FUSION music perhaps played one of the biggest parts in shaping British Asian culture and one of the early pioneers was Najma Akhtar.
Blending south Asian music rooted in centuries of rich culture with modern western contemporary sounds and performing on the biggest global stages enabled the path-breaking singer to inspire a generation to follow in her giant footsteps. She opened doors into the western mainstream for other artists, but also laid the foundation for exciting new genres and helped bridge a significant cultural divide.
The popular singer is still delighting audiences on the live scene and delivering music like her captivating Five Rivers album that continues to cross new creative horizons.
The cover of her album 'Five Rivers'
That strong body of work recently resulted in her receiving an Eastern Eye ACTA award for music. The iconic star discussed her history-making journey, ahead of a hotly anticipated central London show at Crazy Coqs in Brasserie Zédel on June 21. She also spoke about music, singing, her forthcoming show, fabulous Five Rivers project and inspirations.
How do you reflect on and describe your music journey?
My journey has been one of discovery, opportunity, refection and joy. I’m always truly thankful to the support I received from my family, Mohammed Ayyub of OSA, Iain Scott and Bunt Stafford-Clark of Triple Earth, Womad, classic press and magazines. Also, all the southeast Asian artists for helping, giving opportunities, encouraging, and teaching me the ways of music. There are so many names that I would need a separate page to list them all. That is one of my main reflections, as it all went hand in hand.
What keeps your passion for singing alive after all these years?
No matter what artistic talent one has, once an art is embedded in the psyche of your body, heart and mind, it’s there forever and never really leaves. So, my love to explore new collaborations and create new challenging and diverse music that goes beyond the norm keeps me going too.
When you first started, did you imagine being such a path-breaking artist, who would open so many doors for others?
In reflection and looking back now, I can see the results of the long-term influence I have had on British-based, southeast Asian artists.
Honestly, at the time, being caught up in the hard work and adrenaline, I couldn’t see that I was actually making such huge waves, breaking both musical and cultural barriers. I had no idea that what I did musically at that time would mushroom into such a legacy, catapulting me into ‘iconic’ status.
How do you feel about the fact that so many artists have been inspired by you?
It’s extremely humbling to know that artists have taken inspiration from my music, style, performance, instrumentation, and experiences. Sharing my music lights me up, and make me happy.
Which of your many songs holds the closest place to your heart?
That’s a tough one. Each song has a special story behind its conception. I keep thinking that one day I will talk about them individually on my YouTube channel. Inshallah, I will definitely share my full story on YouTube at some point (or even a book). So, watch out for it.
How much do you love live performance?
Live performances are like magic dust for all artists. Even though rehearsed, I love the fact that at any given time, arrangements within a fixed parameter may change on stage. This high musicianship and understanding between musicians allows a great degree of impromptu and spontaneous creativity and improvisation. The critical part of any final performances are always the sound checks and I am always in stress mode for that.
Najma Akhtar performing live
Tell us about that.
What we, as musicians, hear on stage is not what audience hears. So, getting the right balance of all instruments and voice is always delicate. And there is never enough time before the doors open.
What has been your most memorable live performance?
There are just so many of memorable performances. Have you heard of (music legends) Nina Simone, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and Jah Wobble to name a few? Yup, I have performed with them. Plus, my own solo/band performances. Performing all over the world at classic music festivals, even before the name of WOMAD was common place, one of which was Glastonbury Music Festival with WOMAD.
You have had a formidable live career. Which others would you say have been memorable?
The Paleo Music Festival Switzerland, Japan tours, Ronnie Scott’s, gosh so many. All mentioned on my website (www.najmaakhtar. com). Remember, this was all before the age of internet and social media. I know many of our southeast Asian artists and public in general are totally unaware of what I actually achieved and where I went at that time. Great times though.
Tell us about your Five Rivers project.
Five Rivers is a confluence of musical, poetic, and linguistic traditions of the east and west, absorbing musical traditions of West Africa, Mississippi Delta, western folk traditions, ghazal, rock music, jazz, and psychedelia. Over the years, it has become a transformative journey where the rivers of various collaborations have profoundly influenced me. The idea didn’t really go anywhere until I came across two western songs that struck a deep chord with me.
Which were the songs?
It was a Celtic folk song titled, Black Is The Colour Of My True Loves Hair and blues track Death Don’t Have No Mercy. Chalk and cheese in terms of lyrical meaning but both equally haunting. One full of deep romantic unrequited love and the other full of the melancholy of death.
To me both were ghazals but in the English language. When I put my voice to them, I was hooked by the idea of exploring synergies that exist between the ancient traditional poetic art form of the south east Asian romantic ghazal ballads and western traditions of songs.
So what happened next?
So, using other selected covers written by great western songwriters such as Donovan, Tim Harding, Rev Gary Davis and the mystical love poetry of WB Yates allowed me to compare the many shared reference points between the ancient tradition of ghazal (romantic Urdu poetry) and western tradition of lyrical poetry, both beautifully addressing the issues of unrequited loss, tragedy and disillusionment. The voice that tells a story.
Akhtar with the Eastern Eye ACTA for music.
What can we expect from your forthcoming show?
This is where it becomes interesting for people that are open to diversity in music. There will be sounds of Asia, alongside Delta blues, Celtic and rock styles. My June 21 concert in central London will be bilingual, combining Urdu ghazal with Sufi-spiritual, Punjabi classics of course, with English poetry, expressed through contemporary western songs. It also includes some western covers from Five Rivers. I have a great band accompanying me and the venue is very chic.
How do you generate so much emotion in your voice?
Wow! That’s a very humbling question. Such sentiments fulfil me as an artist, making the ups, downs and hard work of music all worthwhile. My voice helps me to find balance, energising me both spiritually and mentally, while feeling grounded. All I can say is that it is a blessing from God and the listeners, who voice their appreciation.
What kind of music dominates your own personal playlist?
I love music in all forms, crossing from the east to west. Contemporary, classical, traditional, spiritual, religious, folk, world, blues, jazz. The list is endless. I also have great admiration for rappers. That is quite surprising about rappers.
Can you tell us about that?
Unlike a ghazal or typical standard-length songs, a rapper’s lyrics are just pages and pages of words that are political, debatable, and controversial, and are all totally memorised for a performance. For me, when subtitled, I get to read and appreciate the depth of their expression and art.
Today, what inspires you?
Inspirations comes from many things. It could be from something initially small and insignificant that lurks in the back of your mind for years or something current and larger than life. Or something that immediately resonates with you. The hard thing to do is for it to materialise in real time to the spec you envisage and even harder, to then deliver it to the mainstream.
What can we expect next from you?
The continuous growth of my Five Rivers project, which means, exploring more musical genres with ghazal and finding the synergies and dissimilarities too. I have some tricks up my sleeves.
Why do you love music?
That’s simple, music is ‘rooh ki ghazza’. A combination of music, arrangement, vibrations and lyrics that seek out the spiritual aspect by touching the heart and moving the soul.
Artists of all genres put their heart, energy and soul into whatever they create. So, if one can find and feel the vibrations of this energy and appreciate it, then there is nothing like it.
www.najmaakhtar.com
Ram Murali
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A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5