Basement Bhangra, a dance party that has been a New York City fixture for twenty years, is coming to an end.
DJ Rekha, who's run the party since its birth at S.O.B.'s in 1997, said her final show will be at Summerstage in Central Park this Sunday, Aug. 6.
The event was an immediate phenomenon, capturing the attention of the mainstream press with its blend of hip hop and Punjabi sounds, and perhaps more importantly, providing the emerging South Asian-American creative class with both a gathering place and an aesthetic that was uniquely theirs.
"When I walked into my first Basement Bhangra in New York City in 1997, it was as if I'd found the music I had been waiting to hear my entire life," said author Tanuja Desai Hidier, who set portions of her first book — a widely-acclaimed young-adult novel called "Born Confused" — in and around the party.
Bhangra, a music and dance form that emerged in the Punjabi countryside, was brought by migrants to the UK and then the United States. It was folk music, but underwent a dramatic re-imagining in the diaspora at a time when the children of South Asian, or desi, immigrants were coming of age in the 80s and 90s.
"The other desi parties were way more heterosexual, way more of a meaty, meat-market vibe," said Swati Khurana a writer and artist who documented the early days of the event.
By contrast, she said Basement drew "writers, activists, artists, community organizers, teachers, people in queer circles," and that often, "people would come in drag."
Vivek Bald, an MIT scholar and DJ who collaborated for years with Rekha on a club night called Mutiny, noted that for much of the 20th century, the U.S. had barred immigration from South Asia. This changed in the 1960s, resulting in many immigrants moving here from India and Pakistan.
"And in the 1990s, the children of that wave of migration were reaching their 20s and 30s, getting involved in music, film, activism, forming community-based organizations, etc." he wrote. "Rekha was part of that surge of cultural and political energy in the 1990s and Basement was an outgrowth of it."
Rekha recalled "it definitely felt like there was a moment happening in New York City at that time" and felt empowered to play pretty much what she wanted to.
"The party is bhangra music," she said. "It was really tough when Slumdog Millionaire came out, and these girls would say 'Could you play Jai Ho?' And I'd say 'Jai no. I cannot.'"
Among the bhangra artists she championed early on was Panjabi MC. His song "Mundian To Bach Ke" was re-released with vocals by Jay-Z, taking bhangra from the club scene to the American mainstream.
"Suddenly you were hearing bhangra coming out of people's cars in the summer time in New York City," said Bald.
While it's hard to pin down the long-term impact of a party, Bald said Basement successfully took ephemeral ideas about multiculturalism and embodied them.
Rekha said she is leaving on her own terms, and not because of rising rents. She intends to pursue other creative projects and further studies, and issued a parting endorsement for the city that embraced her and her work.
"There is nowhere in the world," she said, "where so many different kinds of South Asian art takes place on any one given night," including, she argued, London or Mumbai.
"I think in New York City there's an environment that breeds that kind of art. And that's why in so many ways Basement Bhangra could only happen here," she said. "It's a good place to stop, to know that that's out there."
