As DJ-based music continues to incorporate elements of previously unexploited cultural terrain, an exciting new musical genre has formed from a combination of traditional folk and pop music from India (bhangra) and house music. Called 'Bhangra Beat,' this moody, adrenalized blend was pioneered by the Birmingham, England-based mixmaster Bally Sagoo, who pleased a packed house Wednesday with unrelenting Eastern-tinged house beats.
A live performance that consists solely of spinning remixes -- two turntables with no microphone -- might seem a contradiction in terms until one considers that the sweaty dancers in the audience do the actual performing, while the DJ simply provides the environment. "You're going to rock the house tonight," Sagoo encouraged his public after being introduced, repeatedly, as "the godfather of the scene."
The scene in question was S.O.B.'s monthly Basement Bhangra Night, which attracted a mix of sexually ambiguous dance club habituTs and well-groomed Indian-American twentysomethings. Both responded enthusiastically to Sagoo's remixes, which, in the tradition of house music, were designed to provoke a response both aerobic and entrancing.
Songs bled into one another, interspersed between vast tracts of pounding kick drums, lockstep high hats, and unrelenting industrial-style rhythms. Familiar hooks made brief appearances ("Macarena," "La-Di-Da-Di," soaring melodies from Indian pop songs and film soundtracks) amidst beveled, layered beats. Because Sagoo's real performances occur back in the studio when he mixes his records, the only truly live thrill of the show was watching him spin several records simultaneously, creating rhythmic shifts and divots that pulled the crowd in several directions at once.
Sagoo satisfied his audience's craving for innovative house music, but his odd, original new album, "Rising From the East," layers traditional Indian music's solemn soul atop dance beats that are less mechanistic and bombastic than those he played live. The appeal of "Rising" isn't limited to the dance floor, and Sagoo's Bhangra Beat is beginning to