Introduction – A ‘rescue’ post
I recently rewatched one of my favourite films, Almost Famous, and dwelled in the fantasy of being a music writer like the protagonist, William Miller who was commissioned in the film by Rolling Stone magazine to profile an up-and-coming rock band. It brought to mind a similar assignment I had in my youth that was never published. I recently dusted off this article I wrote in 1999 and was pleased with how it stood the test of time. Rather than letting it wither in my archives, I’m publishing it here, a “rescue” of sorts to give it some sunlight.
The assignment was “commissioned” (quotes, ‘cuz it was an unpaid gig) by then print magazine Rungh, a hip publication focussed on arts & culture of the South Asian diaspora. Alas, the issue that would have featured my piece was never released. The magazine went on a long hiatus but has since been reincarnated online at rungh.org.
My piece is about a documentary film maker, Vivek Bald, and his work-in-progress (at the time) documentary, Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music (Mutiny Sounds Productions, 2003). The documentary was ultimately finished but as far as I can tell, never received formal distribution. Fortunately, it too gets some sunlight – Bald continues to screen at festivals, as recently as last year in San Francisco at the Third i film festival (www.thirdi.org).
Original piece (manuscript from 1999)
Never Mind the Masala…This is Mutiny!
Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music – A documentary film by Vivek Bald
Masala this and Masala that. I was really tired of all the titles for everything South Asian having references to food. I was brought up with an understanding of my connection to South Asia that was about history and politics.
Vivek Renjen Bald, filmmaker
The Sex Pistols have more to do with Vivek Bald’s choice of documentary subject than the hype surrounding Britain’s so-called “Asian Underground.” The film-maker of Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music talks about his film, political musical expression, and what it was like to grow up in a surf town, schlepping around his sitar, and playing drums in a post-punk band.
An Intimate Glimpse
“Identity Politics” is a redundancy for Vivek Bald. He sees the two forever intertwined—especially for South Asians growing up in the West. Bald is a film-maker who’s latest effort, Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music, focusses on the politically charged music emanating from second generation South Asians in the United Kingdom.
An all too short work-in-progress version of Mutiny was screened at the 9th Annual Desh Pardesh Festival in Toronto. Based in New York City, Vivek returns to Toronto regularly for Desh’s offering of celebration and networking in the South Asian arts and culture community. His first documentary film, Taxivala/Autobiography, was screened at the 3rd Desh festival in 1993.
Mutiny features many U.K. artists who have cultivated a strong following among those who share Bald’s belief that music is a powerful political pulpit. Cornershop, Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation, Anjali, Hustlers HC, Fun-Da-Mental, and The Kaliphs are among the artists profiled in Mutiny.
The film showcases these artists in their homes and neighbourhoods speaking candidly about their politics and their choice of medium to communicate it. Anjali Bhatia, formerly of the all-South Asian, all-female, and all-punk band, The Voodoo Queens, provides sage narrative on the racism and xenophobia that gave rise to a generation of politicized South Asians in the U.K. She dubs the icon of skinhead thugery a “fat white man who’s lived on chip fat all his life.” Mush Khan of the Kaliphs sums up the shift from the tolerance of his parents’ generation to his own generation’s fight against racism, “We’re not pacifists, we’re Paki-fists,” he says.
The bulk of Vivek’s filming took place in 1996/1997 when many of the artists where just gaining the widespread popularity they enjoy today. As a result, Bald says “Everyone was very accessible and very generous and encouraging. They could see where I was coming from and they really opened up.” In the film, Talvin Singh, who’s album OK topped Canadian college charts in 1999, is shown in what looks like his family-room-cum-studio tinkering with drum programs, injecting his own tabla improvisation. Such intimate glimpses of this seemingly distant music scene are what make Mutiny a timely and refreshingly relevant film.
Bald credits Aki Nawaz, Nation Records honcho and member of Fun-Da-Mental, with introducing him to a large part of the scene in the U.K. “He opened up is phone book and started giving me people’s numbers. It just rolled onwards from there.”
A Struggling Artist
Bald’s shooting schedule was interspersed with obligatory periods of freelance web design—a sideline he picked up at just the right time. “In the period of May 1996 to October 1997, my life consisted of freelancing on web projects for two or three months, saving up a chunk of money, flying over to England for about three weeks, doing interviews, shooting performances, using up all the money that I had on production-related expenses, coming back to NY, getting another freelance gig, working for another two or three months, and then going back to London.”
Although very grateful for a grant from the North Star Fund, an independent organization that supports a wide range of politically progressive causes, Bald laments the sad state of funding for independent artists in the U.S. “It’s just really bleak. The grants that were there have been decimated. I’ve come to appreciate the fact that, in Canada and in Britain, even though I know that there’s been a lot of cutbacks in Canada in the last ten years, there is a better infrastructure for granting to independent film and video-makers.”
Bhangra this ain’t…but nuff respect
The Desh screening was the first glimpse of Mutiny in Canada. A couple of screenings in the U.S. garnered surprise by American South Asian youth at the level of politicization in the U.K. “They were hearing about a second generation experience they had no conception of. I think, in contrast to the U.S. where the second generation growing up in the 70’s and 80’s was mostly middle-class and suburban, in Britain, the second generation was mostly working class and urban. That definitely plays a part in the kind of music now emerging in the second generation.”
A panel discussion followed the screening. Among the panelists was DJ Rekha, a NY-based DJ who recently joined forces with Bald to start a club night at New York’s Rebar. The “Mutiny” club night, named for the film, features much of the U.K. music from artists in the film as well as local New York artists who have embraced a non-Bhangra political-musical expression.
Rekha is also known for creating the widely popular Basement Bhangra club night at New York’s SOB’s. Although she still spins Bhangra and has found a way to steer clear of the glitzy wedding industry variety, Rekha is also inspired by the more substantial messages in the music of Asian Dub Foundation and Fun-Da-Mental. The Mutiny club night has since become a regular fixture on New York’s club scene (every last Friday of the month at The Cooler on West 14th Street).
Careful not to dismiss Bhangra completely, both Rekha and Bald agree that it was a seminal movement in the eighties and early nineties. It gave second generation South Asian youth a music to call their own—something they had been searching for. But with commercialization and gentrification, Bhangra seemed to lose its edge, increasingly communicating apolitical messages to largely apolitical audiences.
I was a pre-teen Sex Pistols fan
Bald’s political grounding began remarkably early in life. Growing up in California, Bald was always aware of his South Asian identity and the political ramifications of it in the mostly “hippie surf/college town” of Santa Cruz. “I love Santa Cruz,” he admits but adds, “It’s is basically the bastion of hippie exotification of India.” He attributes his early identity consciousness to his mother. As a junior professor at a Santa Cruz college, his mother (born to parents from Lahore and Punjab) was a hub for students from the recently decolonized world: Africa, Latin America, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. “I grew up around this kind of pan-third-world community. I was also charged with the energy of those nationalist struggles. From that, I gained a conception of myself and my connection to much larger histories of decolonization.”
One day, when he was twelve and watching the news with his family (as was the custom), the Sex Pistols were featured as the final story. “They entered into our domestic space and I was never the same again.” A year later, he was a true fan of both the music and the message in the Sex Pistol’s Never Mind the Bullocks album. He was also drawn to the politically conscious reggae of Lee Perry, Burning Spear, Agustus Pablo and others.
But Vivek was not only a fan. He joined a post-punk band as the drummer and took up the sitar with a local guru. Asked if he felt comfortable in such vastly different environments, he responded, “Yeah, I guess it’s one of those second generation things. We are often comfortable in spheres that, on the outside look like they’re completely contradictory.” Bald tried to merge the two musical traditions but soon gave up. Already a reluctant “native informant” on Indian spirituality among his curious California peers, Vivek felt uncomfortable with the way the sitar was being received and digested in that environment. “I was starting to work out how I was being positioned. It’s also a part of being mixed. There’s this classic position that we’re always put in—being different enough to be exotic but not so different as to be threatening. That’s definitely the position I was assigned in that white, college, post-punk scene.”
Dread, Beat, Blood and Inspiration
Himself inspired early in life by the music documentaries, Dread, Beat, and Blood and Dance Craze, Bald hopes to offer similar inspiration to South Asian youth. “I’d like to make a documentary that will affect 13-14 year old second or third generation youth and inspire them the same way those films inspired me.” Inspired in what ways? To explore their identity, politics? “Yeah. It’s dangerous to see identity in terms of vague and ungrounded notions of culture, religion, music, etc. that are somehow disconnected with history, politics, and class. All these things are interconnected in complex and powerful ways. Music and politics, in particular, have always been connected.”
A second agenda for the film is to address the misrepresentations of South Asians in the popular media. “When we see messed up representations of South Asians, whether it’s exotification or portrayal of south Asians as stupid clownish figures, there’s two ways of dealing with it. The first way is protest and that is really important. The other way is to produce counter-images…basically put images of South Asians out into the popular media that are strong, articulate, uncompromising, and diverse. Both of those approaches are really important and they both need each other. But I guess what I’m interested in right now is more the latter. I want to create something in documentary form that contributes to the process of expanding people’s conceptions of what it means to be South Asian in the West.”
The Finished Product
Vivek will spend the summer in earnest, finishing up the film. He is considering entering it in several film festivals, some of which require that the screening is a premier. Hopefully, distributors who see Mutiny on the festival circuit will recognize it’s relevance and give it the exposure it has earned.
torontoArm 