Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article “India Resounding in New York” by Jon Pareles (©2004 by the New York Times Company).

When Bombay Dreams, the musical about making it in the Indian film capital known as Bollywood, was imported from London to Broadway in 2004, it introduced some listeners to the madcap eclecticism of filmi, the song-and-dance numbers that punctuate Bollywood’s sprawling musicals. But Broadway was the last to know about the rendezvous of Indian and Western music. The profound improvisations of South Asian classical music have long been welcome in New York City’s concert halls, jazz musicians have been absorbing ideas and collaborating with Indian musicians at least since the 1960’s. Hip-hop has latched on the Indian rhythms. In New York’s clubs, the sounds of Bollywood and other South Asian fusions have been drawing crowds for years.

As often happens, the music follows demographics. In the 1960’s, a change in immigration law brought a wave of white-collar Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to the United States. Now their sons and daughters are establishing their place in the arts as well as in the wider American economy, and they are making sense of a musical upbringing that is likely to include Bollywood tunes alongside hip-hop, Western classical music, Indian classical music, rock and jazz.

For South Asian and Asian-American musicians, producers and disc jockeys who have been building their own scene in New York, the latest East-West hybrids are not just occasion for musical connections and experiments. They are also affirmations of an identity that grows ever more complex and cosmopolitan. Vijay lyer, a pianist who brings his Indian background to jazz, said: “Making music is very much aligned with activism and sociopolitical cultural work, and that actually is something that does unite this community. It’s not just making music to be cool or look hip or be sexy, but actually to make a difference in the world. Especially in New York, that’s a mobilizing force for the South Asian community.”

The New York wave of South Asian music was preceded by influential South Asian hybrids from England. The documentary Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music details the way established Indian and Pakistani communities in London confronted racism with music. In the 1970’s and 80’s, bands in London merged Indian elements—notably a 4/4 Punjabi beat called bhangra—with other music that connoted resistance, like punk, reggae and hip-hop. And in the 1990’s, studio wizards came up with styles that became known as Asian Underground, which swirled together South Asian music with the beats and textures of electronica.

The music traveled to New York at such parties as DJ Rekha’s Bhangra. “It’s very urban, very New York, and that’s what makes it exciting,” Rekha said, “We play big-room hip-hop and a little bit of dancehall as well as bhangra, and the music has gotten a lot more intense. The drums are more pronounced; the production is much better. The music has come of age.” Regular visitors include groups of young South Asians who participate in intercollegiate bhangra dance competitions around the country.

AR Rahman, who wrote the songs for Bombay Dreams, is one of the top modern filmi composers, but also one of the most western-flavored. Through the decades, filmi have tossed together everything from electro to salsa to surf music to funk with vocals that hint at ancient Indian traditions; there’s a daring shamelessness to the way they steal from and one-up their sources.

Iyer has collaborated with disc jockeys and Indian classical musicians as well as jazz improvisers. His own compositions and arrangements reach deep into both the labyrinthine of modern jazz and the rhythmic cycles of Indian music. Iyer grew up in Rochester, New York, surrounded by American culture as much as by the Indian music his parents had brought with them. “I went to hundreds of Indian music concerts,” he said, “Without trying to pretend that I’m an expert on it, because that’s something you have to devote your whole life to, it’s a second language that something in my heart was really drawing me toward. It was really about trying to make sense of who I am, I’m not trying to recapitulate Indian music of pretend that I’m playing Indian music.”

“It’s very trendy right now to be associated with all things South Asian,” Iyer said. “I don’t know how long that’s going to last. But I can’t escape it; that is what I am. And I’m going to be with this forever.”