There was a time when the only exposure to Asian music was on a Saturday night after you stumbled into your local Tandoori or on the late great George Harrison’ s incredible output of Indian inspired records.

In the past ten years however that has all taken a dramatic turn with some pivotal movements in the so called Asian underground.

The term Asian underground has been a double edged sword just as Britpop turned, with its rise and now its fight for survival in the fickle world of fad culture. As urban myths go, the term Asian underground came from the legendary Anokha nights at the Blue Note club in London. The night was put on by one of the main players on the Asian scene Talvin Singh.

Talvin Singh

Defying the criticism and conformity, Singh went on to work with luminary forces in the musical world coming into the fray with Massive Attack, Madonna, Sioxusie and the Banshees and numerous other heavy weights.

The album that launched the well used term was Anokha: Sounds of the Asian Underground which gave the media a convenient box to place this new movement in. The album featured some ground breaking artists who where experimenting with traditional and electronic sounds on the decks and live at the Blue Note Club. The sound of Asian Fusion subsequently caught global attention and put State Of Bengal, Amar, Future Sound of India and Singh himself firmly in the spotlight. With the floodgates opened Talvin was able to release his own solo experimentations which can be heard on the ‘OK’ and ‘HA’, albums.

Another British Asian artist also working in the same ball park is Nitin Sawhney, currently riding high above the Asian underground tag, with his sixth album titled Human. Born in Dulwich in the mid nineteen sixties Sawhney experienced, like Talvin Singh and most other colonial immigrants growing up in Britain, that uncertain feeling of alienation. However great diversity often leads to great art, and Sawhney’s releases are a good argument for the fact.

All artists need their advocates and Outcaste and Nation Records have been instrumental in giving Asian artists a voice. The Outcaste label was formed in 1995 by Shabs and Paul Franking to create a home for world music making artists and releasing some awe inspiring records in the process. It’s a partnership that has risen from humble beginnings to being a major force in world music, winning the outstanding achievement award in 1998 and getting a nomination for a mercury music prize in 1999 with Nitin Sawhney’s ‘Beyond Skin’ album.

Martin Morales head of A+R at Outcaste explained his reasons for setting up the label was to represent Asian music to a wider audience. ‘The key to a successful label is having great artists which we’ve had with Nitin Sawhney, Badmarsh And Shri and now with Oi Va Voi’. Morlaes is clear to point out that ‘Outcaste is run by people who love music, ‘We treat are artists as stars, we sign future stars, treat them with respect and then tell the world’. He sees the current climate of economic problems suffered by the entertainment industry as an opportunity for smart labels to rise above the competition from other products like DVD’s and computer games. Creating exiting music, making original sounding records that people want to buy and not copy, and offering value for money is Outcaste’s policy and it seems to work. As I write this another Outcaste release is delivered by the postman, the album is The Classical Indian Selection. No beats this time just amazing sound-scapes and arrangements from the legendary Ravi Shanker to new school producers Medival Punditz and heaps more. Diversity is part and parcel of what the label puts out making them more accepted today than the label name suggests.

Nation Records have also played a massive role in placing this genre on the map, with a slightly harder sound and political slant being exemplified by their connection with bands like Asian Dub Foundation and Fundamental. The concept of the label was coerced back in 1989 with the intention of transferring the energy of a Sex Pistols gig circa 1977 to the Asian backbeat of Bhangra. The vision however wasn’t shared by the rest of the music industry, and the obvious plot was to go it alone.

Aki was one of the founding members of the label and the ever growing sound of the band Fundamental. The spark began with an eight track album called Fuse which got the ball rolling as Rich from Nation explains, ‘we knew something was going on once the genres of hip hop and Bhangra started to merge creating a sound that was new and fresh from the streets of Britain’

While I spoke to Rich, doing this interview, a guy knocks at the door with a demo, the interview stops and Rich welcomes him in the door and offers him a tea before recommencing the interview. You get the feeling from the way they operate that it’s not rhetoric but action that creates new breakthrough in music and the arts. Nation have always been ahead of the game because they came from the soul in the first place. In a reserved and not boastful manner Rich states ‘we don’t have a problem with piracy in fact it shows you that what we do is wanted by people, we don’t have to downsize cause we only ever had 3 people running the show here’

Fourteen years on, their mission has launched the careers of Talvin Singh, Natacha Atlas, Loop Guru, Transglobal Underground and a host of others. They look towards the future with a crew from France called Recycler who are busy producing their first album for the label after being huge fans of what Nation did. Aki’s band Fundamental are also in the studio recording tracks for their new album due out next year.

A big forerunner in this genre of world groove who paved the way for this merging of cultural sounds is UK based Indi-Pop Records. Set up by Steve Coe, a musical visionary and discoverer of Shelia Chandra who provided the vocals for the 80’s hit Ever So Lonely and countless other groundbreaking releases.

Indi-Pop are not ashamed to take the credit for creating the whole fusion style which is still influencing now established names like Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh and other composers. Their legacy can be heard on their recent retrospective Compil-Asian album which gives you a taste of the boundaries they’ve crossed.

The new players however are coming on the scene quicker than you can write an article on them. The world is getting a taste of this music from people like Punjabi MC who broke the nationals with Mundian To Bach Ke recently, New York’s Dum Dum project with Punjabi 5-0 and the Bhangra Knights Vs Husan track which accompanied the Peugeot 206 TV add.

Less conspicuous artists making outstanding records are Thievery Corporation, their album the Richiest Man In Babylon is well worth looking out for and San Francisco’s DJ Cheb I Sabbah on Six Degrees records is writing and remixing any thing that moves on the world groove scene.

Visionary Underground

The BBC have also caught up with this explosion by creating BBC Asian, a kind of Radio One for Asians, which unfortunately at times like its counter part, falls short of the mark. The hiring and firing powers at the BBC have recently given Bobby Friction a graveyard slot on Radio One and to their credit supported world music through their Radio Three world music programs.

Another station to give air time to this music is Totally Radio who are based in Brighton. They now broadcast a hugely popular show around the world called the Kundalini Dub Lounge on www.totallyradio.com/kdl. The program is an online interactive show which is listened to by an ever growing global network. The station together with the producers of the show Kusha Deep Productions are currently putting together an album of music which has featured on the Dub Lounge. They are also running a competition for new artists working in this genre to submit their work for inclusion on this release. Chosen artists and producers will feature alongside some of the cutting edge names on the UK fusion scene with the idea of greater cultural musical exchange by dismantling the musical boundaries.

The future of this scene will depend on the innovation of labels and artists to create a genre which is received by the world like other styles such as rock and RnB and not filed away in the novelty section of the musical spectrum.

Comments (1) >>

Fari Bradley said:

Hi this was very informative, was it written a while ago though, as Bobby Friction now has a lot more than a graveyard slot on BBC, he and Nihal have their own show on 1Xtra and represent them absolutely everywhere the brown pound might be enticed into the BBC economy. What I must add is that some of these people are experimenting and others are 'cooking to the recipe' so to speak, which has caused yet another divide in an already sidelined music form. I can't enjoy this formulaic asian music, probably because I do not conform to the stereotypes it seems to propagate of Londonstanis and rajamuffins. I just wish there was still a venue like the Blue Note where discerning listeners could go for live music and a taste of where the frontiers of the scene were at, rather than clicking between BBC Asian and Clubasia. My idea would be to encourage three or four of these labels to invest in a venue together to showcase their artists.

August 15, 2007 | url

Write comment

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment