has broken down some of these old divides while establishing new class associations and edifying certain gender stereotypes. The effect of mass media and pop-culture on regional media and the reverse impact of vernacular expressive forms on the urban ethos can both be gleaned from examining the transitions in the Bhojpuri album over the two decades from the 1980s to the 2000s.



The cover girl: Miss Use

The raunchy Bhojpuri albums invariably feature a provocative figure of a desirable lady on the cover. Over a period of two decades (1980s to the 2000s), the image of this sexualised woman underwent several transitions, each phase marking a staggering shift from a regional culture to an urban sub-culture.

The “cover girl” started out as a voluptuous village belle and has now transitioned into a sexy urban chick. The cover image, initially a photo-realistic illustration, is now a digital photo collage. Earlier the “cover girl” carried an earthen pot; now she cradles a mobile phone. Once coy and bashful, she now wears a daring and taunting look.



Over the years, the cover girl has been variously styled and designed to titillate. Her portrayal has been constantly re-purposed to suit the changing tastes and shifting ethos. The cover girl can hence be aptly labelled as “Miss Use” – a title borrowed from a Bhojpuri album which hints at the much used, abused and misused portrayal of the Miss.

Excerpted with permission from Visual Homes, Image Worlds: Essays from Tasveer Ghar, edited by Christine Brosius, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Yousuf Saeed, Yoda Press.