Sonik Gurus at Masala! Mehndi! Masti

I first heard of the Masala! Mehndi! Masti! Festival a year ago - whilst planning to move from East Africa back to the Great White North (NYC specifically) just after midsummer, a friend insisted I change my travel dates and arrive in time to catch the festival, which he was thrilled to find being headlined by the Rishi Rich project - a crew out of England that has been making waves around the world in the past couple of years with their urban indo-pop sound. After getting emailed a chaotically packed schedule of the events happening over the 5 days that MMM2004 was to take place, I happily picked up the phone to ring British Airways...

Run by husband-wife team Abhishek Mathur and Jyoti Rana, MMM carries a family friendly vibe that has been an annual occurrence since 2001 and boasts the largest attendance of any free South Asian cultural fest in North America! In a city where nearly half a million South Asians live, this festival really has very quickly taken post as Toronto's anchor event for South Asians - with participation by local and international performing artists of various styles and traditions.

Before getting to Toronto last year, I made a stop over in London to catch up with some friends, including BBC Radio1's Bobby Friction and Nihal - who were celebrating their new prime-time slot with a small party at Notting Hill Arts Club. In attendance were a slew of ‘British-Asian' music types including Nerm and a couple other guys from Shiva Soundsystem, Montreal rapper Spek (who was featured on Nitin Sawhney's ‘Pilgrim' track), Raghav and some chaps I would be seeing the next day in Canada - Rishi Rich, Juggy D and Jay Sean. I was flying out early the next morning but for a few hours managed to get a feel for the successful music scenes developing in London/the UK and this energy really thrilled me when pondering what I would find when I arrived back in Toronto before heading off to live in New York.

It was a Wednesday when I flew into town and the only thing scheduled for MMM was the opening ceremony - which was somewhat under-attended by the press etc but still fun; the perfect event to nurse jetlag with easy schmoozing.

Having just lived in Toronto for a few months the year before, I was really excited to see Toronto's South Asian cultural community in action and woke up Thursday morning with wide eyes. MMM2004 turned out to be an excellent example of how people living in Diaspora communities love to celebrate their identity and share it with others like them - tens of thousands of people made it to Toronto's Harbourfront Centre to take in performances and displays of all types of cultural art... the most obvious being the musical shows going on at various stages setup around the outdoor venue.

On a music tip, last year's festival had some fun performances but I didn't really hear any electronic music - the highlight of the festival was to be the Rishi Rich performance, which suffered more from Rishi's un-enthusiastic perch behind a keyboard at the back of the main stage than Juggy D's asthma attack, which amazingly he was able to perform through. This year I decided to get on the horn and try to help introduce festival-goers to some amazing new movements in music that are taking things technically and culturally beyond the keyboard in the back, I wanted them to hear some cutting edge ‘Indian Electronica' ;)

London-based producers Ash Chandola and Ranvir Verma make up the main contingent of the Sonik Gurus. As second generation immigrants to the UK, the Gurus bring interesting multicultural influences to the studio and their debut album (scheduled for Autumn '05 release) merges no only South Asian instrumentation and vocals with electronically produced sounds but turntable sampling/scratches, clean mid-90s-esque drum'n'bass rhythms, deep carribean-influenced bass-lines (courtesy of Verma) and more at a range of tempos. They're a group that has played to audiences in places as disparate as Venezuela, Poland and now North America's eastern seaboard, well, at least Toronto and New York. This was the first time they had ventured over to Canada/the USA and they played two gig dates - the first of which was Masala! Mehndi! Masti! - where they opened for [one member of ] Bhangra legends RDB, and then performed at a smaller MMM venue with myself (as ‘Adbul Smooth') until about 1 in the morning.

This was the first sampling of drum'n'bass that MMM-goers had ever witnessed and the crowd at first didn't know how to react to a DJ bouncing between decks, a mini-keyboard and microphone whilst his long-haired, army-fatigue-pants-wearing bass-player passionately sang on top of the blend of recorded and live sounds. Mind you, this was a crowd of approximately 3,000 people (of all ages) so when a few people in the front stood up and started to dance, the energy spread quickly. In fact, people standing on the fringe of the seating were, if not bobbing their heads, chatting about what this music actually was and whether they liked it. Those who did like it ambled down to the Brigantine Room, a small tented stage, afterwards to hear more dynamic beats being busted out my myself and then the Gurus. The crowd was a whole lot smaller at the Brig (possibly about 250 people came in and out through the gig) but we had everyone intrigued by the assorted audio we presented - my set bounced schizophrenically between classical Indian bhajans (religious songs) and the dark, bass-fuelled tabla-laden breakbeats of Dhamaal Soundsystem, whilst the Gurus performed a ton of their unreleased material, including fantastic tunes featuring Apache Indian and other British-Asian stalwarts.

The introduction of new electronic music with South Asian influence this year at MMM proved a hit and hopefully will become a staple at this festival, which is moving to a larger Toronto venue next summer and even presenting itself in Montreal and Vancouver! Personally, I think that its about time North America wake up to the sounds of a new South Asia, which exists around the world was very happy to see people enjoying the show we put on - now that Indian Electronica is based in Toronto we're planning to facilitate this and hopefully share more with artists getting started and already making musical waves around the world with a whole slew of events here in town - stay tuned!