India Abroad magazine just ran an excellent cover feature (zipped PDFs) on desi rockers and rappers in America, covering Stubhy of Lucky Boys Confusion, M.I.A., Karmacy, Chee Malabar of the Himalayan Project, Shaheen Sheik, Jungli and Funkadesi. They also shout out to ancestral rockers dating back to Freddie Mercury: Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Ashwin Sood (Sarah MacLachlan’s drummer-husband) and Tony Kanal of No Doubt. There are others, of course, such as Dave Baksh of Sum 41.
Stubhy, lead singer of 100K-selling ska-punk band Lucky Boys Confusion, vents his parental issues in his music:
… the artist formerly known as Kaustubh Pandav was something of a vagabond, sleeping on roofs and behind couches in Chicago… he had to decide exactly what he would have to sacrifice to pursue a music career. At the time, he figured it would be his college education. The parents weren’t happy. “They said, ‘Get the hell out of the house,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ ” What followed was a long string of “odd, crappy jobs,” like doing the midnight shift in a parking lot, or whatever else inspired him. “I threw parties,” said Stubhy. “Bought a keg. It was one grand scheme to the next. ‘Let’s go steal comic books from that kid and sell it.’ That would make about $15. Stupid stuff.”… the song ‘Fred Astaire’ [is] a terse dialogue between a demanding parent and a son who can’t live up to expectations. The title, he said, could have just as well been “Amitabh Bachchan”… he still gets e-mails from Indian kids who thank him for writing the song.
The lyrics of ‘Fred Astaire’ are both angry…
They’re pushing these children for all the wrong reasons
So far man you’re crushing down their spirits
Suffocate, emancipate, turn their backs and walk away eventually…
You’re wasting time — I call it living…
… and touchingly sorrowful about disappointing his father:
You can call it anything you want, the fact remains the same
I never got to be your Fred Astaire…
Jungli, a.k.a. Tasneem Nanji, sounds hilarious:
She heads into her next song, about obsessively following a guy from street to street. She refers to it as her Stalker Song. “That’s the first song I ever wrote,” she says afterward. “On the A train downtown, after cheating on my boyfriend.” She laughs and shakes her head, ashamed but not really. “What an ass I am. Who does that?” She squints out at the crowd. “It’s good, right?” she asks. “I hope I make some money off this shit.”… CAREER HIGHLIGHT: Performing backup for Kelis on Saturday Night Live…
The M.I.A. piece had this awkward family moment — I wonder whether it’s a risk to her father in the field for his name to be so publicly used:
Her father [a member of the Tamil Tigers] hardly visited them. When he did, the children were told he was their uncle so they would not let the authorities know inadvertently… she has not yet come to terms with her father abandoning his family for a cause. She had hoped, knowing that he surfs the Internet, he would get the news about her music. She got a message from him recently, she says. He wasn’t happy she was using his name [as the title of her album]. He wanted it to be removed. Apparently she refused. She does not sound bitter.
She doesn’t do white music:
In a previous interview she had said she ‘was sick of people staring at their shoes and wanting to slit their wrists.’ “True, true,” she giggles, when reminded of that statement, adding she also wants people to “shake their asses…” She was not even 10 and barely knew English. She would hear strange but fascinating sounds from the radio next door… Living on one side of her tiny apartment was a “cracked out” family that wanted to steal the meager things Maya and her family possessed. On the other side was a black family with a teenage boy crazy about hip hop. When her radio was stolen, she listened to the music coming from the black family. “Sometimes I wonder if I would have become a singer and musician but for that cracked family,” she says.
Chee Malabar has a long-distance relationship with his partner in rap:
In high school, he connected further with an Asian kid he’d met in 6th grade. Chee and Rainman formed the Himalayan Project in 1994, and continued partnering through their college years despite the distance between their campuses: UC Irvine and Penn State. They put out The Middle Passage, their first full-length album in 2001. The album was inspired by Chee’s reading of the V S Naipaul book of the same name… Chee and Rainman continue to perform together… Rainman still lives on the West Coast. They meet at Asian- American festivals and more South-Asian oriented ones such as ArtWallah and the now-defunct Diasporadics…. Chee also performs solo at spaces in New York, such as the Karma Lounge in Queens…
The flow is intense, and there are sonic textures I’ve never heard before, like the harmonium-tinged bass track. Most tracks are dense, highly textured, almost non-commercial. It’s the intense quality you see when someone creates something for keeping, not for sale, like artwork or filigree… These guys are total pioneers. The market will grow, and they’ll be known as father of the industry in the US. It’s like Gurinder Chadha or Bally Sagoo 20 years ago, when nobody else was doing what they were. They’ll end up like Jam Master Jay when he was alive: street cred, mad props from younger South Asians.
Disclaimer: Kiran of Karmacy and Shaheen are friends of mine from college, and Sajit and I were quoted in the spread.
Listen to all the artists’ tracks:
-
Lucky Boys Confusion, check out ‘Fred Astaire’ and ‘Hey Driver’
-
M.I.A., check out ‘Hombre’ and ‘Bucky Done Gun’
-
Karmacy, check out ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Outkasted’
- Himalayan Project, check out ‘Reaction’
- Shaheen Sheik, check out ‘Wildflower World’ (acoustic version)
great sampler, thanks for posting, Manish!
Its really interesting how most of the Desi musicians in America seem to be in rock bands whilst in England they gravitate to Bhangra/Hip Hop/Dancehall etc etc
Well, alright, its not a hard and fast rule, theres UK bands like Cornershop, but, you know what I mean. I think it reflects the urban / middle class divide….a proportionately higher number of desi’s in England live in the city, urban life, whilst in the states the community is more suburban and middle class and attracted to pull-your-hair-out-feel-my-pain-white-boy angst music.
Alright. I may be talking shit. But its interesting.
And isnt M.I.A British? Whats she doing in a list of Americans?
M.I.A. is trying to break out in America, and is the big story on the scene right now, which is probably why they included her.
There are actually lots of desis in hip-hop and rap here, but the story didn’t include them. Check this.
Hey, I’m all over the punk rock, and unapologetically so. I don’t really care what any pyschoanalysts have to say about it. Besides whic,h labelling all rock as white and middle class is itself way too generalized for my tastes. The word angst is overused as an all econmapssing, contemptuous dismissal. Like most established American music, rock has black roots and some great black proponents (Tracy Chapman comes to mind) and it’s got plenty of working class cred.
Saheli
Punk might have had working class cred in the days of The Sex Pistol’s, but I doubt it has any now. Its usually a bunch of overprivelidged white boys from the suburbs trying to deal with their headaches and rebel against the comfort of their upbringing by creating noise and a dishevelled aesthetic. Thats OK, you only see that as a diss if you see being middle class as something intrinsically shameful, which is what lots of ‘outrageous’ and ‘punk’ musicians seem to think 😉
Manish
That dude in the Himilayan Project is Snoop Doggs twin. No doubt about it.
Fascinating article on the same, written a year ago by a South Asian: http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0304/0304voices.html
Also equally interesting (to me) is the fact that the vast majority of Desis I’ve ever known in the US prefer hip-hop, and those I’ve known in other countries seem to prefer the rock and roll.
That just reflects mainstream music sales.
i’d like to friendster-whore-gloat that the beautiful shaheen is one of SM’s friendsters. if you aren’t part of our social networking posse already, why the hell aren’t you? 😀
sorry – link was fubar on the last post.
thanks for this piece. Himalayan Project is awesome. Anyone know if there’s a Jain connection to the group, though? The Middle Passage sports the Navkar Mantra on the last track, which tripped me out.
Check out Outernational!
The band has apparently been noticed by a member of Rage Against the Machine and rumor has it that a record deal is in the works.
They’re playing on Weds night (3/30) at South Paw in Brooklyn. You can listen to some sample tracks here.
In response to Punjabi boy, yes most Desi musicians in the UK are hip hop/rappers, with one exception. Freddie Mercury. But then again, Freddie wasnt what you call an ordinary British Asian immigrant. He was born in East Africa, Zanzibar, not even Uganda or Kenya. He grew up in his ancestral homeland, went back after he graduated, and flees a year or two later due to upheaval. He settles in Middlesex, works his butt off at music for 10 years and then rises to the top with “Bohemian Rhapsody” all working outside of the mainstream British Asian fold and among the mainstream white community. On top of that, he never acknowledged his roots as a Parsi from Bombay. Only that he was born in Zanzibar and that he was, of all things, Persian! Not even Parsi or Zoroastrian? Persian! It wasnt till after he died that the Bulsara family came out with the truth.
Freddie didnt keep his Parsi background a secret. He just stretched the truth a little for the sake of glam. He just said he was “Persian”. It wasnt like he was keeping it a full secret. He implied it in Persian. All he did was forget to mention that his ancestors left the country 1300 years ago and were settled in India since, losing language and culture, but not the faith. As a Parsi, however, and a rock geek, I feel really sad that freddie never came out and boasted of his connections to our Parsi group. or India for that matter. Many of us in Parsi community and in the Indian rock music fan community as a whole admire Freddie and look to him as a source of inspiration. lots of iranians like to claim him as their own (in fact, his music was recently permitted in Iran) and yet no one ever mentions his uniqueness as the world’s only superfamous Indian rocker and his contributions to the greatness of the dying community of Indian zarathustris.
Also, check out Sheema Mukherjee(sp?) who is the niece of Nikhil Banerjee. She plays a mean sitar, and she played with one Anjali Bhatti. Her music is featured on a commercial for a cell phone called the BlackJack. This song is called Stinging Sitars. Amazing.