WOEBOT

Desi.

Last year Desi blew up, I guess as a consequence of two things. Firstly thanks to it's strong connection with what we might call "The Bashment Phenomenon". The Bhangra-tinged samples of Missy Elliot's "Get UR Freak On" (tumbi and tabla on a r-r-r-roll), the Bollywood samples on Truth Hurt's "Addictive" (the Dre production) and Errick Sermon's "React", and the Sufi-inspired hand-clapping weirdness of Lenky's Diwali Riddim put Desi squarely on the map. Subsequently Jay-Z's (come on, totally useless!) version of Panjabi MC's "Mundian Te Bach Ke" led the forces of Hip-Hop to a make-shift camp outside Desi's city walls. Even Grimey Jammer got in on the act with the Biggaman produced "Step to the Beat". Secondly, and this is what might ensure the music of the NRI making a continued impression on the mainstream, Desi music has truly found it's own voice and sense of purpose.

Observers might want to draw parallels between Desi and The Asian Underground Scene of Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation, Badmarsh & Shri with it's spiritual home of the Anokha club, but really the comparison is flimsy. As RDB's Kuly Singh remarked in the pioneering Desi cross-over article by Kevin Braddock in The Face Dec 2002: "People talk about Asian Underground and it gets boxed into this Talvin-Singh-Nitin-Sawhney-type-thing, which is really good, but it's serious. It's not Sharon and Tracey. You've got to be Sharon and Tracey...We don't give a shit, we're only interested in beats and basslines. We know how to party, yeah!" The Asian Underground Scene was a resolutely beatnik affair, essentially art music without strong roots within the Asian UK community (crossing-over with palpable ease into the mainstream). That's not to say that it didn't have it's moments, just that it lacked any real socio-cultural energy. I did visit Anokha once in 1995 and was pretty disappointed by it's watered-down, weirdly naive vibe. Having said this, some of the fusions which you can find on the Talvin Singh curated "Anokha Soundz of the Asian Underground" and "Calcutta Cyber Cafe" are more mature than those at the original grass-shoots of Desi.

Case in point being RDB's debut album, No.1 in all the UK charts for over 7 weeks, and a massive landmark for the Desi scene, today it sounds a little on the lame side, it's Garage beats wooly, fudged and dated in a manner that Garage from that era isn't. However with "Patlay Patlay" their bootleg remake of "Get UR Freak On" they pretty much grasp the consequence of Missy's track to Bhangra's future. Other earlier Desi like that on RDB's fellow Brum crew Tigerstyle's debut "The Rising" sounds really quite close to the Ambient Junglist fusion that we expect to hear from Talvin, breaking out in parts in a more traditional Bhangra style flecked with electronicisms. Tigerstyle's more recent gun-toting classic "Taakre", a brilliant bristling militant take on classic Bhangra might be seen as them engaging with the power-source of Desi rather than pimping off the dance scene.

Incidentally Bhangra is a traditional form practised in the Punjab since 300 BC, originally the music of Sikh's it has been adopted by the rest of the Indian diaspora. In Bhangra at least one person sings Boliyaan Punjabi lyrics and others beat the Dhol (those waist-mounted, deep-sounding drums) and play other instruments like the mandolin, banjo and harmonium. Desi is the modern form of Bhangra.

In spite of all this barrier building between Desi and "The Asian Underground" it would be cynical to declare Outcaste's recent "Essential Asian Flavas: The Future Cutz", about the only Desi compilation in the big stores and available to the mainstream, to be nothing but an attempt to cash in on the Desi's new-found glamour; even though the non-Desi tracks stick out like a sore-thumb and strain the patience. Oh no, another flavourless downtempo "joint"!

Wondering how to start my investigation into Desi on disc, "digging" as opposed to putting together the scenic overview which constituted The Face's aforementioned ground-breaking article, I rooted around to try and work out where I'd best be going to actually buy some Desi. Asking the question to myself why was there no follow through after that piece in the broader media, I was confronted by the stark fact that this was certainly owing to Desi's total independence from the mainstream circuits of music distribution. You just CAN'T buy Desi in a shop with any ease! With this in mind I first contacted RDB through their website, and when after a month I got no reply I rang them up and spoke to them. Where did they recommend I buy Desi in London? The answer was Southall's "Metro Music". So on February 12th I got on the train to Southall, a suburb in the far West of London, west of Acton town.

Walking into Southall from the train station was one of the weirdest sensations of my life. Suddenly, in my own country I was a conspicuous minority. I walked for miles through busy streets, and I'm not exagerating, encountered only one or two other white people with whom I exchanged rather nervous smiles. There's no sense of hostility towards white people in Southall and in this manner it differed from Black "Ghettos" I've been in in San Francisco and New York. In the process of looking for other Desi to complete my "survey" I also visited Green Street in Newham, London's other famous Asian community. Green Street is, conversely, located at the far east of the capital, and there (again while greatly outnumbered!) I found the ratio of Asian to Black/White less steep. I could have simply popped round the corner to Brick Lane, but my instinct is that the community there is equivalent to the Afro-Caribbean community in Notting Hill, essentially an historic relic, and largely eroded by the area's gentrification.

Weirdly in Glasgow, where I also took in a batch of CDs at the store "Bollywood", the Asian community is much less segregated than in London. The stretch of Glasgow running between the foot of the University and the M8 Motorway, between Woodlands Drive and the Great Western Road (SMACK in the middle of the city) is predominantly Asian, and one can find posters for Desi nights affixed to the lamp-posts on the Byres Road (the heart of bourgeois Glasgow!) Woebot reader Craig Macalister Combe even informed me of Bhangra parties (at least they play Asian music...) which were happening at The Halt Bar (another essentially beatnik Glasgow venue). I was as heartened to hear this, as I was as horrified by Baal's description of the recent BNP march in the city, a protest against a gang murder for which they were holding the Asian community responsible, and remarks heard elsewhere in the city about the supposed connections between the community and terrorism!!! I should very much like to visit the right parts of Birmingham and Bradford and take in the scenery.

Of the twenty or so CDs I picked up this one stood out in remarkable contrast "qua" album. This came out last year, but is still a massive presence in the shops, where Desi turnover is not what Dancehall's is. Dr. Zeus gleaned a bit of "Urban" bandwidth from his collaboration with General Levy "Shake (What Ya Mama Gave Ya)", that's not a bad track, an update on the Apachi Indian trope and interesting as evidence of the bleed between the Indian and Jamaican diaspora. However the LP is a different story, quite stunning, I've listened to it more this year than any other.

Zeus has fashioned an overwhelmingly powerful "sound" which digitises and virtualises the Bhangra template, gone is Bhangra's sonic compression instead we have huge building-high canvases of bass-space, widescreen vistas of rolling tumbi, liquid midi, dancing mandolin lines disappearing into the dub. Everything is placed "just so" in a mix as studied as those Cold Rush Gloomcore classics. Even more astonishing is the fact that these aching, supremely impassioned Boliyaan chants with their vaporous after-trails are incredibly tuneful. Zeus employs a Rocafella sound-a-like, name "Little Lox", to give him the Jay Z edge that Panjabi MC was lucky enough to garner for free, and (gasps) he's BRILLIANT! It's all far too good to be true! In a fairer world this record would be accorded coffee table status, damn you could even make out to it!

RDB, standing for Rhythm Dhol Bass are THE power of Desi. Last year they put out "Unstoppable" their second CD as a collective. I say CD, not (as I'm wont) LP because in Desi there is no vinyl to speak of. Having said this I have tracked down (eye blinks uncontrollably) a Desi DJ-only-imprint "Vinyl Club" called "The Kismet Vinyl Club" in Leicester! You know I'm hardcore! "Unstopabble" is NOT the trounce all-comers classic that "Unda Da Influence" is. Zeus's key innovation, beyond his startling production know-how (rumours were he was to do a mix for Liberty X?), is that he's grasped that Desi, to really rock and shock, HAS to be pitched in pace somewhere between Hip-Hop and Techno; that's to say near it's traditional velocity. RDB seem to want to muck around at a load of different speeds, turning in versions of Hip-Hop, Garage and Jungle replete with MC-ing in Punjabi. It can end up a right dog's dinner. It's the same conundrum which all fusions face, assuming that the successful subsection between the collision of genres is somehow larger by reason of the multiplicity of inputs. Wrong! The sonic domain open to a creative collision is in fact inverse in scale. The amount of useful elbow room available to a producer, without wanting to damage the power of what he's fusing, is tiny. Indeed sometimes the "straight" more traditional Desi Bhangra (as epitomised by the solid Jassi Sidhu "Reality Check" CD) can be all you need.

The best RDB tracks, and there are 3 TOTAL STUNNERS on "Unstopabble": "Nachdhey" by Ranjit Mani, with it's in-yer-face martial Dhol, LFO-come-fairground bleep, "RDB Valay" by Manak E and the steamrolling "Buleeain" Featuring Nee2, work at Bhangra's classic walking pace speed. Dhol and Banjo are cleverly meshed and impacted with splintering breaks and bass. All these tunes will have me wracked with goose-pimples. So I don't mean to diss RDB...

And tread carefully I might because their Untouchables imprint, the home of the peerless Desi compilations Danger (Volumes 1-3) and Urban Flavas (1-2) is the all-defining Desi label. Any of these comps will yield 3-4 killer tracks a piece. It's fruitless going into my favorites in any detail, but "Yaar Mil Gai" (Danger 1) spacey and wistful, "Dil Naeeyo Laghda" by Sanjeev (Danger 3) curiously reminiscent of some of the crushing mantras Loop once perfected, "Na Toro" by Lembhar Husianpuri (Danger 3) Rhythm and Sound meet Asian Nemesis, "Billo" by Gubi Sandhu feat G.I.Jatt & Lightning MC (Urban Flavas 2) which splits, folds and stutters Jatt's divine chant into rhythm-defining arcs and finally (this could go on forever) "Nachna" by Bikram Singh (Urban Flavas 2) which proves that up-tempo Garage-style speeds CAN work are all divine. The idea that RDB as a unit stands separate from the material on these collections (Danger Vol.1 somewhat confusingly ascribed to MCs Metz and Trix) is misleading. The RDB CDs proper are the fruit of collaboration between the same crews whose work fills these compilations. Better to view RDB as, not so much a production team, as Desi itself. They're an empire, Wiley could only dream of the kind of scene-wide domination these fellas practise.

I was a real slouch to get this, the Coventry-based Panjabi MC's cross-over LP. It's made up of material he has previously put out on a whole host of recordings. "Mundian Te Bach Ke" is the tune y'all know, and it's the killer, though the LP is, I was surprised to discover, consistently good. Punjabi MC seems happiest at Dubby/Hip-Hop paces which veer close to Trip-Hop at times (not good) BUT the music always manage to comprise some X-factor that keeps things heavy and street. At it's peaks, on the quite spine-tinglingly evocative "Challa" (storms gather, distant Bollywood choirs gesticulate, flutes, strings and harmonium vie and duel) it's scarily powerful. Also lovely is the lean tabla-driven "Ghalla Ghurian" with it's bewitching female vocal (much of the Desi I've encountered is righteously testoserone-fuelled).

It's necessary too to mention The Panjabi Hit Squad (I'm unclear about their relation to Panjabi MC, actually I suspect they may not have one). Since they've got their show on 1xtra they've been pumping the UK airwaves full of Desi on Tuesday nights 0000-0200. Alot of what they play is just straight bashment, you can listen to their show right now streamed off the site! This CD pictured above is 50% big Urban hits, the other 50% Desi. Whilst they're excellent cheerleaders they haven't, in my opinion, produced much in the way greatness, bar Ms. Scandalous's absolutely storming "Hai Hai", another example of a Garage-styled tune which rocks the joint. From their position at the interface with Urban culture it's a short distance to "Bootleg" Desi.

Compilations like "Bootleggers" (Bootleg) and "Streetbeats" (Ruthless) offer up R&B rhythms, often with the yank Rap drawl still intact, versioned over by wicked Punjabi MCs. For example "Ais Jawani" is an insane take on the Diwali Riddim (replete with Sean Paul chorus) "Chumka Te Lengha" a versioning of Beyonce's "Crazy" (aaah joy!), the best ones (sighs) I don't even know what the original is called! Of course the shady re-titling acts to obscure the original version from too much scrutiny. It's interesting to see that Asian music is faced with an even greater crisis at the hands of CD-copying and mp3-pirating than the mainstream industry, and is locked in identical chaos with regards to legality, provenance and originality.

On the one hand you have Surj from RDB explaining the secret of the sound: "(We) nick things, nick Bhangra records from India, nick other people's beats and put them together" and on the other Zeus remarking in RWD magazine on Desi's scale in the US: "It's so big in the states at the moment, but they're all downloading the tunes off the net and they don't know who we are!" There is an hilarious interlude on the RDB "Unstoppable" CD in which one of the members of the RDB crew breaks into a boy's bedroom with the boy's mother in tow (don't mess with this lady!), and proceeds to berate the poor sucker: "We did that album! Hard work man." The Danger 3 Compilation is actually the first CD which I've come across which employs the new copy-proof formatting! It's impossible to rip it to mp3 from it on a PC or a Mac! I was quite impressed! All the Untouchables CDs come emblazoned with heavy warnings against copying and sharing on the net and security stickers. Personally I'm in total sympathy, I love the way they're so up front about it too, none of this pussy-footing around and doublespeak which (post-Metallica) musicians believe is necessary. On the ground the reasons become quite clear, the whole exchange network for these CDs is grass-roots and amazingly haphazard. All the shops I've bought CDs from have sold other stuff; stuff like clothes, watches, DVDs, mobile phones! The opportunities for piracy are rife in such an unregulated environment. In one remote shop towards the north end of Green Street I asked if they had any Desi (and tellingly) the proprietor produced from under the counter the most rudimentary colour-photocopy created CD of RDB's first record. Another CD I actually bought looks on closer inspection to be a bootleg. Very dodgy!

Why do I love Desi so much? Well sadly, I do nurse a suspicion that my interest might not be sustainable. Sourcing this music has turned out to be an adventure in it's own right; an adventure, more spectacular, though along the same lines as procuring Dancehall 7"s was for me last year. It's a bit of a mission innit! It'd be a shame though because the sheer quality and power of this music is totally undeniable. As for getting hold of it yourself, well as usual I'd caution against using Woebot as an slsk/mp3 guide (please people, I HATE THIS!). The nice people at Untouchables have recommended this online store as the best place at which to acquire stuff. Just be sure to say you came from Woebot.

I can't think of any other genre where you'd get an advert for a firm of solicitors on the inner sleeve of your CD:

Desi. Check it out.

Posted by Woebot at April 14, 2004 07:09 PM