Introduction For once Asians can conduct themselves with other Asians in a way they would never dream of doing in front of their parents. Coming to the Wag reassures me that I’m not the only one suffering from a cultural identity crisis.—RAJAN MISTRY, ‘‘Bombay Nights’’ Getting into Bombay Jungle was no easy task. There were typically eight hundred people inside the club, and eight hundred more trying to get in, with lines that stretched well beyond the length of the building. One eve- ning during a preliminary research trip I made to London in the summer of 1994 I eagerly waited with some friends in the long queue to enter. Once inside, we found the excitement in the club palpable, energized by thump- ing bass and rounds of beer. The deejays on the bottom floor played swing, soul, and hip-hop, while on the top floor they played remixes of bhangra. All of the deejays at Bombay Jungle were young men save for DJ Ritu, the only woman in the bhangra scene at the time. These deejays showed in- credible technical skills, mixing in music that ranged widely in beats per minute and tempo. The crowd, comprised mostly of teens, danced along, mimicking the creativity and variety of the music in their steps. Club-goers moved fluidly between the dance floors as they changed their music prefer- ences throughout the evening. But most of the women congregated on the hip-hop floor while the men exuberantly took center stage on the bhangra floor. Young people’s clothing styles borrowed from those of commercial hip-hop, the men wearing baggy pants and flashy jewelry and even styling their hair with cornrows à la Snoop Dogg. While most women wore the requisite feminine, tight-fitting outfits, some also sported ‘‘hard’’ looks with baseball hats and puffed jackets. The class background of the crowd was not obvious, as their club gear was somewhat uniform. But I later learned that it was mostly working class, reflecting the demographic that was often drawn to bhangra. Though a generally friendly crowd, it was not without some attitude, the worst of which would lead to occasional fights erupting on the dance floor—mostly between men performing tough masculinities. Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/658914/9780822395645-001.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Bombay Jungle wasn’t a club proper but a club night, a temporary ar- rangement that a venue would schedule to attract a specific audience. Three deejays, Mark, Mitts, and Dee, started the weekly event at the well- known London venue the Wag Club in the fall of 1993.∞ Known primarily as a bhangra night, it quickly became the hottest event on the British Asian music scene. Bhangra, originally a Punjabi folk music, had become increas- ingly popular with youth of South Asian descent who had, from the 1980s on, been creatively remixing it to create new music forms, often referred to as British bhangra (or just bhangra).≤ This new music combined the classic features of the genre of bhangra—such as the distinctive rhythms of the dhol (a wooden barrel drum) and Punjabi lyrics in couplet form (or boli- yan)—with the instrumentation and sampled lyrics of popular music like r&b and hip-hop. Many of the young people involved in the scene as well as some scholars celebrated the music for expressing a uniquely British Asian identity. By the mid-1990s, London had already seen many one-off bhangra club nights boasting audiences of up to five thousand. Young people would come not only from all over London, but also from all over England, arriv- ing in buses. Bombay Jungle, however, was unique in several ways. It was the first regularly scheduled club night, and its success had led to the opening of several similar clubs. It was located in Leicester Square, the heart of London’s bustling nightlife, where mainstream clubs had often denied young British Asians entry. As Dee said, ‘‘We were . breaking boundaries. Being Asian, you used to just walk up to a [club] door, and they would be like, ‘Naw, naw, you can’t get in.’ Whereas a couple of white people next to you would walk in.’’ Journalists, who eagerly interviewed club-goers, interpreted the enthusiasm shown for Bombay Jungle differ- ently: they saw mass rebellion by a group they assumed was trodden down by South Asian tradition. Although these media stories reinforced (post)- colonial stereotypes of South Asian culture, the popularity of Bombay Jungle heightened the visibility of British Asians. For many, its success represented a breakthrough. When I went back to London in the fall of 1997 to commence a two-year period of research on the British Asian music scene, my return coincided with the arrival of what was to become the second major form of music to gain widespread attention, Asian Underground (au). As was the case at Bombay Jungle, the lines to get into Anokha, a club night featuring au music, were long. And the media were again, eager to interview club-goers. But otherwise the experience of attending an au club 2 Introduction Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/658914/9780822395645-001.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 like Anokha bore little resemblance to attending a bhangra one. To get to Anokha I took the London tube to the East End, away from the commer- cial center of Leicester Square (other au clubs that opened were likewise located outside of the city center). At the entrance, there were no extensive security checks like the ones that had started taking place at bhangra clubs, whose reputation for being violent had grown. The venue that hosted Anokha, the Blue Note, was small, representing the ‘‘boutique’’ feel of club nights striving to differentiate themselves from mass, commercial ones. On entering the club, I noticed that the audience was multiracial, including British Asians, blacks, and whites, and in their twenties and thirties, a slightly older demographic than that at bhangra clubs. I also later learned that it was generally middle class. At Anokha, fashion took an overtly fu- sion feel, most of the patrons mixing signifiers of East and West. For Asian women, this could mean wearing a kurti (top) with jeans, while for white women it could mean donning mehndi (henna tattoos), bindis (decorative dots on the forehead), and saris. Unlike the performances of masculinity at bhangra clubs, here in the arty, counterculture atmosphere, a few men experimented with gender bending through their club gear. Most, if not all, of the deejays, however, were men, with women appearing mostly as sam- pled vocalists on tracks. Groups of friends danced with one another, doing their own versions of fusion dance styles. But dancing by oneself was also a norm here, where appreciating the music, rather than meeting someone, appeared to be the primary focus. Talvin Singh, a British Asian tabla player trained in classical Indian music, started Anokha, which means ‘‘unique’’ in Hindi, at the end of 1995. The club featured music that synthesized South Asian vocals and instru- mentation (often classical forms) with Western breakbeats such as hip hop, jungle, and drum ’n’ bass. In part to promote the club, Singh released a compilation album in June 1997 titled, Anokha: Soundz of the Asian Under- ground. As the popularity of the club and its music grew, British news- papers, music press, and style magazines seized on the label Asian Under- ground, using it to categorize and often promote the music. This label soon became the name of a new genre and was sometimes used by the British media, much to the chagrin of so-called au artists, to subsume artists who ranged widely in their influences but who produced music not identifiable as bhangra. Thus, while bhangra had certain features that identified it as a genre (see chapter 1), au music was much less easily definable and referred more to the kinds of music artists were remixing as opposed to a particular form they followed. For example, two releases that were considered club Introduction 3 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/658914/9780822395645-001.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 anthems of the au scene—State of Bengal’s ‘‘Flight IC 408’’ and Talvin Singh’s ‘‘Jaan’’—are more similar to each other than most au tracks are. Yet they have little in common with regard to genre other than that they are forms of drum ’n’ bass that use South Asian instrumentation (see chapter 4 for further discussion of both songs). Within a short time au music, like bhangra, garnered public attention. And the scene grew, with other clubs such as Swaraj joining Anokha, and au record labels like Outcaste releasing compilation albums. But, unlike bhangra, au became successful during the late 1990s as a mainstream form of music. In fact, its widespread recognition and mainstream acceptance as British Asian music were unprecedented. The press regularly featured it as a form that could be enjoyed by all, Asians and non-Asians alike, and many au artists received some of the British music industry’s top awards.≥ In- deed, the rising popularity of this music was evidenced in a phrase bandied about at the time: brown is the new black.∂ As was the case with bhangra, many youth and scholars claimed that this music expressed a uniquely British Asian identity. the experiences of youth of South Asian descent in Britain—a group I will refer to as postcolonial youth—shed light on the politics of belonging in a world shaped by empire and globalization.