Soho Road: from the Five Rivers to the Five Boroughs
How New York DJs propelled South Asian Bhangra into the 21st Century
CREDITS
UK
Produced by Punch Records |
Written and Researched by
Scholars and Warriors, Dr
Rajinder Dudrah and our
international Bhangra
Champions | Show curated by
Scholars and Warriors |Book
written and edited by Dr
Rajinder Dudrah | Designed
by Mandeep Malhi, with
Brigitte Windsor |
Photography by Ian Reynolds
and Brigitte Winsor | Archive
curated by Richard Albutt at
the Birmingham Central
Library |From an original idea
by Boy Chana and Ammo
Talwar | Thanks to San-J Sanj
and Kash Sahota
US
Lead partner DJ Rekha
Malhotra | Host 92YTribeca
|US gallery realisation by Rob
Hewitt and Steve Pauley |
Thanks to Srinivas Kuruganti,
Dave Sharma, Amita Swadin
and Manish Kanejam, Ashveer
Pal Singh, Vanessa Cohen and
everyone at 92YTribeca
Find us online:
www.facebook.com/
SohoRoadtoUSA
www.sohoroadtothepunjab.org
www.92ytribeca.com
www.djrekha.com
www.punch-records.co.uk
www.thinkingandthumping.org
www.manchester.ac.uk/
research/rajinderdudrah
For information on hiring or
touring the show contact:
ammo@punch-records.co.uk
About the show
'Five Rivers to Five Boroughs" is the New York story of Bhangra music.
The show explores how New York DJs, dancers and musicians came to splice
Hip Hop into South Asian Bhangra, taking an international urban music trend
into a completely new direction. Our show remixes 'Soho Road to the Punjab' -
a popular British touring exhibition on Bhangra - with documents from the
personal archives of the pioneers of the New York Bhangra scene.
It was in the streets around Soho Road in Birmingham UK that Bhangra
first began to mutate, as musicians experimented with the sounds and styles of
Reggae, Rock and Electropop. When British Bhangra made it onto vinyl and
across the Atlantic, it resonated with the young South Asians of Queens,
Brooklyn and the Bronx. For those already skilled in Hip Hop, it was easy for
them to remix and reuse Bhangra vinyl as raw material for a hybrid sound.
What you can see
Window and floor decals - Glass around the venue has been decorated
with logos and typesetting from classic UK Bhangra albums and cassettes. These
are mostly hand crafted, from the pre digital 1980s. The phrase "Chak de
phattey!" can be translated as dancing till the floorboards are ripped up.
Gallery - Scattered album covers show how Bhangra iconography has
moved through folk music nostalgia to representations of stage performers and
club DJs to more sophisticated graphic design. The wall images contrast a UK
Bhangra album cover, drawn by one of the band, with photography of a
sophisticated New York club night.
Lobby - The lobby area is set up to resemble a 1980s nightclub, with large
prop album covers on the walls and tables. The scattering of albums on the floor
contains some of the best known and most played songs of the period. It was
these records that first found their way into vinyl collections of the young South
Asians who became New York's first Bhangra DJs. The flyposted wall is a
mosaic of club flyers, backstage passes and musicians' ephemera from both sides
of the Atlantic.
Lounge - The lounge area contains two rows of information panels. The
colour set outlines the contributions of Punjabis, Brummies and New Yorkers to
the evolution of Bhangra. The row of hangings gives in-depth biographies of
one UK and one US Bhangra DJ, as well as telling the story of how Bhangra
originated, and how it continues to develop today.