Making Music November 1998

Huge thanks to my friend Sarfraz Malik for giving me this interview:)

Andy Basire talks to Asian Dub Foundation about life, death and harmoniums - and how they're the missing link between Bad Brains and bhangra....

Mercury Music Prize nominees Asian Dub Foundation are a bit miffed. It's not that the makers of one of 1998's most exciting and incendiary albums are particularly bothered about losing out to this year's prize winners, August Making Music cover stars Gomez - even if the dosh would have come in handy. Nope, the brouhaha concerns one David Baddiel (or as ADF's Master D calls him David bada bada bada bad bad Badduek), and the comedian's comments about the band on a televised discussion panek, when he said: " I can't talk about ADF, they really frighten me. One of their songs appears to be a death threat."

(The song in question, "Assassin", is actually based on the true story of Mohammed (Udam) Singh Azed who avenged the 1919 Amritsar Massacre by assassinating ex-Governor General Colonel O'Dwyer).
"He's obviously not read the lyrics properly," starts Master D. "He hasn't read them at all", sneers Pandit G. " I bet he hasn't even herad the track."
Dr Das is keen the band don't appear to be over-reacting: "He's entitled to his opinions. We don't agree with him, and that's OK. But see, because of his standing as a television pundit, or whatever, some people aren't going to question that statement, and now it'll be, "Oh, ADF, that's the band that make death threats ', y'know?
Everyone will think we're Muslim fundamentalists or something. And that's really potentially damaging to the work we're doing with young people and the funding we're trying to get for projects like ADFED (an ADF musical education trust), and company endorsements. All those things could suffer because of something like that."

Badiel later insisted the remark was "simply a joke, intended to be at my own expense," as he's, " a bit scared of an Asian rap outfit" and that he "wholeheartedly withdraws the implication that ADF deal in death threats." He was then quoted as saying he thinks, "they're a good band - if almost completely humourless."

REALITY

Three fifths of ADF are sitting in various states of repose in thei South East London Community Music headquarters. (more of which later). Missing are Chandrasonic (Steve Chandra Savale), off in places unknown (we'll have a chat with him another time); and Sun J (Sanjay Tailor), who's out shopping for equipment (he turns up later with a Quasimidi Rave-olution - much to the band's excitement).
Meanwhile bass player Dr (Aniruddha) Das - the most diplomatic and talkactive od the three, has plumped for a chair right next to the tape machine, and is absently playing around with a bass guitar.

His former pupil Deedar Zaman (Master D) rocks back and forth on his chair, occasionally glancing at the Cubase screen next to him. He's quick-witted, friendly, incredibly young (he first met Das when he was 15), and commandeers the tape player early on in the interview, intent on making sure everyone is heard.
One time youth worker and DJ John Pandit (Pandit G) sits on the floor, then on a flight case, or paces around when he feels like making an important point. A former CAPA worker (an organisation that monitors police and racial harassment in London's east end), Pandit comes across as the most overtly politicised of the three. He's also the one most inclined to leap on any questions he considers ill-conceived - including one about lyrical slackness in ragga, which brings about an extremely concise, softly-spoken lesson in cultural imperalism, taking in America's political agenda in the West Indies, the invasion of Grenada, and a good many other geopolitical events that informed and created internalisation in the musical style and content of Jamaica, which ultimately led to people dumping their shit on someone else, in this particular case women.(Phew...)

We're always trying to define what people mean when they say "politics", says Pandit G. "It can be anything from Clinton and Blair - which isn't really tied to most people's reality - to bands from ten or 15 years ago like Misty In Roots and Linton Kwesi Johnson..."
"Or Bob Marley." adds Deedar.
"...Bands that were talking about real life and what goes in the world - like with Satpal Ram [the subject of a track on the album]. But the "political" thing can just end up as an epithet that's attributed to you, which stops you from doing anything else."

Das: "We make commentary, we have opinions, all our lyrics come from what we're reading about or conversations we have about things that happen to us or friends and families. We never sit down and think, "Right, what political subject shall we write about today?" We do like to party as well. We do like to have a good time."

"It's a very powerful way of reaching people - because the bass is so uplifting." Deedar smiles, "and when you then have someone on the mike saying something positive..."

So does it matter if people just come to an ADF gig to dance?
"Well, we play in places like France," Pandit reasons, "and then audience don't always necessarily know what we're singing about..."
Deedar: "But it does matter to us - I think if you have a platform you should make use of it."
"The most important thing here is not about trying to convert people," the voice of reason Dr Das sums up. "It's just about promoting debate, it's a long term thing, it's not something that you can sum up in a three-and-a-half minute song."

COMMUNITY

The original seeds of ADF were sown nearly five years ago during a music technology workshop run for Asian youths at Community Music. The workshop, run by Dr Das, was where the core components of the band: the tutor, the furious young ball of energy (a rapper since he was 9 years old), and the Youth worker DJ - first encountered each other.
"I was running a music work shop which was being filmed as part of an Arts Council Project, " Das nods.
"Pandit G was involved in the organisation of that, and Deedar was one of the students who came along to that workshop. After it had finished we all just continued working together, although only as a sound system that made music in the studio, and certainly not with anything specific in mind.

"Then a benefit gig came up in 1993 for Quddus Ali [an Asian youth left in a coma after a racist attack by members of the BNP], and that mobilised us to get out of the studio."

Das explains the roots of Community Music: "It was originally set up by a jazz drummer called John Stevens [who tragically died in 1994, before seeing the project's first big success], and really it's all about letting people get to grips with the latest technology - not about creating a load of snotty little pop stars. But if they find they'd like to pursue things we'll give them support to do that. And of course ADF serve as a role model to prove that it can be done this way.

"We also bring people from the record company down to give talks and we're currently building up a tutor database," he adds, propping the guitar he's been playing around with against a nearby wall.
Although many bands pay lip service to "giving something back", and although rapidly-growing touring and recording commitments mean ADF don't get to spend as much time at Community Music as they would like, they do all play an active part in the organisation. They still base their operations in the building too - their small studio-come-writing room occupies the top floor. It seems ADF intend to make sure the opportunities that first benefited them are still available for others.

INNOVATIONS

The major step in ADF's move out of the studio was the arrival of guitarist Chandrasonic [whose previous outfits included the Higher Intelligence Agency]. It was then the nucleus of a band began to take shape.
"To start with we just used decks, a four-track, a mike and some percussion. After a year we met up with Chandrasonic and it began to look more like a band, " says Das, reaching for the guitar he only put down two minutes ago.
"We've got four of these now," he nodds at the headless Hohner B2A now back on his lap, "which we tune B E A D, incidentally, and which I DI live - although I do use an Ampeg for on-stage monitoring.
"I've been messing around with the bass since about 1985, but it was only with ADF, when we had Deedar as the focal, vocal point, that I really got the chance to come out from behind the banks of technology I was hiding behind."

Deedar: "We just got bored using DATs and wanted to work more live."
Das nods. "But we do like to keep things simple - just samples through the [AKAI] 3000XL and the Yamaha ProMix 01 desk, which Sanjay will be dubbing up and muting or whatever. [He also uses a Korg MS10]. And then there's Pandit G and his [Technics] decks..."
"They're for stuff like the flutes, harmoniums, strings and sitar drones," Pandit points out. "I don't mix in beats."
Dr Das, keen to clarify how integral each member of ADF actually is, explains. "That was initially out of necessity, and though there's enough memory space now to sequence up the stuff Pandit G does, it just wouldn't be the same. It gives us a much looser feel, and we do like to bounce ideas off each other and improvise.

"The harmonium is one of our favourite sounds," he enthuses. "In fact, whatever company first makes an electric harmonium is going to make so much money.
"We've always tried to make use of whatever we happened to have at the time, as opposed to waiting six months until we could afford to buy something. Chandrasonic only recently upgraded from a knackered old Squier to a Fender Strat [which he puts through a Trace Elliot Tramp]."

Pandit: "It's like Lee Perry at the Black Ark, with the limited amount of technology he had and the techniques he emplyed to get the maximum effect from them."
Das: "I remember messing around with drum machines, changing the parameters in real time, and today I've been looking at the latest Boss drum machine that has things that enable you to do that. We were getting into the pitch mode and messing around with it when it was only really designed for getting your hi-hats at a certain pitch and leaving 'em.
"Even on the 303 all those knobs were really there to let you create a setting and then leave it. But the real innovations occurred when someone started to do those things as the music was playing, in real time."

Working and writing mainly in the small office space of their headquarters [Deedar explains that generally they'll, "have the framework of some beats and everyone sits around with their instrument and just builds it up."], ADF still prefer to stretch old equipment to its absolute other limits before starting all over again to explore newer stuff."

Das: "For me the Alesis MMT8 was the best sequencer going - the first ADF album was almost entirely created on an MMT8 and an [Akai] S950.
"Having said that, I think jungle really developed the way it did because of the way you use loops in software sequencers like Cubase, and of course time-stretching on samplers. But it's always about someone abusing the technology first, and then the companies finally responding to that."

Master D and Pandit G sit patiently, occasionally nodding, as Das gets into full flow - they must have heard it all before, but there's no doubting his enthusiasm and obvious love of his subject.
"I've got this Indian sequencer called a Sunadamala that has 150 different Indian Ragas in it, grouped according to the rhythmic cycle - so you've got fives, sixes, sevens and eights through to 16s. I'll sit in my kitchen with this sequencer and play a melody and get the characteristic of it and then begin to drop out notes. That's how I create basslines. I think that way of workind is going to be coming up a lot more for us - the album is littered with Indian melodies but as they're played on the bass or through a distorted guitar you might not immediately recognise it."

"For years I had this cultural identity crisis relating to music," he frowns, "but as soon as I discovered the bass I realised I could not only play the dub and reggae stuff I loved, but also the Indian cycles that were part of my background. I even took tabla lessons for a few years, and when I came to programming drum machines, especially on the 16-beat cycles, I immediately felt at home - it was so natural. We just happen to apply those rules to electric guitars and programming. I hear melodic cycles but I also see visual patterns - like for example there's an Indian scale that relates to two diamond shapes," he shows he what he means, running through a scale on the Hohner.

TURNING TABLAS

Deedar, who's been distractedly looking at the Cubase screen next to him jumps in. "To me ragga music was really like bhangra," he illustrates what he means by freestyling a few phrases. "And as soon as I heard jungle, I knew we could do that with tablas."
"We remixed a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan track," Das recalls, by way of illustration. "We created unison lines on the guitar and bass, recreating the vocal lines and when you took the vocal out of the mix what you heard was Bad Brains."
The other two chuckle.
"No, really. People think we did a Bad Brains hardcore trash melody on that album, but it's not, It's Qawwali music..."

ADF can certainly be accused of being deadly serious young men - they're seriously committed to both their music and the Community Music set-up that helped create them [as they fervently hope it will do future projects]. But humourless? Contrary to what some may like to suggest, ADF do actually laugh sometimes. [The album credits even namecheck "Pravin A Laugh" as Head of Light Entertainment].

In fact, even as they were patiently explaining to your correspondent why they felt David Baddiel's Mercury Music Awards quote needed a response, Dr Das, Master D and Pandit G were also animatedly discussing a possible future track they felt they should build around the offending quote, which they laughingly decided should be called "Def Fret"...

Bleak and world-wary perhaps, but a sense of humour all the same. Maybe they should sign up for next year's series of Fantasy Football League.