The Global Sounds of
the Asian Underground
Nilanjana Bhattachariya
"Music... has acquired
a new place and a new significance. It is no longer the hermeneutic
key to a whole medley of expressive practices and is infrequently
appreciated for itself or for its capacity to express the inexpressible…
Its non-representational qualities are being pressed into service
to do an uncomplicated representational job. They are burdened
with the task of conjuring up a utopia of racial authenticity
that is everywhere denied but still sought nonetheless.
--Paul
Gilroy, Small Acts
British cultural critic
Paul Gilroy's observation above was inspired by the state of Black
British music in 1990, but it captures the sense of present conflicts
and tensions surrounding the South Asian diaspora's relationship
to its musical production as well. Most twenty-somethings will
remember that brief instant in music history during the mid to
late1990's when names like Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation
and Cornershop surfaced in mainstream record shops for the first
time in the United States and around the world. Straight from
Britain, their and other British Asians' music at that instant
came to define the most progressive directions in electronic music.
The release of the albums Anokha and the Untouchable Beats compilations
among others attached the term "Asian Underground" to
this music in the minds of those unable to pass beyond the velvet
ropes of Outcaste, Anokha, Swaraj, and other clubs in London.
[i] During this time, record labels actively sought
to sign Asian musicians, who produced this music fusing South
Asian musical traditions with contemporary dance music.
These musicians' albums,
exporting the London dance club experience to mainstream markets
both within and outside Britain, eventually influenced non-Asian
musicians from Madonna to Björk
[ii] as well. But they especially influenced South
Asian diaspora youth communities in both Britain and in the United
States. These younger diaspora communities took pride in claiming
this revolutionary music as their own, and mainstream music critics
in Britain and the States came to see the production of this music
as a sign that the South Asian diaspora community had “come of
age.” Asian Underground music was by no means the first type of
music to mix British dance music with South Asian music, but its
widespread recognition and assimilation into the mainstream media
and music industry were unprecedented. The British press in particular
seized upon the music as the sonic embodiment of Tony Blair's
new, multi-ethnic Britain, and the Asian community in Britain
of course enthusiastically welcomed this overdue public acknowledgement
of their crucial role in forming modern British culture.
These days the same record
stores that once devoted extensive advertising campaigns to British
Asian artists in the past now rarely carry any British Asian music
albums because "they don't sell." Although many of its
fans now harbor nostalgia for those days that "we" were
on top of the world—or at least the charts, they condone British
Asian music’s less glamorous existence right now. Popular music
trends often come and go, but when a genre of music is so heavily
tied to cultural identity as the "Asian Underground,” its
departure can result in unpleasant after affects.
The 1996 collection of
essays, Dis-orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance
Music [iii] , remains
one of the only books to treat the Asian Underground scene, which
at the time of the book's publication was still in its early stages.
Pathbreaking at that time, the essays' authors discuss selected
British Asian musicians' outspoken criticism of racism, political
and economic oppression. The book’s popularity succeeded in enlightening
many readers, especially those outside Britain, for the first
time about the problems faced by British Asian communities and
how musicians are attempting to address those problems. For instance,
the authors report on the band Asian Dub Foundation's attempts
to raise consciousness about racism and police brutality, as well
as their active campaign against the unjust imprisonment of Satpal
Ram-- who was finally freed last month after fifteen years of
imprisonment, largely due to ADF's efforts.
[iv] But their style of writing and selection
of artists have initiated a now regrettably common practice of
judging British Asian musicians solely based on their perceived
politics, as evident in their lyrics and published interviews.
We need to support musicians'
active political engagement whenever possible, but should not
ignore those musicians who are also active—in less subtle ways.
In the opening quotation, Paul Gilroy laments the loss of music's
ability to allude to a variety of different cultural traditions,
and the productive tensions between them. The authors of Dis-orienting
Rhythms unfortunately do nothing to make up for this loss. They
do not acknowledge the ways in which the mere performance of or
allusion to certain musical genres, like Bengali Baul songs or
Qawwali, can create resistance against the dominant norms of British
popular music. Dis-orienting Rhythms suggests that if musicians
do not profess their political stance in their lyrics, they should
not be taken seriously as artists. The production of this music
has indeed affected the general public, who at least for a short
time, enthusiastically received their British Asian neighbors
as full-fledged British citizens, with the right to live in Britain.
Bollywood music is now a recognized genre of music throughout
Britain, especially since this summer’s premiere of the musical
Bollywood Dreams, a collaboration between English composer Andrew
Lloyd Webber
[v] , Indian film composer A.R. Rahman, and British
Asian writer Meera Syal. The Asian Underground’s role in setting
up the conditions for the release of a major musical based on
Bollywood themes should not be underestimated.
There is a sense then that
the afterglow of the Asian Underground has been assimilated into
the mainstream. Producer Talvin Singh's virtuosic mastery of the
tabla and reinterpretations of traditional forms on his solo album
O.K. won him the British mainstream music industry’s most prestigious
prize, the Mercury Award for Best New Album, in 1998. His musicianship
should count for more than a mere referent to South Asian music,
but few people outside the South Asian community are able to appreciate
the complexity of his reinterpretations and reduce it to yet another
source of ‘Asian sounds.’ These days the sampled sound of Indian
instruments—a tabla here, a few strums of the sitar there-- is
so ubiquitous that few people even notice American hip-hop artist
Missy Elliot's recent incorporation of a popular contemporary
Bhangra song in her latest song, “Get Ur Freak On.”
[vi] These few well-placed samples have qualified
an astonishing number of musicians to capitalize on the wave of
musical innovation established by the Asian Underground, and the
majority of them hold no commitments to the British Asian community.
But this cultural transmission
does not travel a one-way stream, as these types of things seldom
do. The Asian Underground, in turn, has benefited from the public's
newfound penchant for yoga, bindis and mehndi, and curtains fashioned
from saris that can double as sarongs—all of which were being
heavily marketed in every department store, at one point. Style
magazines latched onto Talvin Singh's simultaneous ability to
push technological musical wizardry beyond its limits and "tap
ancient wisdom." Sales of Asian Underground albums rose and
attracted young people both inside and outside the British Asian
community to their clubs.
Madonna, a reliable indicator
of significant trends in popular culture, entered the scene as
well, but with her own personal touch: she released a Sanskrit
language song based on her yoga mantra, "Shanti-Ashtanga,"
set to English producer William Orbit's Asian Underground-inspired
beats. More politically confrontational bands like Asian Dub Foundation
and Fun-da-mental tried to distance themselves from the scene
but conceded that the climate had improved the visibility of British
Asians as legitimate cultural producers in literature, film, television,
and music. During the height of the Asian Underground’s popularity,
mainstream consumers replaced their discomfort with their own
neo-orientalist appropriations of South Asian culture with the
sensational British Asian musical trendsetter, hailed as 'the
best of both worlds.' Concentrating on this vision of British
Asian identity as a token success enabled many people to neglect
the poorer, less desirable British Asians also in their midst.
But “the scene” eventually
exhausted itself. The market's saturation of "Asian-inspired"
merchandise, including music, wore through its initial novelty,
and British Asians’ persistent presence began to alienate consumers.
Critics began to denounce the once innovative incorporation of
Indian percussion as affected "pitter-patter" incapable
of replacing a real set of drums, and sales of artists' second
albums slumped. Madonna left Hindu spirituality for sources farther
East before morphing into an American cowgirl. Her collaboration
with Talvin Singh and second attempt at pronouncing Sanskrit,
"Cyber-raga," was recorded for her last album, Music--
most likely in the heyday of Indo-chic, but she tellingly cut
the track from the release and relegated the song to the B-side
of a single shortly before her album's release.
Musicians who create music
reflecting their own identities cannot shed their now passé British
Asian ethnicity as easily as Madonna has shed hers. Although many
are struggling to get their latest albums released, their earlier
songs are reappearing in an astonishing number of compilation
recordings -- in a context that decidedly breaks with the British
Asian sound's emphasis on local reconfigurations of British identity.
British Asian musicians now find new homes for their music among
compilations of exotica-tinged lounge music and virtual itineraries
for armchair tourists, via the Rough Guide and Six Degrees Records
Travel Series. On these compilations, tracks incorporating samples
recorded on holidays abroad by English "techno-tribal-fusion-trance"
producer Banco de Gaia (Toby Marks) peacefully coexist in the
same world as Talvin Singh's compositions, both equally representative
of the British "Asian-inspired" sound.
The historical origins
of exotica and sound tourism give these latest developments a
deeper significance. Exotica was concocted during the 1950's for
bored American suburbanites; men oppressed by the tedium of daily
life would escape to Tiki-bars after work to drink Mai-Tai’s and
listen to tropical sounds. Albums of this music gradually spread
to their family rooms and bachelor pads as well. Americans had
taken a heightened interest in foreign countries after the Second
World War, and these artificial encounters with pagan rituals
and jungle love songs offered a safe, but palatable level of exposure
to foreign elements. American composer Martin Denny satisfied
their interest and churned out countless scores of "Polynesian
Pop" and lounge music, all with "island" rhythms
with appropriate titles such as "A Taste of India" and
"Banana Choo Choo." Although Exotica died during the
1960's, it experienced a revival during the 1990's, which continues
today. Originally associated with kitschy cocktails and a healthy
dose of irony, its revival now appears to be beginning to take
itself and its delusions of grandeur more seriously.
Sound tourism, on the other
hand, originates with the first archival anthropological field
recordings being made available to the public. It later evolved
into the massive commercial genre of world music, in which the
sounds of Papua New Guinea can evoke for their listener the experience
of actually being there without her having to leave her house.
The Rough Guide travel guidebooks, targeted towards adventurous
budget travelers, have recognized the connections between those
who travel and those who take trips in their armchairs via the
National Geographic channel with an extensive line of "travel
guide" recordings for those who stay at home.
But one needn't have an
actual destination in mind to pursue aural escapism; imaginary
destinations can suffice. One of the most successful exponents
of the compilations now featuring Asian Underground type musicians
is the Buddha Bar, now in its fourth volume, with additional legitimate
and illegitimate offshoots. The Buddha Bar, an upscale lounge
and restaurant in Paris, caters to an elite, jet set crowd and
embodies the latest, most luxurious form of exotica. Elegantly
packaged, its compilations attempt to evoke the ambience and aesthetics
of the Buddha Bar for those unable to visit its physical location.
They feature a variety of different genres blended together into
a seamless, continuous mix of exotica-tinged easy listening. This
seamless mix erases aural distinctions between Algerian Rai singers,
Egyptian pop singers, Brazilian samba artists, "techno-tribal-fusion-trance,"
and flamenco-inflected Qawwali. In the actual Buddha Bar in Paris,
a colossal likeness of the Buddha looms over the lounge's patrons;
the figure of Buddha also appears on the cover of the compilation
recordings, calculated to evoke peace, tranquility, and bliss.
The Buddha Bar compilations dissolve troublesome cultural distinctions,
traditions, and conflicts, collapsing these different genres of
music and their respective cultural contexts into an amorphous
mélange of "global ethnic sound," which they then target
to upscale, jet-lagged tourists and their aspirants.
The Buddha Bar compilations'
enormous success raises serious questions about the general public's
commitment to respecting its performers' political and cultural
affiliations. Yet at the same time, some British Asian artists
desire and benefit from this very erasure of identity, which enables
their music to be judged on the same standard as others' and avoid
being pigeon-holed into an outmoded marketing strategy. The record
industry tells us that we, as citizens of a globalized economy,
crave (or at least should crave) music reflective of our cosmopolitan,
transnational identity—the newest utopia of racial authenticity,
as Gilroy describes it. We therefore buy compilations from Six
Degree Records called Arabian Travels in lieu of actually traveling
in person to possibly unsafe areas of world to consume the music
in its local form. We therefore perform our daily yoga postures
to British Asian chanteuse and world music star, Sheila Chandra,
who segues from jathis into traditional Irish folk songs in the
same breath. By listening to this music with inattentive ears,
we are provided not so much with opportunity to learn about a
new culture through its music, but the opportunity to assume a
non-committal identity where economic and political inequities
dissolve into temporary oblivion.
[i] Anokha and Outcaste were some of
the first clubs in London to feature “Asian Underground” music
and DJ’s in the early to mid 1990’s. Talvin Singh, a classical
tabla player and electronic music artists, brought together
a core group of DJ’s, many of whom were of South Asian descent,
with the same vision as he had—to produce an innovative sound.
The name Anokha or “unique” in Hindi/Urdu, reflects this
vision. The phenomenally successful Anokha club was the first
club to release an album of music by different musicians associated
with it in 1996. Produced by Talvin Singh, its official title
was Talvin Singh presents: Anokha: Soundz of the Asian Underground.
Outcaste soon followed with their compilation, called Untouchable
Outcaste Beats – along with many other clubs and producers.
[ii] Björk is a popular Icelandic female
singer and musician, well-known for her innovations in electronic
music.
[iii] Edited by John Hutnyk, Sanjay Sharma,
and Ashwani Sharma, London: Zed Books, 1996.
[iv] Satpal Ram was wrongly sentenced
to life in prison for defending himself in racially-motivated
attack and spent fifteen years in prison before being released
last month. For more on Satpal Ram, see http://www.asiandubfoundation.com/satpal/intro.htm.
[v] Andrew Lloyd Webber has composed
the music for the mega-musicals Cats and Phantom of
the Opera.
[vi] “Get Ur Freak On” samples the British
bhangra producer Panjabi MC’s song, “Mahi.”
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