Treasure the Nuttiness Introduction Art and music critic Kevin Le Gendre discusses the creative case for diversity in music. How hard have black and multi‐ ethnic British artists had to struggle to be recognized over the years, in order to break through in the mainstream on their own terms? For decades, they were seen as inferior to Americans, particularly if they were doing soul‐funk or jazz, and the very idea of a ‘homegrown’ talent with, crucially, its own specific vernacular and modes of expression had little currency. Was there a turning point? Have things really changed? Are there still enough black powerbrokers in the music industry and media to ensure that original black voices are given a platform to do what they feel is progressive without pandering to expectations from ‘inside’ and outside their own community? Along with guests, Sheila Chandra and Kwame Kwaten, Kevin Le Gendre also considered both the diversity within black and multi‐ethnic music and the influence of the images that have derived from its legacy. What were the implications of a British‐Asian appearing on Top Of The Pops in a sari in the 80s way before anybody had coined the term ‘Asian Underground’ – or even coined the term British‐Asian for that matter? The panel will investigate this and the creativity shown by multi‐ethnic musicians in the field of sartorial and visual style, and debate on the cultural and political ramifications of the evolution from Errol Brown’s baldhead to Jazzie B’s funki dreds. Kevin Le Gendre: I want to start off with a general picture; we’re going to go into a bit of history and talk about how things may have developed for Black British artists over the last 20 years or so, or maybe the last 30 years and take us right back to the 70’s and 60’s which is the time when Black British artists have been contributing to the music industry. But I’d like to start by asking the panellists how they feel about where they are today in the year 2009 where we have the likes of Dizzee Rascal or Tinchy Stryder or Taio Cruz enjoying phenomenal success with number one records? They are headlining at major festivals; Speech Debelle just won the Mercury Music Prize, Bat for Lashes is doing really well; she is critically acclaimed, so on the one hand we have all of this success and I would like to just, without too much prompting or leading, just throw it open to the two panellists. How do you feel about where we are in the music industry for black and Asian artists? Are we in a good place? Sheila Chandra: We’re definitely in a better place than we were. When I started at 16 (I’m part of the older edge of the second generation),there were very few Asian people in the media. Now it’s common to have reporters and journalists and presenters who are Asian as well. We’re being represented as part of the mainstream much more, just in terms of personnel. Back in those days we weren’t and with the likes of Jay Sean and the huge success that he has had, Chucky D and Rishi Rich, it’s great that these people are making inroads to mainstream charts and mainstream music and not entirely in a diluted form. I mean originally, I thought it would be much easier for artists to get through who completely denied anything of their culture to the point almost of changing their name and not really referring to it, but that’s not the case. KLG: Having to compromise basically. SC: Yeah, having to compromise. In fact, those are artists that experimented with our own forms, whether when they do, they are accepted by a wider listening public as making music that belongs to and represents that wider listening public, is the question. I think the question with pop music is that you always want it to be ‘ours’; you want it to represent something that is ‘us’. And the difficulty with artists that are working in diverse music forms, whatever their ethnic origin, is that those musical forms appear as ‘other’ to the mainstream audience. So there is always this question of, “Are we going to sit down at the end of a hard day and put on something that is a little bit mentally challenging?” Because we didn’t grow up with it. So now it’s much, much better than it was. It’s very, very encouraging to see that, but I would have liked to have seen the stuff that Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh were doing [in the 1990’s], get a little bit further. I felt that was more intellectually challenging stuff. KLG: Okay well, there are some great points that you made there, several issues that you raised there. I particularly like the point about representation and ‘the other’ and how that plays out in the longer term, so there’s already some food for thought, if you can just keep those things in mind, because this is just the opening salvo at the moment and we will come back to those in greater detail. Kwame, let me hand over to you, hear you bounce off that idea of where we are today, that kind of premise with the success of the artists that I mentioned and all that kind of stuff and maybe if you could react to some of Sheila’s comments. Kwame Kwaten: Where we are today? I guess in order to look at where we are today, if I take it that in probably 1988/89 when D‐Influence started, it was thought of as a very special occasion when a black artist got a video or a budget for a video on any form of TV to where we are now. I think to me, if you’re looking at it in general terms, that kind of shows you where we are, looking at a channel like Channel U or AKA which is almost predominantly black music video and from this country as well, so that shows you a kind of leap from where we were to where we are now. KLG: So the importance of a video, I take it in pop terms, that’s a pre‐requisite to sell a song? So having a video in the first place puts you in the game. KK: You’re talking about a time – I can recall being told back then –“Oh, no, no, no, black acts don’t get videos,” I mean it was a standard. We at the time were guilty of saying, “Oh yes we do, we do get videos,” it’s easy to put it in those terms, but once you actually look at the kind of thought pattern that goes into someone presuming that that’s okay to say, it kind of lets you know where things were. KLG: It’s an outright form of discrimination to say that black acts don’t have videos. KK: Well, that was then. KLG: And where did that come from specifically? KK: You’re looking at the fact that someone like CBS had to threaten MTV with pulling most of their rock acts from MTV viewership in order to get Michael Jackson, one of the biggest entertainers in the world at that time, on to MTV. It was as simple as that; it was leverage, it was, “if you want this, MTV, then you have to do this.” And they played ball and some of the walls came crashing down. And then through that, other stuff happened and then other stuff happened and obviously people like Soul II Soul being in the frame and them having the huge success they had, meant other people could then go through as well, of which I think we were one of a few. KLG: So we are talking about a good 17, 18 years; I mean Soul II Soul was the early nineties, 1990 thereabouts, D‐ Influence, for those that don’t know, had major success in the early nineties as well with tracks like ‘Good Lover’ and by the mid‐nineties they were kind of peaking commercially, selling out venues like the Jazz Café; you guys played the Shepherds Bush Empire and venues like that, as well as The Forum. So you know, fairly substantial venues, so D‐ Influence wound up ... KK: Really about ’98, ‘99. KLG: So that would take us to a good ten years. Think about what you’ve seen change in that time, ‘98 to 2009. KK: Again – 1998 – this is quantum leap stuff, this really is. I’m lucky because ... I’ve got to write a book, haven’t I? KLG: Absolutely. KK: I had first hand knowledge on a lot of the things that went on, so for instance, Jazzie B I still count as a friend; I still know the Young Disciples; Galliano’s people, if I see them on the tube we’re chatting about then; – Stuart Zender from Jamiroquai – all of that is wrapped up in UK music Brit. history and soul and funk and everything else that goes into it, so it’s hard for me to talk about it because in a way, the battles that people have had to go through have been that severe in order to get to where we are now, which is weird. Okay, let me go the other way – if I go Dizzee, Tinchy, Chipmunk, Wiley, Kano, Tinie Tempah, Wretch 32 – these are the new kind of pack of rappers that have all of a sudden come and gone, “Okay, we are going to blend and incorporate the mainstream sound and actually take that and add our music to it.” So, what they are doing is likened to what happened with rap in America in the early 90’s is what they are doing now in the UK, so that is what is going on.