Despite the global success of Jay Sean, why is there still a lack of successful British Asian artists? Is this due to post-colonial attitudes or Asian cultural traditions?
Brian Smith Barbara Kiviat
Chasing Desi DollarsWednesday, Jul. 06, 2005
· “Sean talks about being a kid and starting a band in England with his cousin,
He also talks about listening to bhangra music, choosing singing over medicine as a career and picking a Bollywood actress to star in his latest music video.”
· “During the 1990s the number of Indians in the U.S. more than doubled--making them the fastest-growing Asian minority. There are some 2.5 million desis in the U.S”
· "We speak English, but we don't speak the same language," says Vivek Sharma
It's Hinglish, innit?
By Sean Coughlan
Glenn , St Helens
Wednesday, 8 November 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6122072.stm hybrid of English and south Asian languages= HINGLISH
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By Sean Coughlan
Glenn , St Helens
Wednesday, 8 November 2006
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· “a hybrid of English and south Asian languages, used both in Asia and the UK - now has its own dictionary.
· “For the young are linguistic magpies, borrowing from any language, accent or dialect that seems fashionable”
· “Goodness Gracious Me used Hinglish”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/jay-sean-spinning-as-britishindian-singer-tops-us-chart-1802496.html Jay Sean 'spinning' as British-Indian singer tops US chart
· “He started rapping at the age of 12 but moved into R and B, reportedly due to the difficulties getting into the British rap scene with his Punjabi Indian heritage, and thanks to his talent for singing.”
· “He released his debut album "Me Against Myself" in November 2004 in Britain…spawned two top 10 hit singles there, while also selling strongly in India.”
· "I have a heavy fan base in many countries including India. I'm in a minority culture but in many countries, there’s still Indians there and they all knew me," he said.
· The singer said it was no surprise to his parents when he switched from studying to singing……"They knew there might be a strong possibility I'd do music," he said
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· "They told me, 'The same way you apply yourself to your studies you have to work hard doing music.' That's always stayed with me."
Asian artists celebrated the AMAs like we do the Brits and Mobos?http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/mar/10/asian-music-awards
· “When the AMA’s started 10 years ago, the UK Asian Music awards could have ended up being just another niche event…. A decade later, and they've become a showcase for cutting-edge talent and a platform for artists such as Jay Sean and Rishi Rich.”
· “Many Asian artists in the US and in the Indian subcontinent see breaking the UK as a sign of success and critical credibility.”
· “It's ironic….that the US has been more open to British Asian talent than the UK. For example, Jay Sean, the most successful British Asian act of all-time, knocked the Black Eyed Peas off No 1 in America with his single Down in 2009. However, his success only came after he parted company with Virgin and set up his own label.”
· “Part of the reason why the mainstream music industry has been slow on the uptake is because of its lack of awareness about sales figures.”
· “Before YouTube and MySpace, albums by artists such as Apache Indian exchanged hands in Asian video stores and markets, and were promoted largely through word of mouth and the (growing) Asian media.”
· Bands including Asian Dub Foundation were critically acclaimed but never really gained mainstream traction.
· In an industry that deals in simple categorizations, British Asian music didn't fit snuggly into established genres, such as the one-size-fits-all world music category, as it is very much a British phenomenon from the streets of Southall and Leicester.
· While the AMAs has faced some of the criticism that the Mobos received about "ghettoising" Asian music, they have really served the purpose of drawing mainstream attention to underground genres, demonstrating that there is more to Asian music than Bollywood and Bhangra.
· R&B singer Mumzy Stranger, who has been nominated in the best male and best album categories, says:
"British Asian music is full of talent just like any other scene. It's taken such a long time because Asians have slowly become more diverse. The talent has always been there but the confidence and support has lacked."
"British Asian music is full of talent just like any other scene. It's taken such a long time because Asians have slowly become more diverse. The talent has always been there but the confidence and support has lacked."
· Also, while acts such as Jay Sean, with his brand of R&B have been accused of not being particularly representative of young British Asians' concerns, these accusations seem to come mainly from people who don't know what it's like to be young, British and Asian.
· Sean’s parents are Punjabi Sikh immigrants –
“our community had never, ever, had one of us doing R&B pop music,” he says but quickly spread.
“our community had never, ever, had one of us doing R&B pop music,” he says but quickly spread.
· Today, “I can touchdown in any country in the world and hear my song on the radio or see a poster or something. It blows my mind. It really does.”
· I imagine you had to fight certain stereotypes, being an Asian trying to make a career in R&B?
I think the stereotypes were, ‘You’re an Indian, why aren’t you singing in an Indian dialect?’ and ‘Why are you doing bhangra music, not Bollywood?
’ I always found that extremely ignorant. It’s not racist, it’s just… ignorant. If you were a Scottish rapper, how ignorant would I sound if I said, ‘Why don’t you put bagpipes in your songs?’ I guess as time went by I was judged less on the obvious things like my colour and my background and people just judged the product. Which is how it should be?
’ I always found that extremely ignorant. It’s not racist, it’s just… ignorant. If you were a Scottish rapper, how ignorant would I sound if I said, ‘Why don’t you put bagpipes in your songs?’ I guess as time went by I was judged less on the obvious things like my colour and my background and people just judged the product. Which is how it should be?
· Do you feel you’ve outgrown the ‘Asian musician’ label?
Absolutely. I’ve always said the only thing Asian about my music is me. And I’m proud of that. But when you have that tag – ‘British-Asian singer’ – it’s very hard to shake it. But it’s all good, man. Proving yourself is good.
Jay Sean and Taio Cruz took America by storm http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/01/jay-sean-taio-cruz-interview?INTCMP=SRCH
· “The reasons for that lack of success are easy to determine: America has long led the world in western black music – blues, rock'n'roll, soul, funk and R&B all emerged from the US, as did their greatest practitioners.”
· “The dominant global musical force of the last 20 years, hip-hop, emerged as a black American form, before mutating into different musical strains as it conquered the world”
· I don't think you can underestimate how difficult it is to break America in any genre if you're a British artist," says Mark Sutherland, global editor of Billboard,
· “Jay Sean and Taio Cruz, by any standards, have done something fairly remarkable by getting to No 1." says Mark Sutherland, global editor of Billboard,
· Many in the industry are wondering whether or not their success suggests there are more British urban acts capable of making a successful Atlantic crossing.
Closure of BBC Asian Network http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/21/bbc-asian-network-closure-bhangra-flashmob?INTCMP=SRCH
· "First to show that a lot of people are angry about the BBC's decision to close down the Asian Network, and secondly, that it directly affects the vitality of fusion Asian music created in the UK." said organizer Sunny Hundal
· “Hundal, the editor of political blog Liberal Conspiracy, said “the protest was the next stage in the campaign. "Asian Network reaches nearly a quarter of all British Asians every week and many of those listeners will be abandoned by this move," he added.”
BBC non-executive director Samir Shah last night re-opened the debate about the lack of top level managers from ethnic minorities in British TV,”
Despite 30 years of trying, the upper reaches of our industry, the positions of real creative power in British broadcasting, are still controlled by a .....largely liberal, white, middle class, cultural elite - and, until recently, largely male and largely Oxbridge
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Issues In Americanisation And Culture By Neil Campbell, Jude Davies, George McKay 2004
1. Europeans do in their consumption of America popular culture. Few for example enter a Kentucky Fried Chicken ... p (5)
2. ‘America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version’ “Baudrillad 1988 :76 p (5)
3. Hollywood, literature , the music industry and tv ...contribute to an “Americanisation” process at home that “translated” immigrants from many different narions into Americans p (8)
Coping With Two Cultures: British Asian and Indo-Canadian Adolescents By Paul Avtar Singh Ghuman 1993
1. “apart of folk wisdom in Britain and north America to claim that second generation Asian young people suffer from a so-called identity crisis” p13
2. Are they Indian, English, British Muslims or Asians” (13/ viii)
3. Before the Second World War the population of Asians living in Britain (Kondapi, 1949) was around 5,000 included 1,000 general medial practitioners (2)
4. Immigration to the UK increased dramatically after WW2, The 1948 Nationality Act gave commonwealth citizens the right to enter the UK without visas or work permits (2)
5. In Britain the position of the first generation is summarised succinctly by Rex & Tomlinson 1979 (20)
6. In British Columbia(Canada) there is a positive attitude towards muliculturalism whereas in England such initiatives have been reserved since the early 1980’s (Tomlinson 1991; Troyna 1990) (23)
7. Children of these immigrants are less sure of their personal and social identities.
They have been described by academics and others as a half-way generation (Taylor 1976)
a generation suffering from ‘culture clash’ ( Thompson, 1974)
or youngsters who have the best or worse of the two worlds (Ghuman, 1991)
from immigrants to ethnics (Rex and Thomlinson 1979) (22)
They have been described by academics and others as a half-way generation (Taylor 1976)
a generation suffering from ‘culture clash’ ( Thompson, 1974)
or youngsters who have the best or worse of the two worlds (Ghuman, 1991)
from immigrants to ethnics (Rex and Thomlinson 1979) (22)
From the margins to mainstream? Representations of British Asian youth musical cultural expression from bhangra to Asian underground music R Huq - Young, 2003 http://you.sagepub.com/content/11/1/29.short
1. Asian Americans represent one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the US. While in 1960 they represented less that 1% of the total US population.
· Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond By Anjali Gera Royhttp://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8O9tua3CjhMC&pg=PA262&lpg=PA262&dq=Bhangra+in+Newcastle:+Music,+ethnic+identity+and+the+role+of+local+knowledge&source=bl&ots=wsGnJNVifw&sig=uuKBJTJmoyIBzTFyxpArtVfAQ0c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VzSxUJXAIeW60QXDi4C4Aw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Bhangra%20in%20Newcastle%3A%20Music%2C%20ethnic%20identity%20and%20the%20role%20of%20local%20knowledge&f=false
2. Bhangras penetration of the national popular music market was an unprecedented feat facilitated by the music industry marketing machinery that challenged Hindi film musics monopoly and initiated the regionalization of the Indian music industy (123)
3. Alex Seago asks “whether or not the global presence of MTV in itself signifies the development of a uniform Americanized capitalist monoculture (2005:125) p 130
4. “birth of an Americanized global mtv generation were refuted by the indigenization of contemporary pop culture, citing India as one of the most obvious examples 130
5. Cultural gatekeepers 135
1. “Third world postmodernism is as diverse as Third World cultures themselves” p162
2. “traditional non-western music has become fair game for postmodern appropriation” p161
3. “While gangsta rappers sing of disposed ghetto dwellers, most of their fans and listeners....[are known as] wingers -> white niggers p141
· Ali Rattansi ; RACISM,a very short introduction
1. “british colonial authorities’ attempted racial classification of the Indian population.” P50
2. “Ashis Nandy’s brilliant exploration in ‘Intimate Enemy [1983], there was no single stereotype only contradictory ones that characterised European imperial discourses on Indians p49
3. “the recent historiography of India is now united around the argument that British colonial administrators in thie attempt to classify the Indian population for purposes of more efficient rule....[and] failed to understand the complexity and fluidity of indain caste division “ p51
4. “Arguments common in the 1980’s ...that the real racists are not indigenous whites but the black and Asian immigrants who insist on keeping ..their own ways of life while still wanting to claim full rights as British citizens and turning whites into ‘second class citizens’.” P 101
· Citizens of This Country: The Asian-British By Mary Stopes-Roe, Raymond Cochrane http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F7v7Y7DSpMsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=British+Asians&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X_qXUOXSD6ON0wW114GoDQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=British%20Asians&f=false
“expectation that settlers in Britain will cast off their original culture and adapt to British ways. The notion ‘hyphenated British’ has as yet not caught on (Watson 1977) page:9
Ballard & Ballard (1977) in their detailed and extensive work on Sikh communities made quite clear .....’culture conflict between “traditional” repressive parents and their freedom seeking “anglicised” children will exist
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