Month: May 2007

Anjali and I were booked to play the Black Lodge at Reed College for their annual Renne Fayre festivities a few weekends ago. I had only been to Renne Fayre once, a decade ago. At the time a Reedie ex-girlfriend gave me a bunch of wristband scrap ends that were taped together to form a makeshift wristband that worked surprisingly well throughout my attendance at the event. I remember naked jello hillslides, a human chessboard, and a bug eating contest featuring either hideously large, or maggoty insects. I vaguely remember that there were musical performances, but I couldn’t tell you who was playing. I really had no idea what to expect of Renne Fayre in 2007.

It wasn’t until very near the date that we learned that we were sharing the bill with Bigg Jus and Myka Nyne. Since what we do is in no way related to underground hip-hop, I wasn’t sure how that bill matchup was going to work. I pictured a bunch of underground hip-hop heads fleeing at the first sound of “foreign” vocals. The more I thought about it the more I figured this slot would give me an excuse to play a lot of the hip-hop in my collection that I rarely get a chance to play, since my regular gigs are so focused on international music. The lodge was lit all in black light, with many white sheets giving off an eerie blue glow. The sound was fairly quiet as an MC rapped over low-key beats, to a room of bopping kids. Things were off-schedule by an hour, and when it was finally our time to play, Anjali played first.

Anjali played an amazing set of hard-hitting bhangra (on the future tip), British Asian Hip-hop and heaping dollops of Panjabi 2-Step. The crowd seemed to be remarkably receptive, yet I wondered how many people had no idea what was going on, and were hoping for something else. I definitely heard a group of kids discussing how they wanted to hear some Justin Timberlake.

I didn’t go on until after 2:30am. I started with a set of hip-hop-heavy bhangra mashups which got an ecstatic response, and then very excitedly, went into Nas’ “Made You Look.” Total dance floor damper. This is a song that has caused me to spontaneously leap from my seat and run great distances in order to dance in front of the speakers while it plays. Not this crowd apparently. But I had just seen a whole dance floor of kids bopping to far-from-energetic hip-hop!?! I play one more bhangra hip-hop mashup and then find myself lost with seconds to go and I grab frantically for Eric B and Rakim, dropping “I Know You Got Soul.” Total dance floor damper. Wow, I thought this was a hip-hop crowd and nobody wants to dance to Nas and Rakim!?! I take one more stab at something outside of my usual international stomping grounds and play XXXchange’s remix of Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” which I had just received in the mail. A few couples are grooving to it, that’s it. That was my token crowd-pleasing lowball, and there is nothing more embarrassing than an unsuccessful lowball. Eventually I find my footing and after some Zion to cleanse my palette, I start playing a crazy mix of Bhangra, Bollywood, Reggaeton, and Balkan Beats, and get a positive response, doing pretty much do as I please.

Even though I eventually felt good about what I was doing, and people were appreciating it, I was really thrown off by my how much I misjudged the crowd initially. Anjali had played a consistently aggressive and ahead of the curve (even if several years old) set, and got a great response. I tried to get a response with what I thought would be more familiar enticements, and relatively fell on my face. Only after the performance did I see a Renn Fayre schedule and see us billed as “Legendary Portland club DJs” playing “four hours of Bhangra, Middle-Eastern Hip Hop, and Asian Techstep.” Well, that would explain why Anjali’s very future forward set seemed to be right in line with what the crowd was expecting, since “Asian Techstep” described a lot of what she was playing. Meanwhile I, not knowing how I’ve been billed, or even that an attempt to describe my style was made in a guide to the Fayre, look like a dumbshit lowballing the crowd with familiar American hip-hop and R&B. The joke is that there are no doubt thousands of DJs that are forced to play hip-hop by their crowd’s insistence at their gigs, who would like to play something different, and I, who spend most of my time playing songs most gringos have never heard before, long to be able to drop some more familiar hip-hop every once and a while. I definitely picked the wrong place to do it this time. Fortunately Joti Singh was in town to keep us company and make the night a lot of fun.

IK

Ashu Rai, resident DJ of Desilcious, and co-founder of Sholay Productions, wrote a response letter to my Desilicous 5-year anniversary party review. I tacked in on to the end of my review, a few posts below, if you care to check it out.

IK

5/09/07

Sorry for the lack of fun and exciting blog updates. I’ve started several, only to leave them unfinished due to lack of interest. Even I get tired of the theme of self-excoriation on occasion. What I have been very interested in lately is superhero mythology. As a child I was a ravenous collector of comic books. I lived in Cairo, Egypt for kindergarten and first grade. When my cousin came to visit us from the States and offered to buy us anything we wanted, I knew exactly what I wanted. I had her take me to a nearby shop with American toys and buy me a comic book. Upon returning to the States I began devouring comic books with a vengeance. I had my mom buy me any comic that looked cool at the supermarket, and followed her to garage sales every weekend hoping to find a stack of old comics for sale. My passion for comics continued unabated through high school. Up until I went to college I was convinced that there was no other path for me in life than to be a comic book writer/artist in the mold of Jack Kirby or Frank Miller. Almost as long-lived was the thought that I would actually wear a costume and battle crime as some sort of holy crusade. As a child I sincerely thought I was going to “keep it real” and don a costume to combat evil-doers. Since then my comic book enthusiasm has died off for a year or two at a time, only to come alive upon the discovery of some cool new creator or creators.

When I was a child there was no such thing as the internet. The only way to access superhero mythology was to read the comics themselves. I rarely had even two issues in a row of a comic, so I had to fill in an awful lot of blanks. Each issue would often end with a cliffhanger and I had no idea how a hero made it from one predicament to the next. Captain America is transformed to a weakly teenager at the end of this one, how did he get out of it? Nick Fury shot Black Widow in cold blood!?! What happens next? It was a mythology in fragments. There were no handbooks or guides. And as I said before, there was no internet. Now if I want to find out some character’s history I can just look on wikipedia, or many comic book-related sites. Decades of comic book history all spelled-out and condensed for rapid absorbtion. Want to know about the Phoenix? Google it. The white hot room? The M’kraan crystal? Google away. I have spent many, many hours piecing together vast temporal architectures of constantly-developing superhero mythology. I have spent many, many hours asking and answering my own questions related to the Marvel and DC comics universes, online. One thing I’ve learned is how hopelessly convoluted any long-term comic character’s mythology is. Characters die and are reborn over and over. Their powers are ratcheted up to godlike levels and then erased and then ratcheted back up over the years. Over the forty to sixty years these characters have existed all sorts of wacky, nonsensical, and just downright what-the-hell-were-they-thinking things have occured. Just like any other mythology!

I loved classical mythology as a child as well, and fantastical stories from any culture I came across, but it was superhero comic books that seemed to have the most vital and captivating myths. Of course these superhero myths are not frozen in time, but constantly revised, amended and overturned for a monthly audience. It was their very slipperiness and temporality that made them that much more enticing to me as a child. Back then there were no such things as trade paperback collections, and if you didn’t get a comic when it came out, then good luck hunting through the back issue bins trying to find it. The knowledge was rare and elusive. Only a comics archaeologist could really know the truth about these heroes and their histories.

I’ve been a massive fan of the comics writing of Grant Morrison since a clerk at Future Dreams tipped me off to his work on Doom Patrol back in 1991. One of the outgrowths of his massively influential Invisibles series was a community that started up at http://www.barbelith.com/. I’ve been vaguely aware of its existence for years but never spent much time there until recently. After having spent hours poring through posts by (mostly) erudite writers, artists, scientists, magicians, etc., micro-analyzing Grant Morrison’s work, I have a brand new appreciation for the man’s writing, and the intelligence and knowledge level of many of his other fans. I re-read the man’s work more than anyone else’s, and I am amazed at all the symbolism and symmetry in his work discussed in the barbelith forum that I often do not have the knowledge-base to spot. Parallels to spiral wave dynamics in the progression of villains? Who knew? The role the kabbalah plays in deciphering the color choices of the heroes’ costumes? Wow. Dense, dense stuff. While this might all seem like ludicrous over-analysis, Grant is well known to shove as much of his scientific, literary, pop culture, and magickal influences into works that operate on a number of symbolic levels.  No doubt soon the man will finally get a property made into a successful Hollywood blockbuser production and then become ubiquitous. I know he’s hoping for it, unlike someone like Alan Moore. Just because of how much insight I’ve gained already, I have a feeling I’ll be spending a lot more time at barbelith.com in the future.

IK

PS Oh yeah, and then I learned about a July 2006 comic book convention talk given by Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison called “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes.” Apparently Deepak’s son, Gotham introduced his dad to Grant Morrison’s work. Deepak was quoted as saying, “everything I’ve been trying to say in my nonfiction work and in some of my fiction work had been so aptly, so beautifully and so imaginatively expressed in the work of Grant Morrison.” Who knew? I myself have never read any of Mr. Chopra’s books, but I did see a very interesting and provocative talk that he gave years ago, so I am not one to dismiss him outright, as I imagine many people are quick to do.

While Anjali and I were in NYC the Asian/Pacific/American Institute of New York University presented a film festival entitled Emerging and Emergencies: New South Asian Film-Making from Britain. We saw a documentary about young Muslims in the UK post 9/11 called Young, Angry, and Muslim directed by Julian Hendy. It was shown with a made for BBC TV dramatization called Bradford Riots by Neil Biswas about July 2001 riots in Bradford by mostly young UK-born Pakistani Muslims . In the aftermath of the riots 191 men were jailed for a total of more than 500 years. The soundtrack was by Asian Dub Foundation, and Steve Savale, the guitarist for that band, led a discussion after the film. The movie was well-done despite having elements of that made-for-TV feel. Anjali and I also saw a double feature of Skin Deep by Yousaf Ali Khan and Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music by Vivek Bald. Skin Deep is a very affecting thirteen-minute short about a self-hating half-Pakistani, half-English teenager trying to pass for white in racist ’70s Britain. Mutiny is a movie that Anjali has been wanting to see since it was finished in 2003. She even tried to bring Mutiny to Portland years ago, but Vivek turned down her request to show the film in Portland, and cancelled a scheduled Seattle showing. He is very selective about letting the movie be shown. In the program guide for the festival Mutiny is described as “rarely screened in New York.” Yeah, rarely screened anywhere. Which is a shame, because it is such an exciting and inspiring movie. It traces the roots of British-Asian second generation music from the dub/ska/punk and hip-hop scenes in the ’70s. All sorts of musical figures that I associate with the late ’90s are shown as early punks and break-dancers. Archival television footage from the British ’80s included in the film showing desi break-dancing crews is just too cool. Mutiny features Asian Dub Foundation, State of Bengal, Talvin Singh, Fun^Da^Mental, DJ Ritu and great footage of the British Anjali, both as a hard-rocking member of the Voodoo Queens, and in her new sultry lounge singer incarnation. Most of the footage is from the late ’90s. Steve Savale from Asian Dub Foundation, who talked about the film afterwards (along with Vivek Bald and NYU’s Professor of Punk, Vivien Goldman), said all of the Asian Dub Foundation tour footage in the film was from 1996.

I remember reading about a lot of this music in the British press at the time. Looking back it was such an incredible flowering of talent. Unfortunately major labels stepped in, swallowed up, and spit out many of the promising Asian bands at the time. Most of them without ever releasing an album. The movie chooses InvAsian as a new (at the time) artist to feature as the bright young hopes, since Vivek didn’t want to end the film on a pessimistic note. They look and sound great in their first performance and I have to wonder what happened to them. Nowadays there are many young British Asian producers that show a clear debt to the sonic pathways forged by the late ’90s innovators. I only wish that more of them shared the insight and politics, and not just the sonic thunder.

IK

Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m finally sitting down to write up the Desilicious 5 Year Anniversary Party Anjali and I attended in NYC. We have been aware of the party for most of its existence, but had never had the opportunity to attend before. It was held at Club Shelter which I have never been to before. We arrived to the sounds of “Nach Baliye” which then faded into silence. We made our way through a sparsely-attended lower level up to a very-full upper level where we watched performances by two South Asian drag queens. Then it was time for us to become the show. Dance music started up, the stage filled with revellers, and the party started raging. The crowd was a mix of brown and white and very boy-heavy. Despite all the images of shirtless male desis from prior parties projected on the screen, no one took their shirt off while I was there. Because I had dressed so poorly for my NYC trip I was wearing a sports coat at the club. My shirt underneath was too embarassingly shlubby to wear without the jacket to a club night, so I sweated it out, realizing early on that I was the ONLY guy with a sportscoat on at the body-filled space.

I have always assumed that New York City club DJs are required -by their employers and the crowd- to exhibit high levels of technical DJ skills. I imagined that the birthplace of technical DJ forms such as disco/house and hip-hop would place high demands on the DJs in the clubs. My experience at the Kush Lounge with the laptop-enhanced trainwrecking of their DJ had me rethink that. I thought Desilicous would feature seamlessly beat-matched Bollywood house sets; instead the DJing by resident DJ Ashu Rai, featured songs that faded out while another was faded in, or brief out-of-time overlaps of two songs with different tempos. Nothing was horrendously jarring or drawn-out, although energy levels definitely sagged during the transitions between songs. The DJing was all about the selecting, and not the mixing.

I showed up hoping for a night of current Sunidhi Chauhan-sung dance songs. I don’t know if I heard her at all. The songs were a mix of new and old; remixed and original. All were Hindi songs during the time I was there, except for M.I.A’s “QT” vocals over Madonna’s Abba-jacking “Hung Up.” People did not seem into it, even with the Abba-by-way-of-Madonna rhythm. Some of the ther songs DJ Ashu Rai played: a remix I really liked of “Bolo Churiyan,” two songs from Kya Love Story including Alisha’s “It’s Rocking,” the new “Khaike Paan Banaras Wala,” “Salaam Namaste”(which sounded like the best song of the night to me), a mix of “Say Shava Shava,” “Dum Maro Dum (Take Another Toke) Asha Bhosle Punk-a-wallah’s remix,” the house remix of “Signal” from Bhagam Bhag, the house remix of Himesh’s new “Shaka Laka Boom Boom,” “Jhoom Jhoom (Remix),” Stereo Nation’s “Nachangi Sari Raat,” “Dhoom Again.”

Anjali and I left after an hour or two. It was still going on, but we were tired from many nights of hardly-adequate sleep. We stopped to dance to Destiny’s Child “Lose My Breath” which was playing on the lower floor on the way to the exit. I noted that the DJ on the lower floor wasn’t mixing either, which I thought at least the DJ assigned to play Western music would be doing in NYC. I always thought that only Portland had so many DJs that were selectors as opposed to mixers; now I know NYC has plenty as well.

IK

Ashu Rai wrote the following response to this review:

Hi,

I came across your review of Desilicious. Thanks for
the writeup and we’re glad you were able to come.  I
had a couple of minor quibbles:

–  Because this was our 5-year anniversary, we played
a larger selection of older songs (more than normal),
or our most popular Desilicious dance songs over the
years, including Shawa Shawa, the Stereo Nation track,
Bole Churiyan, etc. Specifically, I pulled tracks from
my playlist from our debut March 2002 party.
–  I am the resident DJ, as well as the co-promoter
and co-founder of Sholay Productions, which has been
throwing Desilicious for 5 years.

Hopefully, you can attend a future party next time you
are in town!

Cheers,
Ashu Rai

http://www.myspace.com/sholayevents
http://www.sholayevents.com