DJ Rekha: turning 'cab driver music' into a viable business
The entrepreneur and immigrant is a woman in her 40s in a business that favors young men, but she shrugs it off: ‘Anything with power, guys are there first’
DJ Rekha’s Basement Bhangra, attracting a host of people of all ethnicities to what was disparaged as ‘cab driver music’. Photo: Nina Roberts
Published in the Guardian US on December 5, 2014
Inside the subterranean club Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan a crowd dances to bhangra music with a pounding bass line. Under a disco ball and whirling ceiling lights, DJ Rekha stands on an elevated stage behind her laptop mixing one track into the next. The rhythmic music is joyous, raucous and originates from the Punjab region spanning northern India and part of Pakistan. Bhangra is considered folk music, but since the 1980s it has often mixed with hip hop, electronica and sometimes elements of dancehall, reggae or rock.
Basement Bhangra is a bhangra dance party that’s been running for 17 years in New York City.
The creator of Basement Bhangra is also the DJ in the room. Sporting the ironic, loose-fitting outfit of a hip gym teacher, she is a woman in her 40s: Rekha Malhotra, a veteran of the New York music scene who turntables under the name DJ Rekha and has turned her immigrant upbringing into musical entrepreneurship, mixing the music of US hip-hop with bhangra music from the Indian region of Punjab. She is laid-back, with a seen-it-all-before expression.
The crowd of 20- and 30-year-olds of all ethnicities dance or socialize at the bar. Dashing men shimmy in the middle of the dance floor, clad in crisp blazers and tight jeans; some wear turbans. All smile widely as they kick and raise their arms skyward, bopping their shoulders up and down. Although they dance around like laughing schoolgirls, somehow the testosterone oozes. A visitor from Florida wearing an oversized T-shirt holds a plastic cup of beer and looks on in awe.
“In the US it’s a little weird to see a group of men dancing together,” says a man originally from the Punjab region of India who sports a blue turban, “but we love to dance!” Leaning against the bar he mentions that he’s been attending the Basement Bhangra party since 2007, periodically crying out, “This is my mother tongue!” to a song’s lyrics and finally pardons himself to dance.
DJ Rekha, at the center of all this, is doing more than mixing the music. She’s also an entrepreneur, and one who has managed to take hold for 17 years in the ageist, sexist, trend-driven music industry. In addition to DJing, she produces, programs, consults, and teaches. Her company, Sangament Media, has had up to three full-time employees at its height, and down to an assortment of part-time assistants in slower times. Her last office job was in 2000.
Basement Bhangra started with many of her new activist friends she met as a result of getting politically active around the hate crimes committed against South Asians at that time in nearby Jersey City. Within a year she was programming sets for Central Park’s prestigious SummerStage concert series, and later brought South Asian UK artists such as Panjabi MC, Tigerstyle and MIA to the US.
The contrast between the mostly male crowd and the female DJ is difficult to overlook, but DJ Rekha shrugs it off, noting all fields are male dominated. “Anything with power,” she clarifies, “guys are there first.”
She believes more females DJs need to be booked, but she can tell it’s no longer strange to be a female DJ: she doesn’t get asked now, as she once did, where her boyfriend is.
DJ Rekha was born in London to Indian parents; she moved to New York City as a child with her family. She’s Punjabi and grew up with both Hindu and Sikh traditions. Without her particular background – Punjabi heritage coupled with hip hop infused American teen years – she’d most likely not have her bhangra niche, which is a near monopoly. But when asked if she feels lucky to be an immigrant and of two cultures, she makes a disgusted “ugh” noise.
“One can paint a very romantic idea of biculturalism, but you know, it’s a challenge, it’s hard,” she says in her small, chaotic office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that appears to double as a storage space. “You are an outsider,” she states as she putters around, pulling out her most treasured bhangra vinyl. She wears a “Brooklyn” sweatshirt and a long chain with a sparkly “R” dangling at the end.
She also experienced racism as an immigrant. Despite growing up in the racially diverse neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, she was called a “smelly Hindu” by classmates. She remembers her dad getting egged one Halloween when he walked home from the train station.
By age 13 she was regularly scrutinizing the music industry magazine Billboard while listening to an eclectic mix of music from Beatles to Prince, to Bollywood soundtracks, but didn’t DJ until she was a student at Queens College.
Obsessed with hip hop, technology and observing kids around her putting together DJ crews, she formed one with her two younger cousins. They created an official company called Sangament Entertainment Group, complete with business cards. She even consulted an accountant about filing taxes. He turned out to be a “condescending asshole”, according to DJ Rekha, because he didn’t take her seriously and then sent her a bill anyway.
The nature of being an immigrant to the US is evident to her in a social business like music. She points out that native-born Americans often have social and work networks that are not easily accessible to immigrants, although most immigrants create their own.
When she started DJing at Basement Bhangra in 1997, she and her new partner DJ Joy had been instructed by Indian-American promoters to “keep it safe” and not to play too much Punjabi music. Punjabi music, it seems, had a downmarket reputation. “Because within the community,” explains DJ Rekha, “it’s too rough, it’s too cab driver.” In India and its diaspora, Punjabis suffer a stereotype that portrays them as loud and flashy.
The promoters’ requests struck a deep nerve within DJ Rekha, and instead of acquiescing to their desires to shove the Punjabi music aside, she pushed back.
“Luckily, I had the freedom to do what I wanted and really go in hard on the Bhangra in a way that hadn’t been done,” she says. It served her well; her career skyrocketed. She says the success of a DJ relies on building a regular audience, which is a different skill than just being an excellent DJ.
The Basement Bhangra crowd has thinned over the years, which she attributes to changing music tastes, attention spans and entertainment options. She’s also found Manhattan to be “douchier”; for some partygoers it’s about getting expensive bottle service and showing off status rather than dancing. One of these specimens wondered into Basement Bhangra the other night, quickly sized up the crowd, which he found to be “unrefined”, said the bhangra scene in London was better, and made a quick exit to Lavo, a glitzy midtown club with bottle service.
DJ Rekha says she doesn’t serve the snobs. “I’ve always made the party cheap and accessible,” she says. The $15 entrance fee is waved for early birds, which might keep some partygoers returning, but DJ Rekha attributes her longevity and success to her DJ sets’ accessibility. She rarely meets people who don’t like Bhangra. “It’s good music,” says DJ Rekha. “I’ll stand by that.”