#India regional hip-hop big shift

[suchananewsblog]

Regional hip-hop and the big shift

Among the most visible hip-hop artists in India are those singing in Hindi, Punjabi and English. The likes of DIVINE, Emiway Bantai, Brodha V and Prabh Deep have made their way into hip-hop stardom — and made a livelihood out of it. Last week, pop/hip-hop artist Diljit Dosanjh took over Coachella and even had DJ-producer Diplo dancing in the crowd. Artists rapping in India’s various regional…

[jordannamatlon]

By Vivekananda Nemana

It was barely 7 pm, but the village of Korra’s narrow lanes were deserted. So Ramesh Gujjela stepped onto the small stage he’d erected that morning, across from the pastor’s house in the central square, set the speakers on full blast, and grabbed the mic.

“Wake up, friends!” he squawked, inflecting his voice like a boxing announcer. “At 7:30 we’ll be starting our special ‘Dance, Baby, Dance’ programme. Come for dancing, come for comedy, come to see unseeable things!”

Known in Korra as The Dance Master, Ramesh has been busting routines for almost all of his 28 years. He wooed his wife not with words but his smooth moves. In high school he was hazed, he said, by being forced to dance on command, but far from being traumatized, he joined a Western-style dance team when he moved from the northern reaches of Andhra Pradesh to the “big city” of Visakhapatnam for a spell of “migrant work”, and now, on evenings after his shift ends at the local post office, Master Ramesh teaches kids in the village: “Hip-hop, breakdance, lock-and-pop, Western, Eastern, all styles compulsory.”

Actually, nearly everyone here in Korra, where homes are simple huts and the power cuts out for long stretches, is into dance. It’s an Indian tribal village full of hip-hopping b-boys and b-girls (well, more boys than girls). In fact, said Ramesh, “every village [in the region] has its own dance crew. During the festivals we all get together and compete to see who’s best. That crowd, people cheering, being told that you killed it out there – for me that’s just the greatest feeling.”

And that night, in this little speck of rural nowhere amid India’s vast turmoil, a band of Ramesh’s charges took the stage, six or seven young guys dressed in the Subcontinent’s ubiquitous polyester shirt-slacks combo, some with fake diamond stud earrings or glitter smeared across their faces. Not the stuff of any upcoming Fall-Winter fashion line, but the lads cut a certain country swagger: collars unbuttoned way too low, mustard coloured bandanas tied around their necks, knockoff Nikes. They were led by a bug-eyed, 12-year-old brown Steve Buscemi, who strutted and grimaced, running his fingers through his hair to the Harlem Shake, all of it set to a remixed Telugu number about the hottest girl the singer had ever seen.

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