:::The Desi Flavor:::

A Pakistani Festival Of Change

Sufi’s Choice - In Pakistan, dancing was banned for many years, and some clerics would like to do the same to music. A new festival is changing things. (via ArtsJournal)

For Lahore, the 10-day festival was a huge, at times startling cultural event. The music ranged from pop to classical but the finest show was the pure Sufi night. Festival president Faizaan Peerzada runs an event that aims to transform Pakistani life. By promoting Sufi music he hopes to 'counter the extremism of the mullahs who use the mosques to spread ill-will against the west'.

Competing with foreign music channels

Pakistan Music Channels competing with foreign music channels - Globalization has enabled Pakistani’s to lose interest in local channels because of the glitz and glamour of the foreign media. Viewers prefer Indian music, soaps, films and Hollywood movies, thus resulting in local channels being relegated to the background.  Inspite of all that, the local music channels like Indus Music, The Musik and G Channels are able to match up with foreign music channels, because of their witty, educated presenters and colorful sets.

M.I.A Nominated for Mercury Prize

British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. (real name Maya Arulpragasam) has been nominated for this year's Mercury prize going up against heavyweights such as Coldplay and Kaiser Chiefs. She is nominated for her debut album Arurlar and the £20K prize is usually given to emerging talent. Other desi winners included – Talvin Singh who won it in 1999, the same year that Nitin Sawhney was nominated.

Related:

: From the New Yorker on her first single “Galang” –

The music of Maya Arulpragasam, a twenty-seven-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil who moved to England
when she was nine and performs under the name M.I.A., is not like that. Anyone who has trolled through bins on Canal Street for videos of kung-fu movies or reggae mix tapes will recognize M.I.A.'s first single, "Galang" (2003), as an example of actual, on-the-ground world culture: synthetic, cheap, colorful, staticky with power. The beat is shuffling and abrasive, made from what sounds like the by-products of some other, more polite song. It most resembles Jamaican dancehall patterns, but with a twist.

: Nirali interviews M.I.A on what makes her tick –

"Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs ... Every bit of music out there that's making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing.

: Wikipedia on M.I.A

: MTV profile on her

: She's a revolutionary's daughter and her music oozes attitude. Guardian's Dorian Lynskey meets MIA

: From MeFi thread

Galang-alang-alang-a. (insane, 18MB QuickTime music video)

[MusicFilter] Cranking out music somewhere between hip-hop, electronica, Nintendo cartridges, and reggae, 27-year-old Maya Arulpragasam is getting a lot of attention for the results of tinkering with one box. M.I.A. (her stage name) dresses in garish flourescents like it's 1983, dances like no one's watching, and is making waves all around the critic-o-sphere. [RS|NYT|Eye|pm|pfm|New Yorker|CBC] Want a sample? The video for "Galang" takes her grattifi-esque art, animates it, and mashes it all together with her, um, unusual style of dance, for a music+video experience that is hard to forget. Is M.I.A. redefining the world of 21st century global pop... or is it just crap?   (via WG)

Selling album royalties on eBay

Rather than struggling for years to raise money, singer Shayan did the simple thing - he sold royalties on his album on eBay. With the album not ouw, he's attracting criticial acclaim. More here:

"Using his initiative the British artist set up an auction on the website eBay, which enables users to buy items on auction. For £3000 investors had the opportunity to purchase a quarter percent (0.25%) of his entire life earnings, which include everything from CD and DVD sales to concert royalties until 70years after the musician's death.

Just seven days after his ad went up, Shayan had investors pouring in from London, Toronto and New York. Soon, media interest followed. The Zoroastrian singer has already been featured in The Observer and The Guardian as well as ITV London Tonight and ITV News Sunday.

Shayan first discovered his talent six years ago when he began to produce music as a way of expressing his emotions after the death of his mother. Playing the piano, singing, writing songs and producing came naturally. Tragically a year later Shayan also lost his father, and it was then he vowed to use his music to make a difference."

Downloading cheap music...

This must be the cheapest music download service I've come across. It doesn't cost $1 per song or even $0.80 per song, but for $5 you can download 500MB worth of music, which at 5MB per song yields about $0.05.

That's the apparently insane price proposition that a Russian site called allofmp3.com offers its customers. You buy your music by the megabyte, at the rate of 500 MB for $US5 and you dial in the sort of encoding you want: MP3, MPEG4-AAC, OGG, MPC, WMA etc at various bit rates using different encoders _ say the LAME alt-presets. If we were prepared to pay more for the bandwidth, we could elect to have the music encoded with lossless algorithms, giving us the same quality as the original CD.

Computers at allofmp3.com encode them on the fly and spit out the files, at an impressively fast rate. It will even email you when they're ready, or you can use their software, Allofmp3 Explorer, to manage the transfers. The software - like everything else on the website, from the catalogue to the order and payment mechanism - is surprisingly well written and professionally presented, the range of popular music is vast, and the quality of the music is at least the equal to anything we've heard.

Click here for the rest of the article.

British Bhangra Music

Another essay on British Bhangra Music: Drum'n'dhol - British Bhangra music and diasporic South Asian identity

British Bhangra is a genre of British popular music fusing Punjabi lyrics and the beats of the Indian drum, the dhol, with black music genres and British pop sounds, producing an urban anthem and commentary about the lives of it's British South Asian audiences. This article draws on qualitative research and interviews undertaken in Birmingham, UK. It outlines how diasporic South Asian identities are made sense of through a conception of the way in which British Bhangra music encapsulates an urban black British experience, how conservative lyrics of caste and gender in the music are negotiated by it's listeners, and how some of the intergenerational formulations of British South Asian identities are performed at celebratory social gatherings.

Rise of bhangra and asian underground music in UK

Interesting essay about the rise of bhangra and asian underground music amongst the British Asian Youth.

From the margins to mainstream? Representations of British Asian youth musical cultural expression from bhangra to Asian underground music. Abstract of the essay:

This article looks at the youth musical cultures of bhangra and Asian underground alongside wider societal shifts relating to British Asian youth in recent decades. The article first examines previous youth studies research, primarly media source material and data from qualitative interviews; it then looks at these twin hybrid musically expressive forms fusing Indian instrumentation and fashion which have been principally produced by second-generation Brtish-born youth of Asian origin - a group who have hitherto not been particularly noteworthy in either UK pop lore or youth studies. The data presented in the main body of the article are based on a number of semi-structured interviews in which the subjects' own discursive framing of, and qualitative reasons for, their actions and reactions to events and cultural products are given. The fieldwork was carried out at various bhangra and Asian underground musical events in London and Manchester, allowing a longitudinal picture to develop of British Asian music and it's place in the representation and realities of Asian Youth.

Other:
: History of Bhangra

: New Bhangra - Coming of Age

History of Bhangra

Notice that the Bhangra scene has come back to the fold after a little hiatus. Here's a little history on one of India's more 'lively musical forms'

Bhangra is a lively form of music and dance that originated in the Punjab region in Southeast Asia. As many Bhangra lyrics reflect the long and often tumultuous history of the Punjab, knowledge of Punjabi history offers important insights into the meaning of the music. While Bhangra began as a part of harvest festival celebrations, it eventually became a part of such diverse occasions as weddings and New Year celebrations. Moreover, during the last thirty years, Bhangra has enjoyed a surge in popularity worldwide, both in traditional form and as a fusion with genres such as hip-hop, house, and reggae. As Bhangra continues to move into mainstream culture, an understanding of its history and tradition helps to appreciate it.

Vijay Iyer's new album...

Jazz Pianist Vijay Iyer called one of "today's most important pianists" by the New Yorker is back. His latest offering - In what language? - in collaboration with rapper and poet Mike Ladd - comes in response to the 2nd grade treatment being meted out to foreigners in general and Muslims in particular in recent times. The album is a fusion between hip-hip and jazz. The Billboard recently reviewed his album:

Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and poet Mike Ladd understand the strange energy of an airport: constant restlessness, sterile anonymity and an ultra-charged atmosphere post-Sept. 11, 2001. With Iyer working as composer and Ladd as librettist, the two weave together elements of jazz, hip-hop and spoken-word art into a new, subversive kind of song cycle. Shifting constantly between narratives, their kaleidoscopic lens sees the airline passenger as both the viewer and the viewed. Cultural and political references fly fast and furious, shifting as quickly as the musical mood. As much as this album is a potent political statement, it is also a fine work of music—just listen to the crackling energy of "The Density of the 19th Century," the Reich-like, hypnotic, circling piano figures of "DeGaulle" or the rolling, majestic balladry of "Plastic Bag." This is a disc that demands repeat listening.—AT

He is also the 2003 recipient of the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts

: Review from New York Times

: Video footage of In what language?

: Interviews with JazzWeekly and Sounds of Timeless Jazz.

DJ Rekha Nominated for Best DJ in NYC

Jay Gohil

Source: Pink Noises

DJ Rekha one of the pioneers of New York' s South Asian scene has been nominated as the Best DJ of the Year by New York Magazine. British born DJ has founded Basement Bhangra and co-founded Mutiny, has been instrumental in bringing the sounds of Bhangra and British Asian music to North America. Here is an excerpt of an interview she gave to Pink Noises:

PN: What made you want to be a DJ? Was it working the crowds, or presenting the music you liked to other people?

R: I was very excited about the music; and it was kind of like a family bonding thing with me and my cousins. We wanted to do something together, we wanted an activity, and we thought maybe we could make some money... We actually were inspired because we saw a lot of punk-asses do it, and thought they did a really bad job, or thought... we could do this better, which made a lot of sense. And then before I knew it, one of my cousins all of a sudden landed upon some hot gear. It was like one minute we're talking about it, next minute, someone's selling me a CD player, mic... and I'm like, OK, cool, that's it, done, we're started! And I still have that gear I bought. It was a Radio Shack mixer, CD player, tape deck, microphone, like good shit, you know?

PN: And to you, is Mutiny more musically exciting?

R: In many ways it is. To me, Basement Bhangra is just a fuckin' no-holds-barred, rock-on house party. You know, seriously. Work out and all that shit, you know? But Mutiny, you're gonna go and experience something. It is about dancing, but sometimes it's about listening. And I think that is exciting to me. And there's so many different people who DJ at that party, and so you're really getting open to a lot of different things, whereas at Basement, it's just me and Phil [Money], and we have our ways.

PN: How would you characterize Mutiny musically?

R: Very hard to characterize. We used to say South Asian drum-n-bass, and I don't even think that's true anymore. Electronic music is such a vast landscape. And I feel like we draw on electronic music in every form, and we put in a lot of South Asian influences, and that's kind of where we go. Sometimes DJs will be doing a straight d-n-b set, or you know, everyone's on the electro kick, or whatever... I think it can go in lots of different directions. It's very eclectic.

Other related posts:
: Bhangra Over Bombs Over Baghdad -The Villagevoice

: What's Shakin'? Bhangra. Big Time - Washington Post

: The big Bhangra theory - Time Out New York

: DJ Rekha - Citysearch

: Studio360 interviewing DJ Rekha about her work and the rise of Bhangra. (audio file)

: New Bhangra - Coming of Age