| You've
got your own style of mixing India, Desi
tunes with western beats, what are your
mucial influences? |
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We're
coming from a folk background, with the tradititional
upbringing of a Sikh family. Our roots are Indian,
Punjabi folk music. People like Kuldip Manak and Surinder
Shinda, basically Punjabi music from the late 70s
early 80s. And of course the usual stuff like Bollywood
stuff, but only because it's somehow part of your
life and our Indian culture.
On the western
side it's Rap, HipHop, RnB and DrumNBass,
We're more towards conscious music like
Dr Dre and Ice Cube and how they are talking
about they experiences as Afro-Americans
and how they can deal with their community
and society on a political level. But
actually we're influences from wherever
and whatever is happening at the time.
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| Don't
you have a classical background? |
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It's not really
a classical background, but more a folk
background. Indian classical music goes
all over India, whereas folk from whatever
state you're from. So we take the majority
of our influences from Punjab, Punjabi culture,
Punjabi language and music.
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| Is there a certain "political"
message you wanna get across?
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Actually
we have only done one political track and that was
on our first album. We raised a certain issue that
haven't been raised before in any music that has come
out from India. A lot of information on the Punjab
crisis has been controlled by the Indian media. Indian
authorities and government have no control over Bhangra
music in the UK. A lot of the feeling of the Sikh
community outside of India has always been and will
be negative towards Indian government. But that's
the only political track we've done.
We're working
on some other "political" projects
with other artists, but there won't be
a commercial release.
The tracks
about are not so much "political
tracks", but more to bring Sikh modern
history, more contemporary History. The
Sikh youth get taught Sikh history from
centuries ago, but they never get taught
about recent history, stuff they can relate
to. We want to bring that to them, so
that they can make up their own mind about
certain situations as a lot of stuff that
came out of India was all propaganda.
But right
now is not so much about politics, it's
more about the integration of our music
and culture in modern society. It's more
like a youth movement. Mainstream media
has it's own stereotypes of Asians and
it has it's own way of looking at Asians.
Because of certain situations in Afghanistan
and the Middle East issues like racism
crop up again. So until we actually get
rid of the ignorance in the mass education
of the mainstream society we're not gonna
progress, and that's what we're leading.
We're leading a progression from just
being a suppressed society that got it's
own underground culture to become truly
a part of the culture of whatever country
we're living in.
Germany seems
to be leading the way. Punjabi MC's "Mundian
to back ke" track has broken a lot
of barriers. It came out in Germany first.
And even now - just look at the Snap track
"The Power of Bhangra". To most
people that might seem weird, cuz the
UK is the home of Bhangra, but still these
tracks get released somewhere else before.
It's basically because Germany is used
to get music that is not in English language,
so they are a lot more accepting of the
languages and cultures whereas in the
UK it's like "if you can't speak
English, we don't wanna hear you".
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How do you position yourself?
Are you
a British, a Punjabi, a Scottish band? |
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It's best
to stay without definition, cuz when you're
being defined your're pigeon holed and people
expect certain things from you. We'd rather
be not defined and let our music do the
talking. Whatever you think our music is,
that's what it is.
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Why do you call yourself "Tigerstyle"?
Where does the name come from?
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Just look
at Sikh history, Sikh heritage. We come
from a martial, a warrior clan and Sikh
warriors have they own martial art, they
have Gatka. If you look at Kung Fu, Shaolin
Kung Fu, they have their different styles
based on animals or nature. One of those
styles is called Tigerstyle. And only
because the name Singh means lion, you
can associate that with us, so it makes
sense to call us Tigerstyle.
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Many US and UK artists are currently working
with Indian/Desi artists. Shabba Ranks
is collaborating with MC Thanebad from
New Jersey and rumours say that you are
also involved somehow. Is that true ? |
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We haven't
been approached by any of them, but there
are a lot of rumours about a lot of artists
these days just to get your attention. The
only project we've got going on now for
sure are the 50 Cent Remix "In Da Club",
a remix for an artists on G-Records called
Lamia, which is gonna be an album track,
and a remix for Lisa Mafia.
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Talking about your album. When will it
be released ? |
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It should
be released end of this year, early next
year. We actually split of with the label
we were working with cuz they weren't
promoting us as they should have.
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| Finally, what kind of music are you personally
listening to ? |
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Well, techno,
blues, basically everything. Nothing specific,
as long as it's banging. But all I'm saying is
"50 Cent" is just
the biggest thing right now!!
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