Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain PDF
Preview Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain
Bhangra and Asian Underground FALU BAKRANIA Bhangra and Asian Underground South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain Duke University Press Durham and London 2013 © 2013 Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $. Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker and typeset in Arno Pro by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bakrania, Falu Pravin. Bhangra and Asian Underground : South Asian music and the politics of belonging in Britain / Falu Bakrania. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-5301-0 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-5317-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. South Asians—Great Britain—Ethnic identity. 2. South Asians—Music—Social aspects—Great Britain. 3. South Asians—Great Britain—Music. 4. Nightclubs—Great Britain. i. Title. da125.s57b35 2013 305.8914%041—dc23 2013009710 For my family. Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 PART I. The Politics of Production chapter one . Mainstreaming Masculinity Bhangra Boyz and Belonging in Britain 33 chapter two . From the Margins to the Mainstream Asian Underground Artists and the Politics of Not Being Political 70 PART II. The Club Cultures of Consumption chapter three . The Troubling Subject of Wayward Asian Girls Working-Class Women and Bhangra Club Going 117 chapter four . Roomful of Asha Middle-Class Women and Asian Underground Club Going 160 Conclusion Bhangra and Asian Underground in the 2000s 187 Notes 203 Bibliography 227 Index 237 Preface One afternoon in the summer of 1991 my cousins played a remix track for me; it was Bally Sagoo’s ‘‘Star Megamix’’ from the album Wham Bam: Bhangra Remixes, released in 1990 in Birmingham, England. ‘‘Star Mega- mix’’ was unlike anything I had heard before. More than nine minutes long, the track layered and tacked back and forth between diverse musical forms such as classic bhangra, funk, and hip hop, and diverse vocal samples from American and British popular culture. I loved it; it was fun and funky. Indeed, the album that ‘‘Star Megamix’’ is featured on is billed as fun, party music (the liner notes claim it is ‘‘specially designed to fill any dance floor’’). But more than this, the track brought together a range of South Asian sounds in a way I’d never heard growing up as a second-generation South Asian in the United States. My experiences contrasted with those of my cousins, who were always hip to the latest popular culture of South Asia and its diaspora: in their early teens they had moved from India to a heavily South Asian neighborhood in Los Angeles and were able to frequent the South Asian shops that lined their streets. Particularly striking to me was how ‘‘Star Megamix’’ claimed a space for itself and subtly expressed a political consciousness, most notably through its use of black voices and music. For example, the track begins with a black British man stating, ‘‘Now we play bhangra my way,’’ and then laughing menacingly. This is later followed by another black British man asking, ‘‘What do you think about r—bhangra music?’’ (The singer is about to say ‘‘rap,’’ but Sagoo substitutes a sample from a South Asian man saying ‘‘bhan- gra.’’) Following this, in rhythmic succession, is the line ‘‘Now is the time!,’’ sampled from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. The track then builds on the theme of power by including the sampled lines ‘‘I’ve got the power!’’ (from ‘‘Power’’ by Snap), and ‘‘Shout, shout, let it all out!’’ (from ‘‘Shout’’ by Tears for Fears). One of the final lines, spoken in an official voice by a white, British male radio newscaster, expresses the conceit common to hip-hop songs that announce their own success: ‘‘This cut has been analytically designed to break on radio, and it will.’’ After a pause, however, the news-
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