Desi hip-hop

Skilled bar tenders flipped glasses and tossed bottles as they mixed potent cocktails. New York’s hottest DJs were spinning at New York’s see-and-be-seen Kiss and Fly nightclub and the crowd went wild when rocker Jay Sean’s Down amped up the dance floor. 

“If you haven’t heard of Jay Sean you have been living under a rock. He is to die for,” said 20-something Columbia University student Annette Clark, hitting the dance floor as the up-tempo track streamed through the expensive sound system.     

Most Americans can’t really escape a la Sean, whose real name is Kamaljit Singh Jhooti. The lean 28-year-old R&B singer-songwriter of Sikh descent from London just moved up one spot to hit No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 ending the Black Eyed Peas’ 26-week reign at the top of the US singles chart.

The new rock star on the block has sold 1.5 million downloads of his song Down. Sean signed his first record deal in 2003 after quitting medicine. He says he has been “grinding hard for the last seven years” and his head is “spinning” after making US chart history. 

Mumbai-educated Queens front man Freddie Mercury, aka Farrokh Bulsara, was the first global Asian rock star. No Indian origin musician has achieved that level of stardom since he died in 1991. Sean’s quick rise in the hard-as-nails US music industry now comes as a pleasant surprise. “All the journalists and radio people have been saying, dude, where did you come from?” Sean told the BBC. “It’s just different for them. I talk funny. They love the fact that we’re from two different worlds, and I love that as well.”

Sean’s success spotlights other Indian artists like Tina Sugandh, Kabir Sen, Manu Narayan and Rupa Marya who are making a name for themselves in the US music industry. Most of them dig deep into their Indian musical roots to create distinctive sounds.

Distinctive sounds
The colourful San Francisco Bay Area band, Rupa & the April Fishes creates music that defies easy categorisation. Their debut album, eXtraOrdinary rendition, brims with Argentinean tango, Gypsy swing, American folk, Latin cumbias and even hints of Indian ragas. Billed as “one of the hottest emerging acts” by Time Out, Rupa & the April Fishes are performing throughout the US, Canada and Mexico in October and November in support of their new album Este Mundo.

Songwriter and bandleader Rupa Marya, who also happens to be a doctor, writes in a number of languages, including French, Spanish, Hindi and English. She has an extraordinary ear for languages.

“I think it’s because my family moved so much and I was constantly exposed to several languages as a child. Language is musical and mathematical. And my mind tends to enjoy both of those things. I am not a language expert but I do love building and crossing bridges and learning another’s language is a good place to start,” Rupa told The Mag.

“I would describe our sound as the kind of music you’d hear at a bazaar where several streets from several countries from around the world intersect at one point. We’d be at that spot, getting the party started. I call it global music, the sound of people with global identities making music, drawing from our different roots,” she added.

The Mag caught up with Hollywood actor and musician Manu Narayan when he was promoting the Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru where he co-stars as Rajneesh alongside Myers, Jessica Alba and Justin Timberlake. Narayan is a classical saxophonist steeped in western and South Indian Carnatic styles.

Five years ago, Narayan impressed AR Rahman with his classical music training and energetic dancing to land the lead role in Rahman and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s $14 million Broadway musical Bombay Dreams where he lit up the stage with his singing.

Critics say Narayan’s fusion music will please fans of Trilok Gurtu and the more recent works of Peter Gabriel. There is a jazz-rock-world music fusion sound behind his band Darunam’s latest album The Last Angel on Earth.

“Our band Darunam combines Eastern rhythm with Indian melody. My partner Radovan Jovicevic is a Serbian rock star who founded the group Zana which toured all over Eastern Europe. We have this Balkan gypsy rhythm, Indian melody and Western beats,” Narayan told The Mag.

“Our first album was mainstream — kind of pop-rock. This new album is Buddha Bar — a soundtrack to our life,” he said.  Narayan, who is counted as one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, is also man-candy in popular TV shows like The Sopranos and Law and Order. His 2007 single All That’s Beautiful Must Die was a blockbuster hit on US radio stations.

Breaking barriers
Making it as a serious musician in the US has always been the longest of career long shots. And Indian musicians in America have often had to contend with the disapproval of their own communities, which frown on risky careers in the arts.

“My father was supportive of me following my dreams, but as an Indian parent, he felt that medicine was a safer investment than music,” said Rupa. “But as I found my voice more in music, their support grew,” added Rupa, who dedicated Yaad to her late father. 

Nothing could have prepared Nobel laureate Amartya Sen for a son who is famous in his own right in a world thrice removed from the rarefied groves of academe. But hip-hop star Kabir Sen says his father played a whimsical role in his musical destiny. “I started playing the piano when I was four and considered quitting by the time I was 12 because I was tired of practising the scales,” said the 30-year-old with an infectious laugh. “He talked me out of it and told me that if I stuck with it, I would not regret it — he was right, of course!”

Kabir said his father doesn’t know much about hip-hop, “but I think he appreciates the lyrical and message-oriented content of my music. He knows that people have recognised my music at various levels and I guess this has helped him to adjust to the fact that I am not in academia.”

As an eight year-old growing up in London, Kabir suddenly lost his Italian-Jewish mother Eva Colorni, who was also a brilliant economist, to cancer. Sen wanted to take his young children — Indrani and Kabir — to another country where they would not miss their mother constantly. So he started teaching economics at Harvard. Kabir picked up the university town’s musical vibe.

“Kabir has always been certain about what he wants,” said elder sister Indrani, a journalist in New York. “When he was a kid he played all sorts of instruments — piano, guitar and briefly the violin, which was not a very great phase for us.”

All three of Kabir’s albums — Cultural Confusion (2001), Fuel for the Fire (2003), and Peaceful Solutions (2006) — have a distinctive sound and identity. He sells thousands of albums without any of the trappings of the ‘guns-n-gangsta’ lifestyle associated with high-profile rap artistes. For those who see hip-hop culture as guns, girls, and drugs, Kabir, who is one of the genre’s finest wordsmiths, comes as a revelation.

He focuses on message-heavy lyrics, away from explicit sex and violence, and represents a generation of Indian hip-hop artistes with a growing fan base.