Putting her spin on South Asian musical invasion

BRIGHTON -- Fueled by a cup of hot chai, Komal Trivedi is blasting out bhangra beats from a claustrophobic basement radio studio at Boston College. The disc jockey likes her music loud, so loud that the bass booming from the two large speakers above her head sounds as if it could burst her eardrums at any moment.

The 31-year-old Brighton resident swivels her petite frame up to the microphone just after 7 a.m., and in a thick Cockney English accent announces: "Yeah, that's right -- you heard it, no excuses. Get up! Get up and out of bed! I've already been awake for a couple of hours, ya know."

Then with a giggle she continues: "Good morning! Welcome! You're listening to 'Bricklane Beats' right here on WZBC, 90.3. My name is Komal, bringing yeeeeeewwww the best of the global South Asian music scene for the next couple of hours. Got any shout-outs, requests, what 'ave ya, do gimme a call, would love to hear from you."

The music Trivedi features on her Thursday morning show is an infectious mix of modern dance beats, and experimental electronic sounds and classical Indian rhythms. Until now, South Asian music in Boston had "been confined to the AM radio international music ghetto," says DJ Brother Cleve, a local musician, producer, Bollywood music fan, and mentor to Trivedi. "Her show is really one of the first local FM shows to feature a wide variety of what's available and what's happening."

Trivedi's broadcasts are helping expand the audience for South Asian -- predominantly Indian -- music in the area. Perhaps more significantly, she and her fellow Desis are also looking at the prospect of exponential growth through the Internet. "Desi," which means "motherland" in many South Asian languages, refers to people of the region and their diaspora.

One fast-growing website is San Francisco-based desihits.com, whose CEO, Anjula Acharia-Bath, is convinced that South Asian music is about to explode into the cultural mainstream, in the same way that Latin music did a few years ago.

"Everyone's looking for the next big thing," she says, "and lots of people think that Desi culture is the next big thing."

Like Acharia-Bath, Trivedi is a British expat with roots in India. She grew up in a large Asian immigrant community in London's East End, just around the corner from Brick Lane. The music she plays is reminiscent of the sounds she heard spilling out from the balti houses, grocery stores, and bookshops lining the long narrow street.

The first hour of the show is devoted to bhangra. Bhangra was originally a traditional form of music and dance from the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Nowadays, the term is also used to describe the fusion of elements of Punjabi music, such as the dhol drum and the tabla, with Western dance music including disco, hip-hop, and reggae.

By 8 a.m., Trivedi is switching things up. The voice of the legendary Indian cinema vocalist Asha Bhosle cuts across the airwaves, and the next half-hour is pure Bollywood funk.

Trivedi has her father to thank for sharing his love of Hindi film scores with her, along with his precious music collection. "I brought his old tapes back and play the tapes on the show when I reach the classics," she says proudly.

Trivedi also enjoys showcasing the work of her contemporaries, including Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney, who pioneered Asian Underground. The British Asian artists helped create the genre by spicing up classical South Asian beats with modern dance music, heavy on electronics.

Asian Underground burst into the British mainstream in the 1990s, but Trivedi says that when she moved to the Boston area three years ago, this type of music was difficult to find, especially on the radio.

Trivedi was eager to fill the void, so a colleague at WGBH, where Trivedi is an executive assistant, suggested that she approach the Boston College station, where the colleague worked as a DJ in his spare time. The colleague showed Trivedi the ropes at WZBC, and just over a year ago "Bricklane Beats" was born.

Another local advocate for South Asian music with ties to India is Nikhil Rajpal, a.k.a. "One Signata Nach," who was born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., and attended Boston University. His socially conscious South Asian hip-hop fusions are often heard on "Bricklane Beats," but the 26-year-old rapper regrets that "the Boston audience for South Asian hip-hop is not very large at all."

Like many of his peers, Rajpal shares his music with a global audience online and gives it away for free on his website, onesignatanach.com. "People are connecting so much on the Internet and people who live in Boston can even be a part of it," he says.

Acharia-Bath has a similar enthusiasm about the Net and what it could mean for the future of South Asian music. She cofounded Desi Hits!, a digital media entertainment company, and she and her colleagues launched desihits.com in January.

The site showcases Bollywood and bhangra shows, streaming videos, blogs -- all with a distinctly Western perspective. The website also has a link where people can buy the music on iTunes. According to Acharia-Bath, the goal of desihits.com is to take Desi music to the next level, since "terrestrial radio can only take it so far."

To illustrate the growth of the genre, Acharia-Bath points to a recent collaboration between Grammy Award-winning R&B singer R. Kelly and Desi artist Ash King, and, she says, even Britney Spears and Madonna have gotten in on the act by working with Desi artists and producers.

According to the company, desihits.com received 8 million hits in July, which is double the figure from the previous month. There is traffic on the site from 68 countries, with 42 percent from the United States.

Acharia-Bath wants to expand the site by developing an online network of US college radio programs that play South Asian music -- shows like "Bricklane Beats."

"We'd love to feature her," Acharia-Bath says of Trivedi, and suggests that she could post the program "online and get people voting for it."

It would not be the first time that Trivedi has been exposed to an audience outside of Boston. This summer, she was selected as one of 10 finalists, from some 1,452 hopefuls, in the nationwide Public Radio Talent Quest.

As this Thursday morning's show comes to an end, Trivedi breaks the disappointing news to her listeners: she has been knocked out of the Talent Quest competition.

"Maybe America is just not ready for me yet, you know. It ain't ready for the 'Bricklane Beats' vibe. We've got to keep it strictly underground," she tells them.

America may not be ready for Trivedi, but that does not stop her Boston listeners, most of whom have no ties to Britain or Bombay, from enjoying "Bricklane Beats," even if they don't always understand exactly what it is.

That fact was brought home to Trivedi when a listener called the station and told her, "I'm laying a stone wall now -- this is great! I love this music -- it's great!"

Trivedi was confused at first, then suddenly realized what the caller meant. He thought the name of the show he was listening to was "Bricklaying Beats."

"Bricklane Beats" airs on WZBC-FM (90.3) on Thursdays from 7 to 9 a.m., and is streamed live at wzbc.org/listen.html. It can be downloaded at underheard.org.