INTERVIEW
The HomeBeats soundtrack: an interview with Asian Dub Foundation
1 December 1997
IRR talked to John Pandit and Dr. Das of Asian Dub Foundation about the soundtrack they created for the HomeBeats: Struggles for Racial Justice CDROM.
IRR: How did you get involved in this project?
John Pandit: We all came out of an organisation called Community Music and, amongst us, we've all been involved in education work. Asian Dub Foundation was first formed in the East End when Quddus Ali was attacked by the BNP in 1993. It actually continued the workshop that we were doing which was about young Asians getting into the music industry, learning to perform, learning the experience of performance and articulating what they want to say. In those days, just a few years ago, that kind of thing wasn't seen and it wasn't done. Over the years we've worked on anti-racist work, with the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism, with the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), and they've been an important resource for activists of our generation to know something about the history of the struggle - a commentary and an analysis of the racism and issues around racism that has happened; an analysis of the struggles that people have done and that has been so important for us. Even if you look at this cd-rom which is supposed to be for 13 and 16 years old - we're finding out things here which we were never taught in school and this is why I think it's absolutely vital for young people to actually have access to this. And I think it's been produced in such a way that it's really easy for young people to tap in and learn something quite simply, at their own pace without having to feel that they're starting a textbook. They can just go in and find what they're interested in and follow their own routes.
IRR: Tell us a little about the music and the soundtrack?
Dr Das: The music was basically a lot of sounds that we were working on anyway. And the sounds that you hear are the equivalent of what would develop into fully blown three minute songs but, rather than doing that, we just made very small loops or thirty second things that related to those particular sections of the cd-rom. We had to work really hard to make something that was very appropriate, catchy and simple in a very small space of time.
IRR: Does the music reflect the global feel of the cd-rom?
Dr Das: We think so. You had specific briefs like America or Asia or Britain so we created sounds that we hoped would reflect that. But there's also a very technology-based bias to the sound of the whole thing and that's in keeping with the nature of the cd-rom itself. Our sort of entry point into the project really was that we'd used the IRR as a resource ourselves over several years. We'd read the magazine. We'd come to the library to research things like the Amritsar Massacre, which was one of our songs. We'd even contributed articles. So it's basically an extension of all of that.
IRR: So has all the music on the cd-rom been specially commissioned? Will you be releasing any of it separately?
John Pandit: Yes. It won't come out in a such a form. A lot of the initial work, a lot of the sounds that you hear, came out of workshops in the first place that we did with young people. It's not like we just want to release a record out of this. We want to see our music being used in different formats and in different areas. Asian Dub Foundation isn't just about making records. The most important element of what we can do is educate, inspire and teach people who want to get into the idea of music, of music performance, the methodology that you can use, a blueprint as it were. We might not have all the answers but it's a start. It's our aim to develop up the next generation of young musicians who don't get access into the mainstream. There's so much talent there.
IRR: How would you like to see the cd-rom being used?
Dr Das: We think the quiz section should be made into a TV show.
John Pandit: We'd like everyone to buy the cd-rom. It should be seen as something that's not just dry and academic for schools, for example. It should be something that people have in their home, for their kids.
IRR: Do you think having ADF on the soundtrack makes it more accessible?
John Pandit: I hope so.
Dr Das: I think it's really accessible anyway and I hope we in ourselves make music that is accessible. So it's very natural to put the two together. The whole thing is very funky, even without the music - the graphics, just how you can jump from one place to another.
John Pandit: I'd never used a cd-rom before and as soon as I got on it, I was just tapping through the pages.
IRR: Did you find it different producing music for a cd-rom compared to other formats?
Dr Das: Only in that you've got to be very succinct and to the point.
John Pandit: And it's got to be simple. It's got to not take away from the message that you're seeing visually. It's got to be something that enhances that but doesn't take away from it.
Dr Das: You're not getting involved in spending three hours creating some high-hat pattern. You don't want to draw attention away from what's being said there. You want to work with it. The cd-rom has really inspired us to the extent that we would like to make some music which has more spoken word on it, which we've done in the past. We want to get other people in like Sivanandan so you might take those ideas right out into a different arena like into a club or into a gig situation. People listen to the words because they're listening to some hopefully very funky music. So that's another extension of this cd-rom.
Thanks to Pamela Gupta and Brit School students for doing this interview. The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: the opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.
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