Author Archives: Taz

About Taz

Taz is an activist, organizer and writer based in California. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), curates MutinousMindState.tumblr.com and blogs at TazzyStar.blogspot.com. Follow her at twitter.com/tazzystar

Slumgod Mandeep Sethi Drops the Boom Bap Rap

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Poor Peoples Planet.png This past Friday, Bay Area Sikh-American hip-hop lyricist Mandeep Sethi dropped his latest album Poor Peoples Planet, a concept album produced by X9 of Xitanos Matematikos that weaves in the teaching Jiddu Krishnamurti, Punjabi gypsy origins, and classical elements of hip hop. At only 22 years old, Mandeep has already developed a strong base of followers having appeared on stage with artists such as Ziggy Marley and Dead Prez and having jumped on the mic with folks I’ve written about before such as Humble the Poet, Sikh Knowledge and Ras Ceylon. You can get Poor Peoples Planet on iTunes later this week and if you visit Mandeep’s BandCamp you can download the album now. Still not sure? Check out the single below Moving Swiftly, Guerrilla Tactics.

[Moving Swiftly::][GuerillaTactics][POORPEOPLESPLANET by mandeep.sethi.music

Full disclosure, I’ve been helping get the word out for Poor Peoples Planet and am excited to support a young Desi American whose lyrics are smart, conscious, and inspired by the hyphenated identity. But in the course of hanging out with Mandeep this week, I was really impressed to find out that he is one of the co-founders of Slumgods. Based in India, Slumgods was founded in 2010 as the first B-Boy collective in India bringing together emcees, breakers, artists of India and America. The Slumgods are bringing it hard and fresh using the the five elements of hip hop as a tool of empowerment for the slum youth in the Dharavi slums with a community center called Tiny Drops Hip Hop Center.

Continue reading →

Jai Ho for Jai Paul

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Jai Paul.jpg

Is it a mohawk or a mullet? With a mo-mullet haircut like that, you can be sure that anything coming out of this 21 year old Brit is anything but average. #MusicMonday for today comes from my latest musical obsession – Jai Paul and his song BTSU (h/t Abhay).

BTSU starts with the tiny, pretty whisper of Don’t fuck with me, though it soon explodes from its small man/big mouth beginnings into a synth storm. Then the squall settles again, back to lazy snare snap and his little coo. At some point there’s smooth saxophone, just a touch. [thefader]

You can download the track here (via Abeano) and keep tabs on Jai Paul on his myspace to see what he comes out with next. Continue reading →

Top Fifteen of 2010

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F5D864A1-4E0E-D007-2655-AFBD3F49CEE8wallpaper.jpg What happened this year? Will it be known as the year that Julian Assange brought down the Western World? A year rocked by such high unemployment that it allowed “creative types” like Das Racist, The Kominas and Sunny Ali and the Kid the time to put out new albums? Will 2010 be known as the year of Sarah Palin’s Nikki Haley? Or is it the year of Joel Stein-ism? Let’s take a look. Continue reading →

Even North Koreans Bend It Like Beckham

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Korean Bend It.jpgYou have to wonder… In a country like North Korea where the nation is stuck 1950s time warp and Western influences have officially not been allowed in… Why the 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham? Why now?

The 2002 film starring Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Myers and Parminder Nagra aired Dec. 26 — a break from the regular programming of news, documentaries and soap operas in North Korea, where Western films are largely off limits.

“This was the first Western film to be broadcast on North Korean TV, and as well as football covered issues such as multiculturalism, equality and tolerance,” British Ambassador Peter Hughes told The Associated Press from Pyongyang, where his embassy helped arranged the Boxing Day broadcast.

Britain has been seeking to reach out to North Koreans through football, a sport that has connected the two nations since North Korea first sent a team to the World Cup in England in 1966. [yahoo]

I get it. Soccer can unite the world, teaches sportsmanship, crosses boundaries of nation states, blah, blah, blah. I can understand why the British government would choose this movie to develop ties with North Koreans. What I’m curious about is the South Asian hyphenated identity and pop cultural references. I would think that in a nation sheltered the way North Korea is, that a lot of these subtle nuances would be totally missed. In a nation where immigration simply doesn’t exist, how much of the immigrant experience story line did the North Koreans actually understand?

But typically of the censoring Communist state, eight minutes were cut from the 112-minute show….The Boxing Day screening was a rare treat in a country whose TV normally focuses on docum­entaries about farms and others glorifying its leaders and Army. [mirror]

Of course, they had to censor something. But I wonder what exactly those eight minutes of censored scenes were in this fairly PG rated movie. Was it when the girls were at the club? Religious references? Who knows. All I can say is thank goodness they chose this movie instead of Bride and Prejudice. Continue reading →

The Absolutely Sick Sikh Knowledge

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On his right forearm he has this tattoo. I didn’t recognize it at first – a four by four of solid black squares. “It’s the squares to my drum pad,” Sikh Knowledge said, pointing casually to his arm. It made sense – he was a reggae dancehall musician that loved to produce music. You may not know who he is but you will and I guarantee you’ve heard his beats. His tunes are the base music for many of the up and coming hip hop Desi artists of the day – Humble the Poet, Mandeep Sethi, and Hoodini have all used tracks produced by him.

Hailing from Montreal and well known on the Canuck Desi scene, Sikh Knowledge made his way to California for a mini-tour in December, hitting up cities all along the coast. I met him in Sacramento, where he was doing a show with his Sikh hip-hop posse at the Sol Collective. The show was live and it was intense to see a whole scene of brown underground hip hop heads. I sat down with Sikh Knowledge aka Kanwar Anit Singh Saini before he jumped on the mic at the Sacramento show. Here’s what he had to say.

Sikh Knowledge got his start young, singing at the temple when he was a child. But he got into hip-hop also at a young age. “I was one of those kids that would beat box going to school… I was the only grade 3 kid bringing mixed tapes to school. I lost Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step” on the playground and that’s when I cried at school.” It was when he heard the Sound Bwoy Burill track in 1994 that he knew he was going to make music his life.

But what really made an impression on me was Sikh Knowledge’s confidence in pursuing his life. At the age of 20, he decided to stop being what other people wanted him to be, dropped out of engineering school and re-started honestly. “I dropped out, came out, and rearranged my whole life,” he stated. “I reapplied and did my undergraduate degree in music with a minor in linguistics. It was the happiest time of my life. I felt good about the decisions that I made.” He’s currently pursuing his Master degree in speech language pathology while having the dual career of mixing some of the ill-est beats in North America. Continue reading →

Trigger Happy Sub Swara

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A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending one of the most bass booming dance frenzy inducing parties I’ve been to since moving to the Bay area. Held at the dope new venue Public Works, it was a record release party for Trigger the latest out of the electronic/hip hop/dubstep/desi beat making duo, Sub Swara. Originating from a NYC club night, Dhruva Ganesan and Dave Sharma have turned Sub Swara into an electronic dubstep music touring machine. Performing that night were also San Francisco’s own Surya Dub DJs Kush Arora, Maneesh the Twister, Jimmy Love and DJ Amar. Almost all of these folks are tied in with the sound barrier breaking Dhamaal Soundsystem.

But enough about the party that you missed. Let me give you something to listen to on this Music Monday. Check out the Triggers Mixtape Volume 2, opening up with a track co-writ by Dead Prez. That’s right, it’s a Dead Prez meets Sub Swara – an unlikely combo but somehow it works. Also check out minute 9.00 for the Ceelo remix, my personal fave.

Sub Swara — Triggers Mixtape Vol 2 by Sub Swara

The above Mixtape is the second in what I can only imagine to be a series – bookmark the Sub Swara soundcloud page to keep track of other mixes that may be coming from their crew. Just in case you were the OG type, below you can listen to Trigger in it’s entirety and original form.

I’ve never been a huge fan of electronic music (though I did attend my fair share of raves in my college days) but I find the music coming out of Sub Swara and their associated DJ crew different. There is more bass, more beats, amazing obscure dancehall and reggae finds that blend seamlessly with bhangra and deep bass beats. I’m a big fan of dubstep and love how this team of musicians can spin to take listeners on an audio adventure.

I’m sure Sub Swara will be doing a show near you very soon (looks like CT, NY and CO are in luck). Keep your eye on their website, and their twitter to keep posted on when the bass goes boom. Continue reading →

Kids Being Kids

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For today’s Music Monday, I want you to imagine this: A big gritty cauldron. Throw in a pork eating Muzzie. A ukulele. A pair of cowboy boots. Stir in a dash of lo-fi, put in a pinch of sultry attitude, and toss in a little bit of “pew, pew.” What do you get?

Kids.jpg

You get the The Kid (of Sunny Ali and The Kid) with a new EP album aptly named Kids. Abdullah Saeed’s (aka “The Kid”) solo project and released on the Poco Party label, Kids maintains the cowboy feelings that you get when you listen to a Sunny Ali and The Kid album, it’s just now it has a Hawaiian ukulele twang. It’s complicated to describe yet oddly simple. Just listen to it below. And after you listen to it, you can download it here at Sunny Ali and the Kid’s Bandcamp site for free – consider it my Chrismahanukwanzakah present for you.

POCO-005 The Kid – Kids by POCOPARTY

From The Kid himself in an interview at Poco Party:

The songs are not really about kids, but from the perspective of a kid. “the bug” is about a school yard game, for example. The limited instrumentation, the rudimentary skill, and the rough recording are all part of this theme.[pocoparty]

So there you have it. It’s an album by The Kid named Kids written from the perspective of a kid. Don’t worry, Sunny Ali ain’t mad at The Kid for breaking off on his solo project – in fact the duo just performed this past weekend in New York City. Follow Sunny Ali and The Kid’s facebook page for their upcoming tours and albums and you can read Abdullah’s latest adventures with music over at MTV Desi.

In the meantime, I now can’t stop daydreaming about how I want this for Chrismahanukwanzakah. Thanks, Kid.

Previous Posts: Q&A with @Porkadventurer, Showdown with Sunny Ali. And the Kid. Continue reading →

Is It The Desi Dougie?

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Is The Dougie a Desi dance move? This is the type the hard hitting questions asked only here at Sepia Mutiny. Evidence one, Brown people in kurtas & salwars dancing The Dougie.

If you haven’t heard this song yet, you’ve been living under a rock. Teach Me How to Dougie is the Macarana for the teens in 2010. Written by the Cali Swag District, it’s been high on the Punjabi remix and I’m sure on the playlist of every Bhangra Holiday Dance Party this season. Still skeptical of the Desi origin of The Dougie dance? Just watch the following video, evidence two. So hard to dispute…

So when’s the DJ Rekha remix of the song gonna come out? And who’s going to teach me how to Dougie? And more importantly, who’s gonna teach Abhi how to Dougie? Continue reading →

Curried Music Monday

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Apologize for last week’s Music Monday fiasco – my effort at a Kei$ha cool factor clearly fell pathetically. Let me try to redeem myself. Have you heard of Curry Smugglers? (H/T Dancing Reena)

Curry Smugglers Chill 3.jpg

A new music site with fusion-y, electronic-y, Bollywood-esque beats, it’s a DJ’ed podcast of some pretty eclectic sounds.

What started off as a dream two years ago, became a reality in 2009 and is now the leading show of its kind in 2010. Tired of talk radio antics of DJs/RJs talking over music, playing classified ads and old school bad BollyPop? Good. Because Curry Smugglers is none of those things and everything you want – a show that puts the artists and music first, listens to your opinion and bottom line – entertains you.[currysmuggler]

Though I’m more of a fan of the Alterno-Desi sounds, their latest release “Chill Edition 3” has more of an electro-fused lounge feel (reminding me of Thievery Corporation from back in the day), including sounds of Sarah Brightman, Nusrat Sahab, Karsh Kale, Anoushka Shankar, Nitin Sawhney. You can download the 77 minute mix through their Soundcloud, embedded below.

Curry Smugglers – Chill 3 by Curry Smugglers

Give it a listen – and you can visit their site for more music or subscribe to their podcast through iTunes. As far as who the creators of the site are and what it takes to be a smuggler, I’m pretty unclear about. But I am clear about Curry Smugglers having music potential and it being a new site to keep an eye on into the future. Continue reading →