Why Bappi Lahiri’s ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ is anthem to protest COVID lockdown in China

The blockbuster song Jimmy Jimmy from the 1982 Hindi film Disco Dancer, composed by Bappi Lahiri, has become viral in China. Millions of Chinese who are subject to the coronavirus lockdowns have resorted to the popular Hindi song to vent their rage and frustration over Xi Jinping’s strict zero-COVID policy, which has effectively walled off China from the outside world.

Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja Aaja Aaja, the iconic song featuring actor Mithun Chakraborty, has been skillfully transformed by the Chinese. “Jie mi, jie mi” translates to “Give me rice, give me rice” in Mandarin. The video, which has gone viral after it was uploaded on the Chinese social media platform Douyin (another name for TikTok), people are shown mouthing the song sung by Parvati Khan and mockingly displaying empty vessels to demonstrate how they are deprived of necessary food items and other essentials during the lockdowns.

Anthem against Zero-Covid  

While numerous other videos have surfaced showing security personnel coming down hard on the people protesting the lockdowns, the video featuring the song has so far managed to escape the Chinese by Chinese censors, who are usually prompt to take down any post deemed unfavourable of the government. The Zero-COVID policy has weighed heavily on China, forcing residents to remain in their apartments for weeks in dozens of cities, including Shanghai, which has a population of over 25 million.

Though Covid cases have gone down considerably all over the world, including in China, the country continues to lock down entire neighbourhoods even if a few people are found to be positive. Besides travel restrictions that are in place, people are also required to have negative Covid tests even to enter restaurants.

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Recently, around 200,000 workers who were hired to assemble Apple’s newest iPhone walked out from a facility in central China’s Zhengzhou, Henan Province, due to the lockdown curbs. The workers at the world’s largest iPhone factory fled their workplace in northern China to avoid Covid-19 restrictions after some co-workers were quarantined. On Chinese social media, there have been scores of videos of people lugging their belongings while travelling down a road and jumping over fences. Most of them are of the employees of Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest suppliers, which is wrestling with massive disruptions at its iPhone assembly factory. Days of partial COVID restrictions had forced them into a “closed loop” inside the facility.

Jimmy Jimmy: A global hit

Jimmy, Jimmy, a global hit song for which Lahiri was honoured with London’s World Book of Records in 2018, may have become the new protest anthem in China, but the country is not new to the song. Before China’s authoritarian leader Mao Zedong dies in 1976, the Chinese were cut off from the rest of the world.

The media operated with tremendous restrictions, the crackdowns were rampant, and the western culture or its influence was out of question. Due to the iron hand of the Communist regime, China was starved of ‘western’ entertainment and music. It was only after things began to open up in 1976 that the Chinese began watching movies, and listening to music, from the rest of the world.

Disco Dancer is the rags-to-riches story of a wedding and street singer from Mumbai slums, who metamorphoses into Jimmy the disco dancer. Lahiri, who was attuned to the British and American disco trend at the time, happened to find favour with music lovers around the world after the film’s release. Jimmy Jimmy, in particular, travelled far and wide; China, the neighbouring country, surely could not have stayed oblivious to the catchy song, embodying Lahiri’s version of disco — with glittery bell bottoms, scores of twinkling light bulbs, pelvic moves accompanied by synths, horns, rhythm guitars and syncopated basslines.

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Thus, the people of China may have missed the meteoric rise of the British disco kings — the addictive songs of Bee Gees, the chart-topping hits of disco queen Donna Summer or John Travolta lighting up the dance floor with his swagger and spirit— they heard Jimmy Jimmy. China loved it then. So, while the song has been a part of China’s pop culture, its use as a protest anthem seems to be unprecedented

Besides China, Jimmy Jimmy also held Russia in awe, but this was before its disintegration. During the Cold War, Disco Dancer was the highest-grossing foreign film in the Soviet Union. Even today, Russians know and sing the songs from Disco Dancer. B Subhash, the the film’s director, was invited to the Moscow Film Festival in 1983 for its screening.

When the then Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited India, Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister, introduced him to Amitabh Bachchan as India’s biggest superstar. Gorbachev replied, “But my daughter knows Mithun Chakraborty.” The only other actor that the Soviet Union loved like this was Raj Kapoor. Moscow continues to have a karaoke bar as a tribute to the song. It’s called Jimmy Poy. Japan, on its part, built a statue of Jimmy in Osaka.

Jimmy Jimmy was also used in You Don’t Mess With Zohan (2008), the Adam Sandler-starrer action comedy. Maya Arulpragasam, British singer of Sri Lankan origin who goes by the name MIA, released her version of the song in 2007.