A sideways look at Desi club vibes

A tongue in cheek column looking at various ethnic club scenes in the capital for the Red Bull Music Academy newspaper, which is being distributed for the duration of the Redbull Music Academy's stint in London. Here's the first, in its full glory. No offence intended. You can download the paper here, every day.


The World Is Your Oystercard

When a Londoner speaks to a non-London-ite these clichés always surface: ‘London’s a melting pot… You can find every nationality of the world in one place… It’s the most cosmopolitan city in the world…’

The fact is clichés are often true and LDN is all of the above- if you’re a foodie this means over a weekend you can grab a Colombian desayuno (breakfast) in Brixton, get stuck into Pakistani kebabs in Whitechapel (just don’t ask for chilli sauce or garlic mayonnaise) or rip apart an Anatolian Pide (aromatic Turkish pizza but better) in Green Lanes.

Similarly if you’re into music you can access sounds from the farthest reaches of the global village, quicker than calculating a carbon footprint. Over the coming weeks this column will arm you with enough crass stereotypes and crude generalisations to get you a slap if you utter them out aloud as you devour music from all over the world, armed only with your environmentally friendly Oyster Card.


BHANGRA + BACARDI = MOLOTOV COCKTAIL

The Asian (or ‘Desi’ meaning from the Indian subcontinent) club scene has a longer history in LDN than rave: I can remember my sis wandering off to school with a bag fall of clothes (including a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Pakis Do It Better’ playing on Frankie Goes To Hollywood slogan T shirts of the mid-1980s), for the daytime bhangra raves at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square.

Twenty-five years on and most Asian kids have more freedom so don’t have bunk off school to go raving, but bhangra nights are very much intact. But what is bhangra? It’s primal folk music celebrating harvest time in Punjab, the bread-basket of India, and is built around what resembles a breakbeat – or the sharp thwack of the dhol (drum). Hard working, burly farmers would wile out to bhangra and generally party-sharty like it’s 1999.

In 21st century London, Punjabis (like myself) like to respect our traditions particularly the hard drinking bit – and at every bhangra rave you will find groups of tanked up ‘Bacardi boys’ hitting the dancefloor: arms flail, legs are hooked and boys spin round, shoulders are mounted and perspiration drips before boy (s) either fall over or career into another group of lads. Cue the inevitable fighting between packs of drunken lads (is it comforting that such belligerence is not restricted to kebab/chicken shop in town centres across the nation each weekend?).

Desi-Licious takes place on March 4th at Ministry Of Sound


PRISSY PRINCESSES

Most Desi kids like to think they’re refined and above loutish-ness, and move onto the stush hip hop/R&b with a dash of bhangra nights which take over city bars/boat parties and the Gherkin.

This is where Jay Sean (before he was ‘Down’with Lil Wayne), Juggy D and Ms Scandalous (check Hai Hai it’s a banger) would perform and you would also hear any US hip hop/R&B with an Asian vibe (Missy’s Get Your Freak On, Timbaland’s Indian Flute, the Jay Z refix of Panjabi MC’s Mundian Te Bach Ke), and MIA’s Paper Planes (only since it got the Slumdog Millionaire seal of approval until then she was waaaaaay to alternative for this straight-jacketed scene).

Chiselled goatees, private school educated middle class boys styled on rudeboys and well-heeled, snotty Indian princesses – think brown skinned equivalent of wannabe Wags with impossibly straight hair (what did you do iron it?), Jimmy Choo heels, Prada purses, dripping with diamonds, gold and white platinum, and wearing too much black.

These are nights are about looking fly, holding it down and keeping up appearances so you won’t see any sweaty gurners but some Bacardi Boys might sneak in. Outside there’ll be a fleet of tricked out BMWs and Mercedes because Asian princesses DO NOT do the tube, and certainly not grubby night-buses.

Instead their date will pick them up in mum and dad’s Beemer or Merc, stay sober and ply the Princess with bubbles in the hope of a quick knee trembler on the back seat on the way home, coz they certainly ain’t getting jiggy at his/her parents’ home.


Desi Disco takes place every Friday in West Kengsington and Indulgence takes place on Feb 27th in the city, tickets here

BOLLYWOOD PANEER

Bollywood club nights are a riot of glamour, fun and silliness as people take themselves less seriously: how moody and uptight can you be as you re-enact chasing a girl round a tree while thrusting your hips and rotating your hands?? This is where you’ll find frisky Indian Indians (as in young men born and raised in India working in London in IT), who – understandably - don’t get the urban Asian thing; these guys have a geeky charm with spectacles, side parting, pressed shirt, trousers and polished shoes. At the other extreme are camp, buff boys with slick Bryl-creamed hair in tight jeans and lairy shirt undone to reveal hairy chest and gold chain, in homage to their beefy Bollywood heroes.

Smiling, coy Desi girls dazzle in saris, langhas, salwar kameezes, kurtas (short shirts), while Brit Bollywood-philes (and there are enough of them) wear jeans and twinkling tops rounded off with bindis and bunches of Technicolor bangles.

Kuch Kuch is on February 27th at The Livery EC2V, with a one off at the Whitechapel Gallery on March 5th


COOL LIKE BHANG LASSI

Last but not least there’s the cooler than thou Asian music scene, which yes you’ve guessed it mainly takes place in that few square miles of the capital where everyone takes themselves too seriously, East LDN (Shoreditch, Hackney, Dalston). Funky tattoos (of ohms, swawstikas, Ganesh or Shiva) grace the biceps and hip bones of gurning guys and girls, as they work up a sweat to fierce Asian-influenced dance music (usually floating a Indian vocal over drum & bass, or dubstep – how original).

In these East LDN warehouses, bars or spaces you’ll find a healthy smattering of hippy shippy Brit-girls who’ve spent a gap year in India connecting with their spiritual selves while not speaking for two weeks and cleaning toilets in exorbitant gora (white person)-only ashrams.

They’ll be reaching a higher state of consciousness through meow (mephadrome) or MDMA and looking to ‘spice up their life’ and reconnect with their ‘amazing time in India’ through the medium of shagging an exotic brown boy. Ker-ching! Guess where you’ll find me?


The Shiva Soundsystem begins a residency at the T Bar on March 25th

The UK Asian Music Awards are on March 11th, and I'm a judge innit so it won't be crap.