Last week, BBC Local Radio announced the Blue Plaque music recognitions in association with the British Plaque Trust. There were 47 recipients, including artistes, their birth places, studios they recorded in and venues they played at.
Prominent winners included Trident Studios, where rock star David Bowie recorded many albums, the birth places of conductor Neville Mariner and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham; the Cambridge School of Art where Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett studied; Byfield Village Hall, where folk-rock band Fairport Convention’s vocalist Sandy Denny last performed; the Brighton Dome, where ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision contest and shot to global fame; and the the Gaumont Theatre, where the legendary Buddy Holly once played.
Three Asian musicians were also honoured - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Sam Zaman who used the name State of Bengal and Haroon Shamsher from the group Joi. While Khan hailed from Pakistan, the other two were from Bangladesh. All three music awards were well deserved, but one observation. In the UK music scene, the term Asian normally refers to people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The others either belong to the Middle East or Far East, or are Chinese or Japanese.
The three awardees this year are no more. For his part, Khan is known to have taken Sufi music to the West, thanks mainly to his recordings with Birmingham-based label Oriental Star Agencies and later Real World Records launched by rock musician Peter Gabriel. He will be commemorated in Birmingham on his 20th death anniversary on August 16. State of Bengal and Shamsher represent what came to be known as the Asian Underground movement, thanks mainly to the efforts of Indian tabla player-producer Talvin Singh and promoter Sweety Kapoor, who started the Anokha club back in 1997.
That brings us to the main point here. The 1990s were definitely one of the most experimental eras in global music, maybe after the 1960s. Newer genres and sub-genres thrived. In rock, for instance, we had grunge, alternative and thrash metal. Hip-hop and DJ-oriented electronic dance music took off in a big way. And there was the British Asian sound, which came under three categories. Asian Underground blended rootsy sounds from the sub-continent with modern styles like drum ’n’ bass, jungle, ambient, trip-hop, lounge and 1990s electronica. Live performance mixed with DJ samples. Tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and producer Bill Laswell extended the sound with their group Tabla Beat Science, and so did Talvin Singh with his project Tablatronic. Though he grew up in New York, British-born percussionist-producer Karsh Kale later became involved with this movement.
It was a perfect formula for the youth who had grown up in the UK, but had a musical connect with their Asian roots. But there were others who used a similar mix but didn’t want to be associated with the term Asian Underground. Examples were the brilliant producer Nitin Sawhney, singer Susheela Raman, and the groups Cornershop, Asian Dub Foundation, Badmarsh & Shri, Black Star Liner and Fun-Da-Mental.
Finally, there was a cross section of musicians using Indian sounds and making it big in the UK. Examples were Apache Indian, who blended Punjabi music with reggae, Bally Sagoo (Bollywood remixes), Malkit Singh and Panjabi MC (bhangra) and Stereo Nation (pop-friendly stuff).
That whole British Asian sound did wonders till the early 2000s. Then two things happened. The musicians started getting into other projects like DJing, production, international collaborations or concentrating on other traditional genres. Two, tastes changed and Bollywood music came back in a big way. The whole British Asian sound movement was lost. But yes, thanks to the BBC Blue Plaques, we remember the immense contribution of some really innovative artistes like State of Bengal and Shamsher’s group Joi. As for Khan, his legend has only grown.
