mark one
water

0.00 - 1:05

Self reflexive introductory bars. The author introduces themself. Rap as a vernacular has had a root in the South Asian (SA) diasporic imagination since its inception. Hip-hop, like jazz, is a unique cultural production by a national minority that is accepted on its own terms for its own brilliance. African-American art calls the mainstream to the margin and represents a self-organised cultural system that does not always need to assimilate to mainstream white America. With a deep-rooted and meticulously executed cultural inferiority, it is no wonder why the SA diaspora have been enamored by the sheer exuberance and confidence of African-American cultural production, here symbolised by the story-teller, the narrator, the author - the rapper.

This intro mobilises rap tropes to explore the cousining of these communities. The frame for this discussion is made explicit in the style of rapping. Far from the 90 BPM boom-bap of the early 90s, this work is blatantly from London. The author mobilises influences from garage and early grime styles, both of which owe a debt to US rap but are aesthetically distinct, notably in the flow patterns. A vision of London plays subtly through the visual work as the frame for the first section.

This is a discussion about place, where the author is from. Since the dawn of rap, rappers have been rapping about where they are from with a prideful positioning of place. With deep ties to locality and history in specific locales that boasts key cultural figures, rap is so often about the relationship between community and its home spaces.

Envious SA migrants hear the hope of settlement, hear what it means to feel located, placed with a self-assured position in the local. So the author gives it a go, flowing with the feeling of the water, the Thames, the Indian Ocean, the Neukolln kanal are all liminal locations of selfhood. From London, living in Berlin, flowing with the feeling of the water. Meanwhile a wild and aged semi-naked wandering mystic is being revered in the visuals. In his own way he represents the liminal space between the material and immaterial.

The smooth flow self-reflexively praised points to another rap trope - the braggadocious bars. Another point of admiration for this form of expression comes for its brash best-ness. The author flexes the lyrical muscle, citing his own skill until invocation to Allah (another common theme in rap music) puts the individual ego back in check. This tussle with the ego is an everyday occurrence, here exaggerated into a song. Meanwhile the party rages on through the Qalandar and upward then to Allah; this is a religious rave.

The mode goes on to critique itself, commenting on the absurdity of the post-colonial language conundrum “this language I hate it, the colonisers tongue” before simplifying it for the sake of delivering a message “this language its the only one”. The statement about language is made ironic after the flash use of patchwork Arabic in the previous lines.  Everything patchwork though.

Finally the trope of overabundance is brought forward and dismantled from an environmental perspective. Material aspirations, particularly property, have been key concerns for much of the SA diaspora. This critique is sharp, quick and instantly turned back around on the author, placing him squarely within the group he is criticising. The baba is being showered with cash as people clamber to venerate the poor, placeless mendicant.

A kush claim closes out the section in the tradition of so many great rappers. At the end of the day, verse, diatribe, lecture, life, maybe the best thing to do when facing these wild and shifting personal poetic postcolonial dynamics is to inhale-exhale for a little. The line is a small fun pun because the Hindu Kush is a famous mountain range stretching across borders. At the end the author ascends to the clouds and vanishes like smoke into air.

mark two
melanogenesis

1:05 - 2:45

Science and its aesthetic counterpart technology produces rapid shifts in our understanding of mobility, categorical difference and violence. Immigration is the false start of the story but is useful in helping us investigate a displacement. The same tabla loop used in the first section is reversed in this one and forms the basis for a discussion about the process by which melanin is created. Using the scientific term offers the text an academic legitimacy especially coupled with its description - 800 nanometers thin. This is used to veil the polemics of migration as verses trade perspectives between the bemused reception of British nativists and the wary settlement of SA migrants. Visually we are reminded that mobility and globalization are only relevant to regular people because of the military industrial complex as footage from a British air show is juxtaposed with Pakistan international airways. The themes are woven together as we hear the recollection of violence and massacre told through the unforgetting female voice. In this we critically engage with the idea of the female body as the archive of authenticity, notice the saris and the smiles and the service on board the aircraft.

Hear also the difference in the two archive recordings. Our female voice recalls a nation's history and trauma with a fierce need to remember the foundation of this migratory tract. The male voice on the other hand is not concerned with remembering, because the cultural history of the nation is stored safely on the site of the female body. He, like the men on board the aircraft can safely 'modernise' to suit. He takes on the language (both semantic and stylistic) of the British nativist seeking the aged colonial aspiration of embodying the master in order to turn away from the emmasculation of subjugation. He guards the self-styled modern and she solidifies the cultural history. He moves 'modern' and she serves his movement as a symbol of the authenticity he cannot embody.

These entrenched gender roles were reproduced in the colonial periphery from the Victorian metropole and that movement is here played forward through time and backward through place. The reversed tabla loop plays on. 

mark three
in the bazaar

2:45 - 4:25

Doubling down on the relationship between folk traditions and the displaced diaspora this section centres the Sufi qawwal. While the sabri brothers are the purists pick for famous performers in this genre, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is the populist. His incursions into the burgeoning 'world music' genre and his mobilisation by white liberal music elites to find essentialised symbols of the Pakistani nation collided to give SA diaspora something to hold, a step into the mainstream. This mystic music is about the desperate distance from the creator and the search for divine intimacy. The qawwal but more broadly the path of the mystic is a constant kind of labour, a full-time vocation. Labour in the modern sense is tied irrevocably to oppression, economy and the stratification of society.

The visual text pits three types of labour upon each other. The background image pays homage to the aged Sufi saying 'polish the mirror of the heart'. The mechanised and industrial happening that rhythmically rhymes with the music is a non-human endeavour - the process of creating a modern mirror. The machine here is brought into congruence with, though clearly seconded to other forms of direct labour. With digital production now the apogee of alienation, suddenly the factory with its arcane processes takes on a sympathetic place in the divine order of labour.

The actual polishing is super-imposed upon that image with a video of a single man joyously mopping the mosque floor, sanctifying the moment in continuous motion. Aside this work is the art of glass-blowing, that contains the breathing-life-into gesture to bring forth a vessel transparent and clear. These two types of work, both utilising the primordial stick form, speak as forms of worship and ways of relating to the divine.

All of this labour happens for the market. The bazaar through which our qawwal guides us echoes through time the authors dizzying and dazed desperation to be close to the divine. Low in the mix, lost in the background and calling from the alleyways of the heart, the author is lost but not aimless. Continuing the self-referential Sufi poetic tradition the author reveals himself as 'le faux', the fake, the stage name in opposition to al-Haqq, the real and reality itself. This is the hint at the kind monoism present in some Sufi traditions that takes the Islamic assertion of Tawhid to its most radical and riveting conclusion.

Nonetheless the dichotomy between creator and created persists in this form sparking an emotional existentialism, a yearning that encompasses a passionate and zealous affection concurrent with an afflicted irredeemable sadness. While this dualism may not be the preferred theological outlook, it's emotive energy is irresistible.

All images lost to the kneeling attests to the power of prayer and as all images fall away on screen the video reminds us that this inter-generational, intra-cultural discussion between Muslim musicians is a form of prayer. The representational image is a faulty and flawed way of seeking the divine and the darkness of the screen for just a moment amongst the clattering of images points to the peace of the prayer mat and the violence of the video itself. Forgive le faux.

mark four
ilford lane

4:25 - 5:37

The psychogeographic tradition borne out of the 1950s radical Situationist thought and reanimated in the 90s and 00s contains many fascinating lines of enquiry. These lines are predominantly white, not an observation used to discredit but one used to delimit the influence and applicability of. The assertion underlying this micro-work is that the radical spirit of these movements can be well revived if psychogeography and postcolonialism were to find a common ground.

The most radical acts of urban exploration, documentation and discovery are done by those who are both insider and outsider. Those for whom home is a form of exile, the diasporas dotted around the city colouring their urban enclaves with the tones of their cultural displacement. We are the natural inheritors of Debord, Sinclair and Self (speaking only of the British tradition). We are the post-colonial psychogeographers.

The sole focus of the image is a short viral video documenting the fastest chicken shop man in Ilford. Windows upon windows of the video play behind each other hinting at the popularity of the video, the amount of times it's been watched by the author alone. Every other frame behind the main one is set in black and white to reference the physical comedy and drama of the performance that feels akin to the works of Chaplin and Keaton. The video venerates the slickness of the individual movements, paying homage to this performative work meant bringing out the ways in which it feels as much like dance as it does anything else, worthy to be set to music. Setting the video in reverse means untying it from the linear progression of labour that necessarily ends in a product. With the meal being dismantled in perfect poise, the work deconstructs itself and Bossman becomes the true artist.

Ilford Lane is an adjunct high street adjacent to a small mall in Ilford Town Centre. Replete with the wares of the SA diaspora, the street is home to some of my earliest memories, my grandfather's flat sits at its head. It felt only natural to start a post-colonial psychogeographic investigation here. Where the SA diaspora confidently flourishes is the production of self-sustaining economies that serve the needs of a local community. These are peppered across East London and are the hallmark spots for diasporic longing and belonging. Commerce turn to poetry.

The text work ends with a continuing repetitive motif that loses its semantic meaning as its sonic power is reiterated again and again. The work urges itself to be understood aesthetically as a treat for the senses and not the intellect. In this way the work becomes one amongst many of saris, mangoes, fried chicken wings, tablas, tires and all variety of groceries.

The sample looped for the music is taken from a Redbridge Museum documentary about Ilford Lane that fails to place itself in the community. A clip of the documentary leads into the music as a bemused resident wonders why he's being asked by a documentary filmmaker what his favourite shop on Ilford Lane is. He jokes that his favourite shop is 'that geezers over there' before making it clear that he just comes here to do his shopping. The documentary maker, so clearly an outsider, is living in the narrative of Ilford Lane being the exoticised bazaar, not a place of day-to-day life. Even if he could point to his favourite spot to get some paan with the homies, how would it help untangle the knot of history that brings people so tightly together. Only the post-colonial psychogeographers can see how to apprehend the city.

mark five
be you

5:37 - 7:28

Having started with a self-profession, a statement of selfhood the work ends with an outward looking lens. Clipping up Mufti Menk was a must. Menk is one of the most famous Islamic authorities around and stumbling on this clip of his conversation with an adorable wide-eyed brown child asking about music - oh - oh - oh it was too much. The Mufti goes on to make some generalised negative comment about music in Islam but the video cuts his response short because all information needed is in the question and every question is the perfect opening for a drop. In-drop the beat.

Ask any beat maker. Just Be You by the Chapparrals is a perfect sample. It was totally irresistible. It’s completely addictive. A perfect loop is something that can be played into eternity. A perfect loop is a stand-in for eternity. The process of looping itself is a reach toward the reproducibility of a single instant - in my eyes, it is a desperate call to the Divine. Anyway, the questioner asks “is music haram and if it is haram what it is the punishment for listening to music?” and Mufti Menk in his white robe asks “will you listen to what I have to say?” And then The Chapparrals say “just be you” and the author says

You don’t have to change,
You don’t have to change no
You contain many you can be any
You got every chance you can know the heart
You can light the spark, you can spark the light
you can be you

Behind (or in front of) the music is the definite and deliberate call to the dance. With this video of an extremely active practice of dhikr being the frame for a show of individual brilliance the message of the work is more overt than ever. Contained within the individual is the many and contained within the many is the individual. In the flux of this elemental balance is the ‘being you’, sometimes pulled by the many and sometimes by the one, sometimes by the self and sometimes by the other. Splayed out over the Divine loop, the soft parting, the validation of a voice confirming that its OK. The authors self-talk, soothing old wounds. Still also talking directly to the image, to the small child who wants to know what is and is not permissible. To the Mufti of authority who intercedes on the Divine will, made popular by the Divine masses of people, asking and asking and asking. Self-soothing and if it helps proving that you are enough then that’s enough for me.