Producing Bhangra: Music, Culture and Technology - Mediating Culture in Music Production

Lightman's ethnographic research examines the evolution of the South Asian diaspora-based bhangra music brought to the UK and its ultimate hybridization and adaptation by diverse cultures seeking new identities and new commercial avenues. The focus of the research is based on Lightman's experience as a bhangra record producer in the early 1990s; his encounter with the negotiation and translation of musical form and cultural expectations, and the mediation between South Asian and Western sensibilities. Bhangra, originally a celebratory harvest music that accompanied dance, provided the secular space for the translation of ethnic music into a new diverse British music incorporating influences from rock, pop, reggae, soca, Bollywood and the technological advances made in synthesizer technology driven by Western popular mainstream genres and musicians. A majority of the initial mediation and subsequent research relating to this thesis, took place in recording studios. The subtexts of culturally grounded expectation and technological prowess, created unspoken power struggles between the stakeholders in opposition to the express intent to collaborate and produce a creative and commercially successful product. The outcome is a discourse of multicultural mediation which is herein evidenced and interrogated.