DJ Ritu

DJR: When I was growing up, I did love music. I absolutely loved music. There wasn't huge amounts of it playing in my home. My parents were into bits of Bollywood, bits of Indian classical music as well. And my dad also liked The Beatles as well. He used to sing, 'She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah' by The Beatles too. You...my parents both sing a little bit as well, but it's just like in an amateur...you know, just for enjoyment. My dad used to also sometimes take us to the cinema to go and watch Bollywood movies. And he would take in a Philips reel-to-reel recorder and sometimes tape the songs, because that was the only way that he could take any of that music home. It was, of course, I think, not a legal thing to be doing. So that's what I remember about music at home in our household, was that there was a little bit of western music in...popular western music in the background. And I'm talking 1960s here. And then there was a kind of Indian soundtrack running as well. But music wasn't listened to a great deal. And it was listened back to on that Philips reel-to-reel recorder on tape. And I think probably in the '70s, when...because we lived in...I was born in London, in east London, but then we moved to Wales when I was quite young for one year, then we moved to America for two years. I don't remember much about music there in any of those countries. And then we came back to London around 1972, and I think that’s when I started to get into music more. I was watching Top of the Pops weekly on Thursdays on the TV. Sometimes I would try and tape it. I think we got our first record player when I was...when Princess Anne got married, whatever year that was, maybe ’73, ’74. And it was also when we first got a colour TV. And we watched that royal wedding on television. But when we got that record player, which was around the same time we got the TV, and I was really heavily into pop music by now, so I used to save up whatever pocket money I had, and I’d go round the corner to the record shop and buy singles, 45-inch singles there. The first one I ever bought was a track called 'Darling' by David Cassidy. And then after that I bought stuff by The Osmonds, by the Bay City Rollers, just anything that was in the charts. I was a huge Osmonds fan. The Bollywood side had disappeared for me really, to a large degree, but we did go and buy some albums in sari shops. There was Dharmonies Saris in...further in east London, around Forest Gate, East Ham. And she used to have the records like under the counter. So that’s where we bought, you know, soundtracks, the LPs, I've still got them, to films like Mera Naam Joker, Aradhana, which was a huge favourite for me, later on Sholay, so on and so forth.

DJR: The capacity was huge, the energy was huge, the impact of Bombay Jungle was huge. It was a 700-people capacity club spread over two floors. The two floors were quite tightly packed. There was like a kind of spiral staircase between...so can imagine...

MM: Sounds dangerous.

DJR: Especially when you've got 700 people packed in there...

MM: Yeah.

DJR: And, you know, people are trying to get up and down. The crowd was almost exclusively young South Asian...South...young British Asians. And so there was a lot of movement on and off that staircase, because there were kids that were just...they weren’t there just for the music. A lot of them were there to chirps, you know, cruise and meet...you know, meet people. So, you know, you had boys and girls going up and down to see if there were any more fit people on the other floor, right? And then of course the difference in the music styles on the floor. Down...the downstairs floor, which was not on the ground floor, sorry, it was on the first floor, was mainly...the music style was predominantly hip hop and swing, as it was called, R&B and a bit of jungle. And then the upstairs floor that I was resident on was bhangra, hip hop, jungle and swing. But predominantly bhangra on that floor. So I became...yeah, I was resident at that club as well. I think the guys that set up the club, they were all students at the time. You know, it was Mark, Matt and Mits. Matt and Mits were students, I think at Queen Mary...well, Mark was at Queen Mary College, if I remember rightly, studying law. And Mark went on to become a...you know, work in the management of BBC Asian Network as the head of programming and so on. The atmosphere was absolutely electric. The dance floors, the way that people were on the dance floor was completely euphoric. Especially on the bhangra floor, because people would dance like with their hands in the air and really in a very frenetic, frenzied way. Like, there was...they would dance like there was no tomorrow. And often they would sing the lyrics, you know, sing along to the choruses, which, you know, you tend to get more so, I think, with certain types of music. We've certainly had that at Kuch Kuch with the...with Bollywood music. You know, I mean, I can still...even now, being closed for...you know, since the pandemic began, or lockdown, I can still hear people singing along to certain tracks, you know? And I associate that with a lot of the club work I've done as well. So...and a lot of the tunes we played just literally became anthems, you know? So, we were playing tracks by the popular artists of the day, the bhangra artists, so you know, Balwinder Safri or the Safri Boyz, the Sahotas, Malkit Singh, Apna Sangeet, you know, all of these kinds of guys. And then some of the more old school stuff occasionally, Alar Premi. But mainly British bhangra anthems, as it were. And then more new stuff that was coming out by groups like Achanak and so on.

MM: And Bombay Jungle opened in 1993, right?

DJR: Yeah, September ’93.

MM: And the next year that's when you founded Outcaste Records?

DJR: Yeah. But they were they were two very separate and entirely different experiences. I must add, as well, that by the time I started at Bombay Jungle, I didn't know how to mix. I didn't know how to mix two records together. And I think it was just around that time, just before I became resident at Bombay Jungle, that I invested in a pair of Technics decks and a mixer and this, that and the other. And I'd already started to practise being able to mix two tunes together. But when I got to Bombay Jungle, oh my God, I really had to up my game very quickly, because the technical standard that the DJs were at was very, very high. I mean, it was on a whole other level. DJing on other scenes, you know, pop music scene, disco scene, women's scene, gay scene, etc., there hadn't been a need to have that level of technical skill. But on the British Asian scene, there was absolutely a need to have that level and more. The bhangra DJs modelled themselves on Black sound systems. And one person would be the selector who would choose the tracks and probably the one that also put the needle on the record as I did, you know, 1986 for the first time. Then there'd be a guy on the microphone who was the MC. And then there'd be another three guys that would carry their record boxes, and they’d all wear the jackets so they were all part of a crew, you know? But usually the selectors were absolute deck wizards, you know? And they could just mix anything together with anything. And a lot of them could scratch as well. Scratching was very much part of that scene. It was...you know, again, they’re taken from hip hop culture. And I had to do a super amount of learning very, very fast to get up to, you know, some kind of level. But I was already playing on the Asian scene before that, but it was one-off gigs. You know, like one of...one thing at Hammersmith Palais and one thing here, and one thing at the Wag Club and one thing at Iceni, and there were a few, literally one or two Asian guys who opened those doors for me. And I'm eternally grateful to them.

MM: Yeah.

DJR: Because there were no women. We weren't welcome to do anything, you know? And I...

MM: Yeah. Looking back at kind of British Asian music, the bhangra like explosion was unreal, but it definitely seemed very male-dominated. And I think Outcaste and Nation Records were a very different vibe to what was going on with British Asian music otherwise.

DJR: But still women didn't come out on the decks really. I mean, the only other Asian woman, if I remember rightly, at that time, apart from Radical Sister who was on both scenes, but was based up north so we didn't see her that much, say, in London, there was Suki, who started to DJ a little bit. She was connected with Nation Records. But that aside, there wasn't suddenly a flood of women DJs on the Asian underground scene either. We're still very much in a minority. Well, I was in a minority, really, on my own, pretty much, again. Though, you know, as you tend to have in the music industry, you will tend to have female vocalists, those are quite common. But women in anything that's deemed to be technical or production or management, women have always been in the minority, I think, as far as the music industry is concerned. And specifically...more so in the different kind of British Asian music genre categories.

DJR: We started to set up the label early in 1994. We didn't come up with a name for it. The name, by the way, is...Shabs came up with the name. Because we had to keep sleeping on...you know, we were coming up with lots of names, and like nothing felt right. And then, you know, I think one night he had an epiphany and kind of went, well, why don't we base it on the caste system? Okay. So that’s why Outcaste has got that E on it. And...but we’re out...we’re...it’s...we’re outcasts, right, as far as the music industry and as far as mainstream culture is concerned, so that’s where the name came from. And then the no entry sign, the initial graphics were based on the no entry sign that you have on roads. And, okay, so the club. Well, I remember I was playing, obviously. I can’t remember who else played at the first night. It was on two floors. Ormond’s was on two floors. It was a swanky high-end Mayfair venue that was often...usually used as a restaurant, and not just for club activity. And there were like, you know, green plants in the...in various corners and, you know, and little trees growing, and it was...yeah, it was incredible. But it wasn’t packed. The first night wasn’t packed. So, it was actually when we did the second night, when we built up the press and the interest, then that’s when it rammed out. And I know on one of the nights I was...I’d finished playing downstairs, I was upstairs, on one of the nights, I think it was the night that Talvin was meant to be playing for us. And...because I’d asked him to do a set. And the thing is, at that time, you never knew if he was really going to do a set. He would get booked for things and then he would make a decision on how he felt on that day, which was a bit of a problem for anyone who was doing...who was the promoter. Really a big problem. But actually, I suppose, looking back on that, it meant that he was being true to himself as an artist, and not just going and doing a gig because he was booked to do it. It was a case of, well, if I’m not feeling this, I’m not going to do it, which is...yeah, that’s actually not a bad thing to be.

MM: I think that’s fair enough.

DJ: It is. But from a promoter’s point of view, it’s a nightmare. And also, you know, because you’ve advertised an artist, you...and if he’s not going to turn up, you know, you have to explain that to people who've paid money to come there. So...and I remember on this night, it was, yeah, yeah, no, I'll come down, I'll come down, if I'm feeling the vibe, I'll do it, If I'm...and we were...and so he gets there, and we're thinking, is he going to feel the vibe? Is he going to feel the vibe? You know. And fortunately, he felt the vibe and he decided to do a very quick set. It wasn't long at all. Bjork was down as well, and...wandering around in, you know, Bjork style, but slippers as well. And there's a load of us all sort of chatting upstairs when Talvin was on and...or before he came on. And so I was talking with Bjork and various other PR people in the background, and Raj from Media Moguls and Pedro, who I'd known for quite a while through the bhangra scene. But they were very interested in what we were doing, and also because they were just about to set up Media Moguls. But Media Moguls is now one of the most important British Asian PR companies. They handle a lot of very big events, you know, music and otherwise, film and...etc. Yeah, so there was really this buzz, an absolute buzz, at Outcaste at Ormond’s. I think we only ran maybe three or four nights there, monthly, before we then moved the whole operation to The End, which was the new club, brand new club that Mr C from the Shaman had set up, and Layo. They’d set that up, and it was just kind of on the edge of High Holborn, or Holborn. And that was a completely different kind of atmosphere there, because it was like more of a warehouse and purpose-built club, you know? Because the amount of money that Mr C and Layo invested in it was phenomenal, and especially in the sound system. And that was two rooms, or three rooms, two rooms, massive great bar that sort of...in one...in the main room. And that was the place where, when the bass hit, you felt it literally come through the floor right up through your legs and into your chest and up through your...coming out of your head. It just used to reverberate like that. It was so powerful. Whereas Ormond’s was, you know, like the equivalent of, I don't know, listening to something on your iPhone.

DJR: But it wasn't just happening in nightlife. I mean, after our last conversation, I realized it was happening all around us. I mean, think about it, the 90s, Goodness Gracious Me on television, Bhaji on the Beach, Monsoon Wedding, East Is East, all of those films that came out in that period, a month long of Bollywood at Selfridges. You know, and we're talking tail-end of the '90s now and probably around 2000, you know? Then Bombay Dreams at, you know, Andrew Lloyd Webber's theatre production. The...we were starting to become cool in all kinds of areas. It wasn't just music, it wasn't just nightlife, and it wasn't just the Asian underground scene. And then the rise of curry and the rise of the Curry King and the...you know, the super restauranteurs, you know, the guys that...the guy that ran the Red Fort, for example, in Soho. And I mean, that was all '90s. So we became cool in all kinds of ways. And then it started to change when 9/11 happened in 2001.

• Club Kali

• DJ Ritu

Entry credit

Anya Amlani