Please state for the record who you are and what you do?
What is DJ Suki? It’s just a collision of sounds, whether they be global, punk, ska, bhangra, hiphop… sounds you’re familiar to but played in another light. Kinda like bootlegs, mash-ups… two sounds you wouldn’t normally hear together. Bhangra with punk, breaks with Brazilian melodies. It’s… I play music I was brought up with, music I got into as well and I fused them together to create a new genre. What do I call it? ‘Polluted Music’! Polluted beats. I’m putting music into a new evolution in my own mind. I can’t hear things as they are, there’s always room for improvements. What I’ve been doing for years is now starting to happen. People are now fusing bhangra with hiphop, drum’n’bass with Brazilian influences. People are now opening their minds to what I’ve been doing for years. It’s just a case of taking things to the next level, and creating something new.
What is your background?
My dad’s from Pakistan and my mum’s from Punjab. They’re both Sikh. I was born here. I grew up in South East Kent. Gravesend. It was… back then, the first town that immigrants passed through after getting off the boats from India and Pakistan. It docked in Gravesend. Lots of people moved on from there but my family stayed. It’s where the first Sikh temple in the UK was built. It’s got the highest population of Sikhs there. I lived predominantly… well, with a handful of Asian families on the outskirts. Basically, I grew with and around travellers. My education was around a lot of Westerners. It was good cos I could make the best of both worlds. I could cherry-pick from two cultures and make up my own. It didn’t matter if my family, or if my teacher didn’t agree. I could always turn to the other.
How would you describe your sound? How did it evolve?
Well, when the first wave of music came about… I’m the youngest of two older sisters and one older brother. My two older sisters introduced me to punk bands like the Make-Up. Also, I grew up on TV. My parents only spoke Punjabi so I learnt all my English off TV from shows like Sesame Street. While watching TV, I was always intrigued by how I liked the punk and ska scene in the early eighties, the coming about of hiphop. Then, if we jump to the early nineties, I think I officially grew up when I was fourteen. My father passed away. I felt like I couldn’t relate to anyone. I never knew anyone my age who had to deal with the loss of a parent. Also, being the youngest, a lot of truth was held back from me. I got into a lot of music then, because I searching, trying to find something to describe how I was feeling, the way I was. I was grieving but I didn’t know what that was. I discovered a band called Fun-Da-Mental. I felt I could relate to them because they were fusing my life together. It was punk, Asian, hiphop. Everything I always thought sounded good to my ears all in one go. I started writing to Aki (Nawaz) from Fun-Da-Mental and discovered his dad had recently passed away too so through the music and writing and drawing and through Aki, it was a sense of grieving through resources. In a constructive way.
My first set of decks, I was probably… seventeen. For two years, between fourteen and sixteen, I was using two Midi hi-fis and fading them through an equaliser. I didn’t have pitch-control so I used weights, stationary, makeup, anything I could get my hands on. Then I worked out my own mechanism to slow the plate down. So, when I got my first set of decks, it just flowed. My first gig was supporting Asian Dub Foundation at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. It was an amazing experience. It was being thrown in at the deep end but I got a rush out of it. It was, the experience, became easier because I knew them (ADF) through Nation Records so I knew them for a couple of years. So that experience of stage fright was ok. I then went on to do their mini-tour of the UK.
What is it like being an Asian female in a predominantly male non-Asian scene?
It’s great, good because I get a rush out of the stupid comments that male DJ’s make. For example, when I come up and I say “I’m a DJ”, they have to repeat over and over again till it makes sense to their ears because the idea’s alien to them. Especially being Asian as well. It goes for males in general. But the Asian reaction is more deadly because there’s a stigma. Because if you’re Asian and you’re born here, another Sikh Asian male will have control over you because their culture allows it. They’ve grown up in a culture where it’s perceived that way. I sometimes rile them up. It’s not a typical profession so they expect me to shy away but I really get in their faces.
It takes a lot to break out of expectations that families and society have. Some Asians have been here for thirty to forty years and so some restrictions and expectations exist. You have to be a doctor or a lawyer. Anything to do with entertainment is a bad thing. Anything that can ruin a family’s izzat (self-respect, family pride) is a big no-no. Yes, it is a male-dominated scene. A lot is at risk for females. It’s difficult cos it’s a male-dominated scene. With Asians, it’s an even bigger struggle, breaking out of the mould of male domination as well as Asian restrictions. It’s twice as hard so you have to be twice as strong.
How did your parents take to your DJ’ing?
Mum was in two ways. Because the younger generation respects achievement, especially when it challenges your cultural traditional backgrounds. If you’re trying to develop something and create something new, they tend to respect that. But the older generation is still stuck in its ways. Any form of difference is not considered. She has moments where I’ve caught her speaking highly of me to the family, like when I’ve been on TV or on the radio. But on face value, she’s not happy at all. Often, it depends on time and the situation. She’s traditional, though she does say there are worse things I could be doing. Your parents always want the best for you, but because they don’t have experience with music and with entertainment, with DJ’ing, often the simplest answer is NO.
Who is your audience and who are you aiming your music at?
To anyone that’s got an open mind. Music can move. If you wanna hear the tracks you like taken to the next level, that’s what you’ll hear at one of my gigs.
What do you think about the sudden zeitgeisty surgence of the bhangra scene and Punjabi MC after years of functioning outside of the mainstream?
To me, bhangra will always be big turbans and white slacks. It came more predominantly in my face in the eighties with Alaap. It was cheesy then and it’s cheesy now. It will always be wedding music to me. To make it more palatable to myself, I try to dilute it with other sounds, hiphop, breaks. But you go to weddings and that’s what the DJ is doing himself, so it’s still wedding music. I hate weddings. They’re mass meat markets. The reaction to bhangra resembles an organised moshpit.
Punjabi MC is completely rinsed out. (It is now a 5 year old tune, given a rebirth by a chance playing on Radio 1.) Every Asian doing music reckons they’re a Punjabi MC cos they’re all using the same samples so it all sounds the same. The only different ones are the American ones, who try to actually integrate the sound with hiphop instead of one on top of the other. DJ Sanj and sorts like that. But even that gets on my nerves. Jay-Z and Punjabi MC, it’s like… it makes me laugh because hiphop is becoming cheesy itself. Adding bhangra to it… You’ll probably see Snoop Dogg in white slacks and a big turban soon. It’s an upgrade of Malkit Singh. It’s not original to me. If I wanted pure bhangra music, I’d go back to Punjab and sit in a field and hear it in its pure essence.
What are your favourite albums, 12s and biggest influences?
Albums would have to be “Journeys by DJs” by Coldcut, “Endtroducing” by DJ Shadow and “Seize the Time” by Fun-Da-Mental. My favourite 12s would include “Witness (The Fitness)” by Roots Manuva, can’t live without that tune. “Anarchy in the UK” by Pollution. And “Mera Pyar” by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The first record I ever bought? Well, my first buy was the Sex Pistols album. I got my dad to buy it for me when I was young, cos it was pink and yellow and I liked it. The first record I bought with my own hard earned cash was “Peace, Love and War” by Fun-Da-Mental.
My biggest influence: Aki Nawaz from Fun-Da-Mental. I’ve been aware of him since the early eighties. He was the first Asian punk I saw on The Tube (mid-eighties music programme with Paula Yates and Jools Holland). He made such an influence on me when I was younger. To see an Asian dressed as a freak on TV, it was so different. It wasn’t Network East. It was the other side of the spectrum. Plus he had muppet hair. I met him ten years later and he still has muppet hair!
The future only looks bright for DJ Suki. Forward-thinking enough to recognise her roots but also see where there’s room for improvement, makes her neither looking back or thinking ahead. Instead, like most things in this universe it balances itself out making her very now and very here.
