Mr Ashfaq Kazi (Minto)

Mr Ashfaq Kazi (Minto)

Mr Ashfaq Kazi (Minto)

Age: 43

Interview date: 22 _ May _ 06

Interviewed by: Jamil Iqbal

Mr. Kazi was a dancer crew member of Joi Bangla Crew. Joi Bangla Sounds & Crew exploded into the music scene and had coverage in all the national newspapers and had TV coverage. Mr. Kazi created his own dance moves. The style and the tempo of the dance moves were fused with the beats of Bengali music.

My name is Ashfaq Kazi, known in the community as Minto. I work as an IT consultant and I am 43 years of age.

Q: How did you come into music?
I think most young people are exposed to music. I certainly remember, when I first came into this country in 1973, I was impressed by Elvis Presley. The first album I had was Elvis Presley’s greatest hits. When my family came over we had a collection of 45 records, they were published by the emerging record industry in Bangladesh at the time. Lot of the songs were patriotic songs and we had that in our collection and that was my first exposure to Bengali music as such.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about the Joi Bangla group, how it was formed and why it was formed?
At that particular phase of my life I was quite heavily involved with local young people and I was actually a member of the Bangladesh Youth Movement (BYM) based in Cannon Street Road in the Wapping area. At the time I was working in Montefiore Centre for an organisation called the Federation of Bangladeshi Youth Organisations (FBYO). I was in the management committee including Ansar Ahmed Ullah so through the FBYO, being affiliate organisations for Bangladeshi youth organisation throughout the UK, we did quite a lot of work with the youth organisations, say in Bradford, London and other areas. It was very natural for me to sort of get acquainted with personalities working on the League of Joi Bangla (Youth). The League of Joi Bangla (Youth) at the time was not a formal organisation with its own base. They were mainly a collection of personalities very much mobile, so they have worked from say Montefiore Centre or they will run a play scheme based at the BYM or wherever they will get some space or wherever they will get some facilities. So it was all very complimentary work to what I have been doing in a voluntary capacity but also tied over to what I did in paid capacity for the FBYO.

Q: What was your part in the band?

My first involvement with the League of Joi Bangla (Youth) was that they had organised a scheme, they got some funding from the authority to take a group of young children, bring them on school holiday periods on various activities and play scheme activities, taking them out to the funfair, go to the seaside, museums and I got involved at that stage. That’s purely a direct community involvement with the League of Joi Bangla (Youth). On the other side, I know, we would have had discussions on other areas and avenues that we could explore, we could diversify into. One of the areas that we felt lot of attention and focus needed was really on how we could best promote the Bengali culture and when we speak the Bengali culture, it is obviously the music and the dance form etc because we felt that the young Bangladeshis who were growing up in this community were not truly exposed to it. Looking at the first generation of immigrants who came over, the only thing they needed from the parents were to go to school and leave school as soon as possible and contribute towards the family establishment. All first generation had the huge barrier to overcome to get themselves established. Amongst my peers at that time lot of my friends had very minimum education and they were more or less pressurised to work in the rag trade and the restaurant trade. By the time I finished my education, the generation that was up and coming who may have been born in this country, had actually no exposure to the Bengali culture and its rich heritage. They didn’t know that our culture and heritage was diverse and stretching back to thousands of years. Our music was accomplished in terms of the poetry. These were the basis of our culture that we wanted to bring over to the young people. The way we decided to promote it was through the medium of English music and dance because for lot of young people that was what they were getting into, sort of listening to the Top of the Pop because they wanted to be more westernised. They were quite happy with that side but we thought if we can do some activities, we can introduce our own culture and do it in a way that the young people will be interested to listen. We thought the good idea would be to present it as a fusion and that time I think Haroon who was a musical genius behind Joi Bangla (Sounds), was experimenting with music. We sort of played around him and came up with this style or fusion of mixing Western music style with Asian music style. When I say Asian it is not only the Bangladeshi music, it was all the popular Hindi music, Punjabi music and classical music as well.

Q: Did anyone sing in that group or was it just mixing music?
I think the initial kick off for the League of Joi Bangla, in terms of music side was purely producing the music. Initially I suppose the music was bootlegged on to cassettes and they may have been distributed by the young stars among themselves. To take it to the next stage, we decided to try and promote it and get some western media involvement, which it needed to be visually appealing as well as musically, it must hit more senses than just the hearing sense, so the idea came about of setting up a dance group, whereby we would sort of play the music and perform some dance routines. This way we managed to get some interest of some of the people. I guess there was a London publication regarding it, I can’t remember the publication, I think it was City Limits or Time Out, one of those two (It was City Limits which is no longer published). The first event, if I am correct, was in the Mulberry School for Girls. They had these events with lots of different acts happening-- this was in 1986-87. We were able to secure a slot to go and do a performance. We basically got members within the organisations together and volunteered. We quickly covered and got together some routine. We practiced like mad and performed and City Limits were there, reporting on the event. The reporters were quite impressed by what we did and this resulted in featuring us on the front page and quite an extensive article on us. This was the first exposure and we got a lot of request from other organisations to do more events. We promoted that side as much as we could.
Q: Were you involved with the band on a TV programme?
That was the first focus, so now we had the Joi Bangla Sounds-- Haroon, Parul, Mark and Hassan. We had different members wanted to contribute in a way they can so we had the Joi Bangla Sounds (JBS) and obviously if they wanted to play in a party, they could engage with the JBS. I think we never did a dance event as a separate entity. My recollection is always been the dance group and the JBS doing an integrating performance. The actual live band that came after, that was, most probably, Ansar’s idea, that we have got a dance group, we have got a sound, mixing all these music but there were individuals who had the skills and the talents who could produce live music. Now we were entering an area from where I was moving away from the performance side of things.
Q: What type of the music did you listen to growing up in London?
I think, Elvis was my introduction to Western music per se. From Elvis, I suppose, I got more exposed to Top of the Pops. I guess Top of the Pops would have been the standard music programme that was available. That played lot of pop music and current popular music. In my late teens, I would say from eighteen onwards, my own personal inclination was towards music of the Black origin, like jazz, blues and hip hop. In my schooling years there was a fair bit of reggae. When I came to this country it was purely rock & roll, and it was from 1973 and lasted for about 4-5 years. I wasn’t, how can I say, an integrated member of the society, up to date with what the music was. My exposure of music was based on what people listened around them. As I started to get more integrated and started making friends, my musical experience broadened and I started to see other styles of music. Then only I was able to make a choice.
Q: Did you ever sing?
No I never sang. I have an atrocious singing voice, I have never sung.
Q: Did you ever playe any instruments?
No, I never played an instrument as well. But during the university period I was involved with the Asian Society and we did perform. I was involved in performing, but I was performing as a dancer.
Q: What sort of dance did you perform?
At the time of my university, the Asian dance style which was popular was the Bhangra. With the Asian society, I spent quite a bit of time following a group called Alaap. I performed in various university events more as a dancer. There weren’t that many Bangladeshis when I was in Queen Mary, local university. There was quite a large number of Punjabis, so I was gravitated towards their cultural influence at the time.
Q: Was it break dancing?
Break dance was very popular in the mid 80s, but there were some members with different musical interest. I believe with the style, tempo and the beat, the Bengali music has, I think, it will be very hard to generate a fusion of Bengali music and say hip-hop because that’s quite a fast music whereas the classical mix was with James Brown which is bit more soulful and slightly slower tempo, it tends to fuse much more musically with the Bengali style. I don’t know if Haroon experimented but break dance fusion with Bengali music probably would have had an unpleasant result.
Q: Before any performance did you use to practice?
Yes, we used to practice every evening after work. I believe we had a space at Mulberry School for Girls. We had a good relation with the school after our performance so we were allowed to practice in the school after the evening in one of their halls. We also practiced at Tower Hamlets Association for Racial Equality in Cambridge Heath Road.
We weren’t a professional group of dancers, we all had some amateur experience but we were a crowd who were more outgoing. A lot of us used to go to parties, clubs and dance so we were not shy of getting up and dancing.
Q: Were there any choreographers?
Yes we had choreography. It was in the sense that, we used to sit down and listen to the music being created and everyone giving their views and consensus of what sounds good and what sounds bad. Once we were happy and we liked the combination, then we decided how we could move to the music. Every evening we used to get together after work and rehearsed. Once the rehearsal aspect had ended, the core group, with Ansar, Haroon, Farook, myself and few others at the time get together at Haroon’s place and listen to music, create music, come up with dance moves. The whole group was created because we had the slot at Mulberry School for Girls. Right from day one we didn’t create a dance group, we didn’t have a dance move and we didn’t have a dance routine ready for public consumption. We had an event and we had to perform and we had to come up with it. We had a time pressure to come up with the routine, come up with music and get everyone trained. From that moment on we had a commitment that “this organisation wants us to do this event and we got the exact amount of time, let’s go back and come up with some music”.
Q: Were you being paid for it?
There was some payment but it was mostly on expenses. It wasn’t that the individuals got paid. The money we were getting was spent on buying some record or some instruments or costumes or travel cost. Some times we had to hire some equipment. It wasn’t a commercial enterprise, these are voluntary organisations so they can cover expenses but couldn’t pay professional fees.
Q: What do you think of the young generation?
I think at the time when we exploded into the scene, we truly did because from one article we had coverage in all the national newspapers, we had TV coverage. So from one means or another, we had a mark and we were known. I believe we had quite a positive impact, kids were happy with what we were doing. They liked the music we were producing, they liked the dance routines. So in some ways the effort that we put into this had permeated out to our target audience. Young people at that time were exposed to the Bengali music and I suppose that sales of Bengali music had picked up significantly.
Q: Can you tell us about any of your memorable events?
That’s a difficult one to say. I can remember the event in Pall Mall, I forgot who was the organiser, may be the National Film Theatre (It was ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts). It was a week long event and they were basically showcasing Asian music. We had bands like Alaap, there were all sort of different groups and all of them performed. And we performed two times so we were the only group that performed twice… we were asked to perform for the second time, so that event is one of the memorable event to me. Our performance was picked as the highlight of the week long event. That was a very good feeling and this was not just at the local community audience but we were exposed to quite a broader audience. It is easy to do something in front of a local community because they have the understanding. They understand the song that is sang but if you go out to an audience who has not heard you before and no affinity to Bengali music and yet see that they appreciated it after the performance, it is a very nice feeling.