Ravi Shanker and co

An important component in the historical establishment of South Asian music in Britain has been Indian classical music. Although principally restricted to concerts and private consumption, a significant proportion of formal music training in Britain has been in the classical traditions. Indian classical music provides a unique, culturally specific, theory of music and performance that inspires and acts as a foundation to the new British Asian sounds.

Although classical music is seen rather problematically as an exotic, authentic, traditional Eastern cultural form, classically trained musicians have themselves been open to western and other global music, and have openly worked with European classical, jazz, contemporary and pop musicians, to produce a complex and challenging hybrid music. Major figures such as Ravi Shanker and Zakir Hussain have gained worldwide recognition not just as classical performers, but also as musicians who have constantly experimented and improvised with the parameters of Indian and western rhythms and harmonies. One of the defining features of the developments in British Asian music, especially since the 1970s, has been the fusion of classical rhythms and melodies with various forms of pop, dance and jazz musical genres and electronic production technologies.

Bombay pulp fiction

The sounds of Bombay commercial cinema, rather problematically labelled ‘Bollywood’, would be the other key source in the development of the music. From the 1950s and 1960s, in the form of records and visits to the cinema, to the rise of the audiocassettes in the 1970s, and the video in the early 1980s, we have witnessed the rapid integration of film music into British culture. Playback singers such as Lata Mangeshka, Asha Bosle and Mohammed Rafi are virtually household names in Asian Britain. Bombay film music has always been an eclectic mixture of Indian classical, folk and European classical, jazz and pop musical aesthetics, instrumentation and technologies – there has never been a pure form of film music. From Urdu poetry to Disco, all forms have been absorbed into this unique genre of Bombay pulp fiction.

S.D. Burman was a prolific composer who wrote popular hit songs for the Indian film industry between the 1950s and the 1970s. In 1996, Najma Akhtar released Forbidden Kiss: The Music of S.D. Burman with American musician Chris Rael, of the band Church of Betty, as a tribute album to the renowned Indian composer.

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CD cover of Forbidden Kiss: The Music of S. D. Burman, by Najma Akhtar and Chris Rael, 1996

The popularity of film music has risen, especially with younger audiences in the 1980s, with the increasing remixing of well-known Bombay tracks, largely aimed at the club dance floors as well as in greater collaborations between western and Asian producers. The acclaimed Indian film composer AR Rehman’s music for the Andrew Lloyd Weber produced London musical Bombay Dreams is one example of increasing presence of Bombay music production globally.

Bhangra – A new British sound

The key development in British Asian produced popular music has been the rise of Bhangra music. Emerging out of the Asian wedding circuit and private parties, in (sub)urban areas such as London and Birmingham in the 1970s, pioneering groups such as such as Alaap, Heera, Golden Star, DCS and producers such as Kuljit Bhamra reworked this traditional Punjabi folk music with new electronic production technologies and techniques. This new metropolitan Bhangra was a result of processing traditional dhol and drum beats and Punjabi folk melodies with synthesisers and samplers, with a heavier bass line and mixed with western pop and black dance rhythms. Cheap audiocassettes, and the rise of Asian DJs, sound systems and a remix production culture, made this genre popular, especially with British Asian youth. In an act of claiming a specific Asian cultural form, the music acted, for the youth, as a unifying point of identification across subcontinental religious, national and ethnic differences and as a way of challenging the 1980s new racism and the notion of English culture as exclusively white.

The Midlands based DJ and producer Bally Sagoo was one of the celebrated figures in the scene. Drawing upon his soul, reggae and dance background, Bally Sagoo created a funky brand of electro-bhangra. His remixing of Bhangra, as well as Bombay film music and Qawwali, for the dance floor in the 1980s and 1990s illustrates well the dynamic range of this new Asian music.

Although Bhangra continues to this day to outsell all forms of western pop music, it has never achieved official mainstream pop recognition. Partly because of this, as well as its idiosyncratic and culturally specific Punjabi lyrics, and rather kitsch machismo image, Bhangra has largely been a significant subculture within the Asian community – probably has claim to be called the real ‘Asian underground’.