"FAR FROM HOME: ASIAN MUSIC IN THE REAL GREAT BRITAIN"

Big thanks to Saurav Dutt for sending this interview to me, it was taken from a much bigger article about the Asian Undergound music scene.

Asian Dub Foundation explicitly refuses to be viewed as just another Eastern New Age-ism. Rather than spirituality, the five-person sound-system crew are inspired by the South Asian spirit of resistance - one more deeply concerned with physical than metaphysical realities. It finds expression through sonic and social pressure on ADF's Rafi's Revenge.

The band's studio production is an alchemy of dub aesthetics, concrete jungle textures and punky guitar strains, as well as Hindustani melodies and drones, subversively re-combined and emitted like sirens and rhythms ready for riot. The band's MC Master D, along with being one of the few mic-handlers capable of rhyming eloquently at a drum & bass tempo, serves up a dose of South Asian-style "edutainment." He drops science on Indian anti-colonial assassin Uddam Singh, the Naxalites' peasant rebellion in Bengal during the '70s, and the current injustices against British political prisoner Satpal Ram. Unfamiliar to most Western listeners - including those with a South Asian heritage - these names and suppressed histories are referenced with an energy similarly expressed by Public Enemy when they used to rap about Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and other forgotten black heroes. Posing a stark contrast to the conventionally sonorous presentation of Indian music, ADF's audio terrorism is a defiance against all stereotypes of South Asian passivity. And unexpectedly, it follows the legacy of artistic, political expression in the subcontinent.

"There has always been an undercurrent of discontent in Indian music."

"India has a long tradition of militant music," states Chandrasonic. "There's the music of the Bombay Slum Dwellers, which is very theatrical. A lot of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's lyrics are actually about pleas for self-improvement and unity across religious barriers. One of our earlier tracks, 'Rebel Warriors,' is actually dedicated to a radical, anti-colonial poet from the '30s, Nazrul Islam. There has always been an undercurrent of discontent being expressed through Indian music. It's crazy to say that Indians have nothing radical to say."

Radical is often taken as a synonym for political, but the urgency of ADF's message is inherently first and foremost about survival. And though perhaps in a less politically overt way, the issue of survival is what ultimately motivates all of these artists. As people unsatisfied with their "acceptance" as hyphenated British, American or Canadian citizens, and struggling with the reality of being Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Hindu, Muslim or Sikh in a tense, cosmopolitan environment.