In February 2003, the UK bhangra producer and rapper Panjabi MC performed a DJ set in Germany, then flew by non-public jet to Switzerland to play twice extra that very same night. His track Mundian To Bach Ke had lately been rereleased. Having spent 5 years on a closed circuit of British Asian weddings, household features, radio exhibits and membership nights, it might quickly attain the UK High 5 and No 1 in Italy, Hungary, Belgium and Greece.
Touching down at Birmingham airport after the tour, his supervisor Rekha Sagoo obtained a name from the promoter. “I’ll all the time bear in mind it,” she says. “Jay-Z had been in Switzerland and heard Bach Ke blasting by the partitions and wished so as to add his personal verse.” The remix that quickly adopted (referred to as Watch out for the Boys) took the track again into the charts once more in 2003, and Jay-Z carried out it at Glastonbury in 2008.
The success gave bhangra music a lift around the globe and made Panjabi MC a family identify. However many individuals bear in mind him as a one-hit surprise, disregarding his huge legacy to British Asian tradition, not to mention his ongoing music profession. “How a lot element shall I am going into?” he asks, sitting in his studio advanced in Nuneaton. Panjabi MC, AKA Rajinder Singh Rai, is stroking a fluffy gray cat, and at 49 he has a heat presence, like a smart, mischievous uncle.
After the bloody partition of India in 1947, many households emigrating from the severed area of Punjab arrived within the Midlands, the place males discovered work in steel foundries. Rai’s grandparents settled in Coventry, the place he was born. He grew up Sikh in a standard house. “We spoke Punjabi. I had fun. However Cov did have a skinhead downside,” he says. The Nationwide Entrance would mobilise after video games on the soccer stadium, and he remembers hiding from them together with his grandmother inside British Residence Shops.
Anger about immigration and unemployment in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain was effervescent, however so was a multicultural melting pot, and Coventry grew to become the birthplace of the 2 tone scene that spliced punk and ska. Rai’s childhood bed room backed on to a pub that hosted reggae bands. As he fell asleep, “all I may hear was the bassline,” he says. At neighborhood weddings, he would watch the bhangra bands arrange their tools. “I by no means wished to go on the dancefloor. I wished to be on stage.”
Bhangra originated as a harvest dance from the Punjab and developed as soon as it married with digital instrumentation within the UK. Outstanding bands reminiscent of Apna Sangeet, Alaap, Heera and DCS toured the UK through the Nineteen Eighties; so, too, did Sufi qawwali singers visiting from India and Pakistan, reminiscent of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. For younger British Punjabis, be they Sikhs, Hindus or Muslims, music preserved their heritage – language and knowledge through the traditional vocal scales of singers; pleasure within the thwack of the dhol – whereas Black music from the US spoke to a shared feeling of otherness amongst working-class migrant communities.
Hip-hop filtered in from America: “We used to ship somebody all the way down to London with a ghetto blaster to document Tim Westwood’s Capital radio present,” says Rai, who would bunk off college to bop at “daytimer” events organised for younger south Asians who weren’t allowed out at night time. After seeing Stevie Marvel use a sampler on Sesame Road, he labored in a garments manufacturing unit to save lots of up for “my very own little lab”, which he used to deconstruct and mix the voices of his dad and mom’ favorite singers with rap and dance music. This sampling was a hip-hop technique but additionally an instance of jugaad: the Indian technique of bending guidelines to resolve sensible issues. “I cherished all the unique bhangra songs, however they have been recorded reside, so that they have been free. My factor was to tighten them up,” he says.
In his early teenagers, Rai had additionally practised rapping at a Caribbean social membership, the place others would name him Indian MC. “I instructed them: ‘Indian isn’t a language, it’s Punjabi!’” he says. The brand new identify caught.
“He made music that mirrored a lived expertise of getting a number of generations in a single family,” says DJ Yung Singh, a member of south Asian music collective Daytimers and the producer of The Start of Punjabi Storage, a brand new Ministry of Sound documentary. “The older generations appreciated that he sampled a lot of the stuff they grew up listening to.”
Apache Indian and Bally Sagoo, each from Birmingham, had developed reputations for mixing Indian music with reggae, dancehall and disco (“Bally was the man to catch,” Rai says). Attempting his personal hand at forging musical hybridity, Rai fused disparate types on his first three albums as Panjabi MC – Souled Out (1993), One other Sellout (1994) and 100% Proof (1995) – and his single Jogi would later chart throughout Europe.
“I bear in mind getting Souled Out and being blown away,” says New York’s DJ Rekha, whose membership night time Basement Bhangra, which Rai performed at many instances, ran from 19972017. “I’m usually enjoying to an viewers right here that's not deeply accustomed to Indian music – it actually has to chop by. P’s manufacturing type was so totally different, it’s sharp to the ears.”
In 1996, Rai travelled to Punjab to document his fourth album. “Somebody stated to me: ‘Why are you sampling these guys out of your mum’s document assortment once they’re nonetheless alive?’” he recollects. A pal helped monitor his heroes down and rented a studio within the bustling metropolis of Ludhiana. Rai forgot his metronome, so he recorded a dripping faucet on his dictaphone to maintain his collaborators in time.
By now, the Asian underground scene was establishing itself with artists reminiscent of Talvin Singh, State of Bengal and Asian Dub Basis combining the myriad sounds of south Asia with UK electronica and drum’n’bass – a powerful basis for Panjabi MC’s 1998 masterwork, Legalised.
It opened with Mundian To Bach Ke. Rai had sampled the theme tune from the Nineteen Eighties tv present Knight Rider; its tumbi riff was performed by KS Bhamrah from 80s band Apna Sangeet; the vocals have been by Labh Janjua, a people singer whom Rai first collaborated with on his journey to Ludhiana.
DJ and broadcaster Bobby Friction remembers shopping for Legalised on CD in Southall, and the euphoria of enjoying Mundian To Bach Ke. “I used to be enjoying all this underground stuff, however I may drop that in the midst of a set and provides a nod to my roots – it was me going: this one’s for the Punjabis!” In 2002, Friction started co-hosting a present that platformed South Asian music on BBC Radio 1 with Nihal Arthanayake. After years of circulation on dancefloors throughout the UK, the efforts of Rai’s label head Ninder Johal mixed with assist from different specialist DJs reminiscent of Trevor Nelson and Tim Westwood and the truth that “each radio plugger who entered the BBC constructing was speaking about it,” in line with Friction, Bach Ke was added to the nationwide channel’s closely guarded playlist.
Rai named his album Legalised to sign that, not like earlier releases, the samples had been cleared. However when Bach Ke began blowing up, he found that he didn’t have publishing rights for the Knight Rider theme. Common Music Group took 90% of the publishing share. “We misplaced some huge cash,” he concedes.
Nonetheless, it was a triumphant interval. In 2003, Panjabi MC appeared on High of the Pops, was awarded greatest dance act by MTV Europe, and received a Mobo award. Bach Ke opened the door for British Punjabi music being performed not solely within the UK, however throughout the globe, from India to America. DJ Rekha was driving by New York when she heard Bach Ke being performed on the revered hip-hop radio station Scorching 97. “I needed to cease the automotive. I had a lump in my throat. I simply couldn’t imagine it,” she says.
Whereas Panjabi MC continued to bridge his sound with different well timed genres, as on the UK garage-filled 2001 album Dhol Jageero Da, the early millennium noticed a brand new technology of UK bhangra-inflected artists come to the fore, chart success for British Punjabi R&B singer Jay Sean, and elevated funding for BBC Asian Community. US producer Timbaland – who, on a go to to London, stopped by ABC Music in Southall to search for samples – drew from Indian instrumentation to make Missy Elliot’s Get Ur Freak On, whereas Fact Hurts had a worldwide R&B hit with the Lata Mangeshkar-sampling Addictive.
“Labels all of a sudden thought that bhangra was the brand new factor,” Rai says. In his opinion, this led to saturation. At nightclubs, “I’d come on because the headline act after two or three hours’ of different acts, and by that point the gang didn’t wanna hear extra Indian stuff! They’d be like: we’ve had sufficient of this, mate!” He shakes his head and chuckles. “They overdid it. However folks reside and be taught. Our children will see the place we went fallacious, and their youngsters will see the place they went fallacious.”
To at the present time, Mundian To Bach Ke holds a proud significance for a lot of British Punjabis and south Asians. It's nonetheless a favorite throughout the dancefloors of continental Europe and it lately soundtracked a brand new business for German eye-wear model, Brille Fielmann. However the track can be uncomfortable for individuals who noticed it appropriated. “When it comes on now, folks within the Asian music business will groan. However that’s not due to the tune. The tune is highly effective,” says Friction. “It’s as a result of for years it was performed at any time when something Asian got here on the tv – anytime somebody cooked a curry on Come Dine With Me. And that took numerous the cultural which means away. It confirmed south Asians how two-dimensional the remainder of society noticed us.”
Demand for Panjabi MC’s reside exhibits grew exponentially after Bach Ke. “From 2002 to 2015 it simply received hotter and warmer,” he says. The unfold of Holi-themed festivals throughout Europe within the 2010s took him and his track in all places; “I’d have 25-gig contracts in Russia sorted at first of the yr.”
He has continued to make standard music, not least the worldwide hit Moorni (Balle Balle) from his 2011 album The Raj, however Rai admits he discovered it arduous to maintain up with how software program improvement, streaming platforms and social media have been restitching the material of music. “Now, the race will not be solely with different producers in England, it’s with producers in India, too. And you'll’t compete with India. There's a lot music coming from there.”
The nation’s modernisation and the ballooning of its center class signifies that a UK-based producer now not has a technological benefit. If something, the tables have turned. “Bhangra right here has all the time been specialised; in India it’s mainstream. Any child within the pind [village] can get themselves a USB keep on with 1,000,000 kilos’ value of software program on it for £50.”
However Rai stands by the idea that the folks sound he grew up listening to won't ever be overtaken. “It’s like telling somebody to remix Motown – neglect it, the originals sound higher. The analog sound is the most effective.”
Panjabi MC’s newest single, Barood, was launched on Christmas Eve, with a trademark tumbi melody and contemporary entice bassline, and vocals by the London people singer Raf Saperra, who additionally directed the music video. “By way of being the person who has taken Punjabi music world, there are not any three, 4, 5 methods about it – it’s Panjabi MC,” says Saperra. “I can’t simply put into phrases how vital his affect has been to me.”
“He put us Cov boys on the map,” says Coventry rap producer Coolie. “If it wasn’t for Panjabi MC, you wouldn’t see somebody like me within the UK rap scene, doing what I do.” In February 2021, he co-produced a drill anthem, Kisan, which options standard Birmingham vocalist Jaz Dhami and regional rappers like Jay1 and Temz to lift cash and consciousness for the farmer protests in India.
The 20-year-old BBC Asian Community DJ Kizzi grew up in a family soundtracked by Panjabi MC. “For each my dad and mom he was just like the godfather,” she says, including that “he’s one of many solely artists who has tailored himself to the youthful technology.”
“I by no means thought bhangra music from England was going to be listened to by individuals who don’t even perceive it,” Rai concludes. “Once I was watching Blue Peter after I was 16 years previous, I assumed: at some point, I’m gonna be abseiling down mountains, parachuting, watching soccer in stadiums, behind a speedboat, waterskiing … I ain’t completed none of that. I spent my time in labs like this. However now I do know my music.”
Our interview finishes and Rai invitations me right into a room the place his associates have gathered on sofas for a drink. He places on a video of Stevie Marvel performing reside and makes everybody cease speaking to pay attention. As I go away, the instrumental for Tupac’s Hail Mary is blasting from a soundsystem. Somebody has picked up a tumbi to improvise a corresponding melody, and Panjabi MC has began freestyling once more.
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