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Roots of resistance

How South Asian music in Britain became a soundtrack for social change

By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

Following World War II, thousands of laborers relocated from the former colonies of Pakistan, India, Jamaica, and Bangladesh, to the industrial cities of London and Manchester. They shoveled coal and stood on assembly lines. They were isolated and ignored by mainstream culture. Their children grew up in a climate of racial hatred and neo-fascism. But their children also began making music that began to make a difference.

A new documentary, Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music, chronicles the explosive rise of South Asian punk, hip-hop and electronica in London in the 90s, and how this music became a vehicle for social change. Director and producer Vivek Bald screened his film Sept. 12 and 13 at the Starz Film Center. He also talked about some of his motivations for making the movie and what he learned in the process.

Bald’s mother is from India and his father was Australian. Raised in Los Angeles – where not a lot of South Asians lived at the time – Bald began following the South Asian music scene in Britain. Bands such as Fun^Da^Mental and Asian Dub Foundation had adopted hip-hop, dub, reggae and hard-rock styles. They sang blatant, political lyrics about the racial tensions pervading London’s streets, and Bald was inspired “seeing (the) second generation coming to this critical mass and standing up for themselves.”

In the 70s and 80s, South Asian youths and their Caribbean counterparts came together in what Bald described as an “organic cultural movement” that was built from the bottom up.

There was also the creation of physical space. By bringing people together through the rhythms of music, club musicians made a statement that was also infl uential. A number of political developments between the late 80s and early 90s led to an easing of tensions, and in response the music became less overtly political, Bald said. It was just as signifi cant – on a visceral level – for people to simply get together and enjoy the new sounds.

“Sharing that music in the same space – dancing, bumping up against each other, sweating – there’s something really important and really central about that shared experience in bringing people together across difference into new communities,” Bald said.

Though some bands were angry and political, others were more club-oriented and spawned a sound and a dance scene that became popular in the British mainstream press. The most well known Indian musician in Britain at the time was Talvin Singh, who mixed traditional Indian drumbeats over modern electronica. He became the fi rst Asian musician in Britain to appear on the cover of a popular music magazine.

“There was a kind of normalization of the Asian presence in Britain,”

Bald said. “It was becoming more common to see someone with brown skin as a normal part of British music and of the British cultural landscape.”

In addition to making and producing music, some artists started music education workshops and provided opportunities for young people and otherwise unknown musicians - particularly South Asian women. They created “a kind of infrastructure for the continuation of music from generation to generation,” Bald said. “What I came to understand was that social change actually happens in a number of different ways and that you have to look beyond the obvious.”

Sometimes when people watch a documentary they are thinking, “I don’t want to be preached to again,” but Bald’s movie is different, said Metro African and African-American Studies professor Jacquelyn McLeod, who coordinated the screening.

“The first thing is the music,” she said. “Then before you know it you’re actually getting the story – how they’re using that genre to protest, to make social commentary.”

People relate to music because they feel a connection to what it says, and often music serves as a conduit for messages that may not be understood by mainstream society, she said. McLeod likened this duality in music to the experience of black slaves in the American South. When these slaves sang spirituals, they were in essence showing one face to the master and another to the enslaved community.

“If African-Americans during a period of enslavement embraced Christianity, then they embraced the religion of the oppressor, of the enslaver. But it’s what you do with that,” McLeod said. “You take from it that which works for you.”

This is what the bands in Britain did when they adopted mainstream styles and infused them with the experiences of their own struggles, she said.

Slaves related to spirituals not just because of their Christian principles, but because they were stories of oppressed people liberating themselves.

“The stories of Exodus are resistance stories. The owner is preaching, ‘Be obedient to your Earthly master,’ and you might not buy into that, but you’re buying into Exodus because that’s a running away theme,” McLeod said.

By accepting the teachings and music of the Christian church, slaves were able to give themselves hope. Even though their bodies were enslaved, their spirits remained free, she said.

Mutiny is a remarkably astute work in understanding how Asian youth found its medium in hip-hop and punk music in order to liberate itself from a submissive, oppressive, subjective state of existence,” said Robert Hazan, chair of Metro’s political science department. “It made me realize how powerful music has been, and how it is and how it will continue to be.”

Political scientists are beginning to view social change more through the lens of art, music and expression, Hazan said, pointing out how reggae and hip-hop have become more and more political. But it’s not any one type of music, and there are many soundtracks to social change, he said. Watching the memorials to James Brown on television this year, he was reminded of how Brown’s music just made people want to move.

“That was his genius. ‘I’m black, I’m proud.’ I mean, why do you need a song like that? Well, because it’s the United States of America. It’s music teaching us about civility, about democracy, about what ought to happen that hasn’t happened,” Hazan said. “Maybe Mutiny is a reminder to get back on track.”

Since Sept. 11 the Asian community in Britain has become somewhat fractured, Bald said. Immigrants in Britain – whether Pakistani or Indian or Jamaican – once referred to themselves as simply “black.” But these nationalities have begun to distance themselves from each other and – in response to terrorist-driven extremism – there is an underlying general distrust of radical politics, he said.

“Those on the left who are openly critical of state policies, whether they are activists or musicians, now run the added risk of being branded as – and treated as – pro-terrorist, pro-Jihadi, etc.,” Bald said. “It’s a really diffi cult time to be making challenging music. But you never know, in the next year or so that might change.”