DesiArt, Inc?

After listening to the Himalayan Project CDs that A lent to me last week, I've been thinking about how few progressive desi music projects I know of that are based in the US. Finding ADF from the UK was a revelation for me a few years ago. Their political voice, ferocity, and commitment to grassroots organizing and empowerment were immediately inspirational. But what about here? Don't we have enough of a history in the United States to begin to see musical work that incorporates and embraces those histories?

I hear some of that in Vijay Iyer's piano and jazz arrangements, but no matter how accessible it may seem or become, it's still not a popular music format, and very few people can hear the message without the words. So what about other music projects? Have I just been out of the loop, or are there very few of them around? I mean, of course people point to Freddie Mercury (British, anyway, and though brilliant, he was mainstream with Queen), Kim Thayil of Soundgarden (who has even heard him speak about anything), Tony Kanal of No Doubt (oh yeah! you're saying to yourself... he is brown), and that brown guy in Sum 41 who gets the least screen time, isn't mentioned in many interviews with the band, but I think is the shredding Maiden-head who gives them their edge, and we can't forget Sonya Mandan of Echobelly (British again, but righteous).

I know that there's music out there, especially in the world of underground and local hip-hop - as this article testifies, but it's so hard to find and to connect to. Is it that the music is so far on the periphery, or that I'm so removed from this scene?

Even the writing scene has been a disappointment. How many pieces are out there that talk about a return to South Asia, or arranged marriages - how many novels break that mold and actually reflect some of the experiences that we can actually identify with? And the spoken-word circuit is almost completely bereft of strong Desi voices who have skills, spit consciousness, and represent real community issues. That's why we have to really support folks who are trying to do this - from D'Lo to the HP brothers. And why we have to take to the clubs, the dancehalls, and the lyricist lounges to find the next voices of this crazy generation.

I'm tired of getting crappy Asian Avenue Plugged In CDs and wondering where the South Asian voice is. I'm tired of Asian American music and spoken word events that have either no, or worse, that bad self-exoticizing kind of desi artist on the playlist. I would rather they don't appear at all than appear and put another piece about arranged marriage or terrible food metaphors out to represent some twisted worldview as a self- or other-appointed ambassador of desi culture. You can't help it if others label or try to squeeze you into a box, but you most definitely don't have to embrace and perpetuate that perception that you're a voice of a people.

High-end desi art, especially in the world of English-language literature, continues to celebrate a "Renaissance" of sorts, in which Booker and Pulitzer and Nobel seem almost pedestrian prizes for members of the global diaspora. But whose stories are they telling? And if it's art for art's sake - who are they really entertaining? And in setting the mold and the expectations of what stories from brown writers should be like, aren't we backing ourselves, and more troubling - future writers, into a tiny little room from which to write? How can the artist depict different views of the world around her, if she's got the same window to look out from as all her peers and antecedents?

All that said, I think that the stage, with plays and theater, are probably further ahead than any of the other creative art forms, at least in NYC. I have seen a number of performances and short plays that feel more with it - especially stuff that DesiPina Productions has been doing. More power to them. Documentary film-making has also been strong, and getting stronger. But the creative side still feels lacking.

However, the aggressive marketing of cultural products has co-opted most attempts at community arts movement. There's so much space for that kind of work to grow, especially in South Asian communities. Where's our Kearny Street Workshop? Is the Basement Workshop's model - something that we spoke of with reverence, if not complete understanding in the 1990s arts community of NYC - outdated and impossible in the corporate, professionalized community-work environment?

So do yourself and the community a favor - support local art that brings forth local and community voices. It may not be polished, but if it's honest, it will have something that no MFA program is going to teach you: it will begin to give us our anthems to sing as the struggle continues.