Queen of Bhangra Hits Austin on Tour

By Sara Haji 5 October 2008 629 views 3 Comments

In the dim Stubb’s lighting, DJ Rekha’s scowl is barely perceptible.

“I can’t believe they’re letting people in when there’s no music playing. This would never happen in New York,” she says.

Queen of the North American bhangra circuit, Rekha Malhotra has been popularizing the uniquely Punjabi music by mixing it with her favorite hip-hop and introducing it to dance-starved New Yorkers. She was in Austin the weekend of Sept. 20 promoting her new album, DJ Rekha Presents Basement Bhangra.

“My music isn’t that calculated,” Rekha says. “I’m Punjabi, so I was familiarized with bhangra early. Then there’s my love of hip-hop, and as long as I find an audience that likes my music, I keep making it.”

In a society that conflates everything South Asian, Rekha says her job is “to be a New Yorker”—that nebulous people microcosmic of America’s cultural landscape—and to “show people that everything South Asian isn’t the same and everything Indian isn’t the same.” She starts with a blank canvas every night, assessing her audience before she begins splattering paint here and there, layering and mixing and masterfully creating.

“I can’t even predict who will come to my shows,” Rekha says. “There was once an African-American woman in her 60s, all frail and hardly able to walk, and she came to see me. Then there was some couple from Berkeley that drove up just for my show.”

Saturday night unfolded slowly, DJ Rekha fusing rock with an underlying bhangra beat. Her predominantly South-Asian audience trickled in, a little hesitant around the foreign sounds. Then M.I.A. started floating through the room, the bhangra beat still a constant, pulsating reminder of the DJ’s ostensible message: no matter what goes on top, the Punjabi sounds remain steady. And so it went throughout the night, with clips of President Bush and social commentary occasionally weaving their way through 50 Cent and Om Shanti Om.

Rekha DJed the after-show for The Dark Star Orchestra, tribute band to the Grateful Dead. She was unaffected by the seeming disparity in the genres of music, saying, “very few people only like one kind of music.”

“The reality of my DJ mind is that I’m really eclectic,” she says, referring to her experience dabbling in musicals and playing for NPR ¹. “I’m not positioning myself as the ‘other,’ I’m integrating things people are already familiar with and throwing in something new.” She carries that over into her non-musical influence, as well; Rekha serves on the board of human rights organization Breakthrough, whose goal she says is, “to raise awareness about discrimination toward Arab and South Asian youth.”

As Rekha switched between South Asian music and English hip-hop, dancers looked across the floor, imitating cultural mores through the linking of multiple dance circles. And again, in the dim light, DJ Rekha’s face was barely perceptible—but this time, a small smile reflected off the turntables in front of her.

Footnotes:

¹ http://www.djrekha.com/press.html.

Photo Courtesy: Araceli Jaime