Look Back In Bhangra Panjabi Mc On Becoming A Pop Icon Music

Leaning on Birmingham Airport after the tour, Rekha Sagoo’s manager received a call from the organizer. “I will always remember it,” he says. “Jay-Z was in Switzerland and heard Bach Ke blow up the walls and wanted to add his own lyrics.” The remix that soon followed (called Beware of the Boys) brought the song back to the charts in 2003 and Jay-Z performed it at Glastonbury in 2008. The success gave bhangra music a boost around the world and made Panjabi MC a household name. But many people remember him as a miracle with a bang, ignoring his vast legacy in British Asian culture, let alone his ongoing music career. “How many details should I enter?” he asks, sitting in his studio complex in Newton. Panjabi MC, also known as Rajinder Singh Rai, caresses a fluffy gray cat and at 49 has a warm presence, like a wise, naughty uncle. After the bloody partition of India in 1947, many families who had migrated from the Punjab isolated area arrived in the Midlands, where the men found work in metal foundries. Rai’s grandparents settled in Coventry, where he was born. Sikh grew up in a traditional house. “We talked to Punjabi. I had a good time. “But Cov had a skinhead problem.” The National Front will mobilize after matches on the football field and he remembers hiding from them with his grandmother in the British home stores. Margaret Thatcher’s anger over immigration and unemployment in Britain was bubbling, but so was a multicultural crucible and Coventry became the birthplace of the 2-ton scene that combined punk and ska. Rye’s children’s bedroom was in the back of a pub hosting reggae bands. As he fell asleep, “all I could hear was the bass,” he says. At community weddings, he watched bhangra bands set up their equipment. “I never wanted to go to the track. “I wanted to be on stage.” Panjabi MC in 2003. Photo: Mauritius Images GmbH / Alamy Bhangra started as a harvest dance from the Punjab and evolved as soon as it got married to electronic instruments in the UK. Prominent bands such as Apna Sangeet, Alaap, Heera and DCS toured the United Kingdom during the 1980s. So did sufi qawwali singers visiting from India and Pakistan, such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. For young British Punjabis, whether Sikhs, Hindus or Muslims, music has preserved its heritage – its language and wisdom through the singers’ ancient vocal scales. pride in dhol thwack – while black music from the usa spoke of a common sense of diversity among working-class immigrant communities. America-Filtered Hip-Hop: “We used to send someone to London with a ghetto to record Tim Westwood’s radio show in the Capital,” said Rai, who closed the school to dance at a youth party. South Asians who did not allow them to go out at night. After seeing Stevie Wonder use a sample on Sesame Street, he worked in a garment factory to save money for “my little workshop”, which he used to deconstruct and combine the voices of his parents’ favorite singers with rap and dance music. This sampling was a hip-hop method but also an example of jugaad: the Indian method of bending rules to solve practical problems. “I liked all the original bhangra songs, but they were recorded live, so it was relaxed. “My point was to tighten them,” he says. In his early teens, Rai also practiced rap at a Caribbean social club, where others called him Indian MC. “I told them, ‘Hindi is not a language, it is Punjabi!’ says. The new name stuck. Rai with his MTV Music Award for Best Dance Performance in 2003. Photo: Mike Marsland / WireImage “He made music that reflected a multi-generational experience in a household,” says DJ Yung Singh, a member of the South Asian band Daytimers and producer of The Birth of Punjabi Garage, a new documentary from the Ministry of Audio. “The older generations thought he experienced so many of the things they grew up hearing.” Apache Indian and Bally Sagoo, both from Birmingham, had a reputation for mixing Indian music with reggae, dancehall and disco (“Bally was the guy to catch,” says Rai). Trying with his hand to forge musical hybridism, Rai combined different styles on his first three albums as Panjabi MC – Souled Out (1993), Another Sellout (1994) and 100% Proof (1995) – and Jogi ‘s single later. will enter the charts throughout Europe. . “I remember I got the Souled Out and I was surprised,” says New York DJ Rekha, whose club nightclub Basement Bhangra, played by Rai many times, ran from 1997-2017. “I often play in an audience here that it is not very familiar. with Indian music – it really has to end. “P’s production style was so different, it’s sharp in the ears.” In 1996, Rai traveled to Punjab to record his fourth album. “Someone said to me, ‘Why do you take samples of these guys from your mom’s record collection when they’re still alive?’ remembers. A friend helped locate his heroes and rented a studio in the bustling city of Ludhiana. Rye forgot his metronome, so he recorded a hit dripping on his dictaphone to keep his associates on time. As for the man who has taken Punjabi music worldwide, there are no three, four, five ways to do it: he is the Panjabi MCRaf Saperra By now, the Asian underground scene had established itself with artists such as Talvin Singh, the State of Bengal and the Asian Dub Foundation combining the myriad sounds of South Asia with electronics and the UK drum’n’bass – a strong base for the Panjabi MC masterpiece in 1998. Legalized. Opened with Mundian To Bach Ke. Rye had tried out the theme song from the 1980s Knight Rider TV show. His tumbi riff was played by KS Bhamrah from the ’80s band Apna Sangeet. The vocals were by Labh Janjua, a folk singer with whom Rai first collaborated on his trip to Ludhiana. DJ and presenter Bobby Friction remembers buying Legalized on CD in Southall and the euphoria played by Mundian To Bach Ke. “I was playing all these underground things, but I could leave them in the middle of a set and give a nod to my roots – I was going: this is for the Punjabis!” In 2002, Friction began co-hosting a South Asian music show on BBC Radio 1 with Nihal Arthanayake. After years on the dance floor throughout the United Kingdom, the efforts of Rai CEO Ninder Johal were combined with the support of other expert DJs such as Trevor Nelson and Tim Westwood and the fact that “every radio link that came in The BBC building was talking about it. According to Friction, Bach Ke has been added to the national channel’s playlist. Performance in Washington in 2011. Photo: The Washington Post / Getty Images Rai named the album Legalized to indicate that, unlike previous releases, the samples had been cleaned. But when Bach Ke started blasting, he discovered that he had no publishing rights for Knight Rider. Universal Music Group received 90% of the publishing share. “We lost a lot of money,” he admits. However, it was a triumphant period. In 2003, Panjabi MC appeared in the Top of the Pops, was named MTV Europe’s Best Dance Performer and won a Mobo Award. Bach Ke opened the door for British Punjabi music to be played not only in the UK, but all over the world, from India to America. DJ Rekha was driving to New York when she heard Bach Ke playing on the famous hip-hop radio station Hot 97. “I had to stop the car. I had a lump in my throat. “I just could not believe it.” While the Panjabi MC continued to bridge his sound with other current genres, such as Dhol Jageero Da on the UK’s 2001 full garage album, at the turn of the millennium he saw a new generation of British artists involved in bhangra, a success on the British charts. Punjabi R&B singer Jay Sean and increased funding for the BBC Asian Network. The American producer Timbaland – who, on a visit to London, stopped at ABC Music in Southall to look for samples – designed from Indian instruments to do Missy Elliot’s Get Ur Freak On, while Truth Hurts had a worldwide R&B success with Lata Mangeshkar-sampling. Addictive. “The labels suddenly thought bhangra was the new thing,” says Rai. In his opinion, this led to saturation. In nightclubs, “I’re coming to the front page after two or three hours” of other shows, and until then the crowd did not want to hear more Indian things! It would be like: we’re fed up, man! ” He shakes his head and laughs. “It simply came to our notice then. But people live and learn. “Our children will see where we did wrong and their children will see where they did wrong.” Panjabi MC: “People live and learn. “Our children will see where we did wrong.” Photo: Hark1karan / The Guardian To this day, Mundian To Bach Ke has a proud significance for many British Punjabis and South Asians. He is still a favorite on the continents of continental Europe and recently released a new commercial for the German eye brand, Brille Fielmann. But the song is also uncomfortable for those who saw it as appropriated. “When it comes now, the people of the Asian music industry will moan. But this is not due to the melody. “The melody is loud,” says Friction. “It’s because for years it was played whenever something Asian came out on TV – whenever someone cooked a curry on Come Dine With Me. And that took away a lot of cultural significance. “It showed South Asians how two-dimensional the rest of society saw us.” For mine…