A Sound Is Born -- Seattle Taps Into `Bhangle,' A Mix Of Indian Music And Western Techno Beats

The Vogue may be famous as the club that, on Wednesdays, helped launch Nirvana. Now on Tuesdays, a non-mainstream night, it plays host to another emerging phenomenon. Instead of a group, this time it is a music: a set of sounds and trends that marry pop - and pop culture - from the West and the Indian subcontinent.

The music at the movement's heart is known in Europe as "bhangle." It consists of genres that originate in India and Pakistan, then are re-mixed with artificial beats, spiced with samples, and fused with British "jungle" (super-fast techno beats topped with rapping by black DJs). How it got from Lahore to The Vogue offers an electronic-era Magical Mystery Tour.

Officially known as "Beats From the East," The Vogue's club night is the brainchild of Damon Gayden, an eight-year employee of the establishment who loves "all kinds of music from all kinds of places." Gayden, who came to Seattle in 1967, had never worked as a club DJ before. But he knew these beats would fill a dance floor.

And how they do! Even if the crowd is small, the sounds are irresistible. They not only draw fans from the bar to the dance floor, but they turn heads outside on First Avenue. Many first-timers (the Tuesday session is 6 weeks old) venture into Gayden's DJ booth with questions. What is this blend of soaring vocals and snappy beats? Why does it mix Punjabi, Jamaican patois and samples from rap songs or "Murder She Wrote"? And how can it sound so up-to-date and appealing?

Good questions, ones that Gayden fields carefully.

An explanation starts with flyers for his night, which advertise "bhangra, qawwali, ghazal and hindi" beats. Those who haunt the DJ's side as he plays glimpse names like the following: Bally Sagoo, Achanak, Malkit Singh, the E-Legal DJs.

In a quiet cafe on a Wednesday morning, Gayden explains how he came to know the music. "My first interest in Indian music was classical," he says. "I knew qawwali as devotional songs of Sufi Muslims, bhangra as traditional Punjabi folk music, the ghazals as traditional Persian love songs."

A basis in movie magic

Much as he loves such classical sounds, Gayden also loves the music soundtracks from Indian cinema. In these lavish, glittering and highly Westernized films, actors merely lip-synch to the work of "playback singers," offscreen vocalists who are as famous as the thespians.

One day, combing through a pile of soundtrack tapes, Gayden discovered a cassette by a Canadian DJ. It bore a cartoon called "The Red Skull" on its cover. Says he, "That really stood out from the movie soundtracks. Plus, the guy's name was `Sunshine.' "

Turning it over to peruse its list of tracks, Gayden found titles like "The I'm Really Raving Mix" and "The Shake Your Bum Mix." Says he, "It was re-mixed bhangra - traditional Punjabi folk music - with a bit of movie soundtrack thrown in. But it was set to very fast techno beats."

A brave new beat

Gayden had stumbled into the musical world of "bhangle". And, with the help of Shezad Qureshi, a Seattle retailer, he set out to explore it. This world was one already known to Qureshi - who, as a student at the University of Washington, spent many a weekend driving to Vancouver.

While there, he and various pals would look for the hot new beats: tapes in which movie madness met pop evolution.

When he got his degree in business and finance, Qureshi's father made him a job offer. Space was opening up in the family's Pinehurst shop, The Souk, and Shezad could have it. Qureshi seized the offer, and opened Yaadgar Video Center. There he sells Arabic, Indian and Pakistani movies - plus a wide selection of music.

"My whole aim in opening," he says, "was to attract young customers. Bhangra beats (the pop mutation of Punjabi folk music) have been big for around five years. But, in Britain, they have been around for eight or more."

Instead of Canada, though, Britain got Qureshi's orders: "Up in Canada, there are no real distributors. From the UK, I can get whatever I want."

The British connection

Thousands of miles away, on a street once part of Jack the Ripper's London, Foyzal Islam sells the same tapes Qureshi orders. He works at Sangeeta Music Ltd., one in a mile filled with busy Asian businesses. (In Britain, "Asian" means only one thing: immigrants from either Pakistan or India.)

Islam, the picture of a young, urbane Londoner, has worked for Sangeeta six months, and he is perhaps his own best customer: "I love music! I have 600 tapes at home, 300 videos." Islam likes mix tapes, movie hits and Bally Sagoo.

Across the counters at both Sangeeta in London and Yaadgar in Seattle, Bally Sagoo is a very hot commodity.

Not only does Sagoo top charts in his own Punjabi; he is also expert when it comes to re-mixing, the 1990s art of retuning hit songs through aural deconstruction. Re-mixers reshape songs with beats and bites of sound. Juxtapositions and surprises are their aesthetic.

Hollywood to Bollywood

Remixes by Sagoo have inspired a new generation. On Christmas Day, 1994, Sangeeta got a mix tape entitled "Bollywood." It brought Indian music a new focus: fusing UK "jungle" (which cuts percussive beats and samples together so fast they trip over one another) to Hindi, Bengali and Jamaican trends. In a city where second-generation Indians and Pakastanis helped shape hip-hop, this was a logical - if surprising - development.

"Bollywood" was a crudely packaged local product; it was credited mysteriously to "Mr. Smith." But the tape kicked off a tidal wave of bhangle. Soon there were record-company versions of "Bollywood"; there was "100% Bollywood," "Bollywood Mix 2" and "Bollywood Classics." All of them served as cultural commentaries: marrying bites from CNN to bits from Hindi soundtracks and snips of reggae-flavored hip-hop.

The term "Bollywood" has long disparaged Hindustani cinema. But in this new context, it gains a real cachet. Now, it denotes not worlds colliding, but worlds fusing. Why? For years, Asian Britons have made hip-hop, techno and bhangra music. Now, with collaborators from other races, they fuse all three into a different music. It is a new sound which is selling like wildfire. But, more than anything else, this time it is theirs.

Global superstars

A clear bond between the Indian subcontinent and the black music it taps is the prominence of female vocalists.

Like groups such as Soul II Soul or Massive Attack, bhangle builds on female vocal talent. And much of it comes from north Indian cinema soundtracks.

Their female vocal style is stereotypical: sweet and plaintive - yet assertive. Many tunes are not only sung in the same style, but often by a single woman: Lata Mangeshkar. Mangeshkar can boast the most-recorded voice in the world.

Still, her fame pales next to that of the most global superstar: Ustad ("Teacher") Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat is the world's most famous qawwal, but he is also one of music's great experimentalists. In every sense, he deserves that honorific which precedes his name.

The form Nusrat mastered is six centuries old. Yet, he has presided over its continuous update - and successfully presented it to a secular audience.

Literally, the word qawwali means "utterance," and the music comprises songs in praise of Allah, in praise of the Prophet and of the Prophet's relatives. Highly distinguished qawwals are invited to sing at shrines.

As Shanen-Shah ("The Brightest Star"), Nusrat does this. But he also has songs re-mixed by artists from Massive Attack to Bally Sagoo. He records hits for star Peter Gabriel's label and will soon appear on a CD-ROM.

That project's producer, Karen Alexander, says Nusrat's art epitomizes "world music." "It's Sufi devotional music from way, way back," she says. "But his versions show its universality. The way he does it transcends many differences. Plus, it helps to establish all these emerging forms. Especially through the medium of film."

Nusrat's Friday performance at the Moore Theatre marks his first Seattle visit in two years. But Damon Gayden managed to see the last one. Says he, "It was unbelievable who he attracted. Traditional Muslims, Sufi Muslims, Sikhs and plain old music fans."

This breadth of religions demonstrates another special trait of Indian music forms. They can be adapted from religious to secular contexts - without an undue outcry.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn hits close to home, and his art brings to mind the dance floor at The Vogue. Whether it's a Microsoft mathematician from Pakistan, a Muslim cab driver or a Capitol Hill clubber, the patrons of "Beats From the East" are also modernists. Like Nusrat, they reflect more than a music's exuberance. They too use it to reach toward the rest of the world.

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NUSRAT TO PERFORM HERE ON FRIDAY

Flyers for Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn's Seattle appearance call him "the world's living legend" and a singer "who moves people of all races and religions."

In this instance, such words are not hyperbole. To music fans from far beyond his native Pakistan, the hefty Nusrat, who will appear at the Moore Theatre at 8 p.m. Friday, is a truly towering figure.

He was born Oct. 13, 1948, in Faisalabad (he now lives in Lahore). Music of the Indian subcontinent, whether sacred or secular, is a family vocation handed down through generations. And Nusrat is no exception: Both his father and uncles were famed musicians.

Nusrat trained with them from the age of 9. But after 1971, he really displayed his genius as he started to subtly transform his genre. The words he sings may tell of Sufis and the saints, but they now attract fans like Mick Jagger. In 1991, producer Michael Brook oversaw Nusrat's album "Mustt Mustt" on Peter Gabriel's Real World Records. It was a smash in the "world music" charts.

Its title track was re-mixed by Massive Attack, England's trendy, multi-racial sound system. Another set of re-mixes - called House of Shah - was commissioned from producer Mick St. Clair. Together with Bally Sagoo's re-mix of "Jewel", they consolidated Nusrat's global stardom.

Nusrat retains his command of the cutting edge. In 1993, he taught for six months at the University of Washington's School of Music, and was awarded an honorary doctorate. In two months, UNESCO plans to crown him Best Musician in the World. And his tunes now appear on Western film soundtracks, from "Bandit Queen" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" to "Natural Born Killers."

Nusrat is also part of a Peter Gabriel CD-ROM. But he continues to cherish live performance. Friday's stop is only one in a global tour, by that rarity: a star who overshadows his hype.

- Cynthia Rose.