South Asian independence
Trying to please parents and stay true to myself ⚖️
In this issue:
Headliner I quit law for the see-saw of professional writing. Mum and dad never got it.
Revival The Crow from 1994 is the only one that matters
Aftershow Perfectionism is a trap, the legend of Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, Ian Penman on Prince, Jenn Nkiru’s Black to Techno
On a sliding scale of bad parenting, insisting your child opt for a respected and lucrative profession such as medicine or law is hardly grounds for divorce.
Also, impressing the importance of studies over everything else – nights out, dates, adventure – is understandable when you have experienced hardship or had career setbacks in a new country as my parents did.
Mum came over from Kampala following Idi Amin’s expulsion of the Ugandan Asians, while dad arrived from Mwanza in Tanzania after studying in Baroda, India. After losing their jobs as a radiographer and accountant respectively, an ‘uncle’ suggested they get into the newsagency business.
That’s right, I was a corner shop kid in early 80’s Brighton. Back then, It was a stable industry, an opportunity for entrepreneurial grafters, and we were a hub of the community who, mostly, appreciated us. This was before Sunday supermarket opening and competition from Tesco Metros and Sainsbury’s Locals. (But did you know convenience stores are rallying in 2024?)
The long hours and physical labour were a real shock. It was a seven-days-a-week affair characterised by mundane and frugal living. But “Mr and Mrs P”, as they were known, took great pride in not only running their own business but also serving the community. Here you could get anything from newspapers, cigarettes, penny sweets and soft drinks to greetings cards, cat litter and safety pins.
Chocolates were a nice perk for my brother and I, but we longed to escape. I remember stocking shelves, unloading goods from the cash and carry on a Thursday night, and taking turns to run the till during the summer holidays.
There were no family getaways or lavish treats at home. But we went to a decent prep school – delivering papers every morning before catching the bus – and then onto a private college thanks to scholarships and bursaries.
Reflecting on that time as a teenager, I remember how recognition for being a top-set pupil masked underlying insecurities. Yes, kids rarely have a strong sense of who they are but I could already feel my identity setting, my path preset, while most peers just seemed … freer. They stressed less and enjoyed more.
The prevailing order of things in our culture became apparent. I was very aware of the sacrifices our parents had made. Even now, I can see my mum testing my spelling while cashing up. How she managed to juggle everything, it’s incredible. The pressure to pay back had an overbearing influence on where I could see myself in the world.
At college, there was a humble careers library comprising a bookshelf or two of folders and brochures. Other than that, a teacher might have a chat with you about your options. My brother always wanted to be a doctor. I can’t remember what sparked that vocation but it was there. Meanwhile, I scrambled to think of something suitable … acceptable.
In South Asian circles, back then you would hear a lot of chat about the doctor, lawyer, management consultant or engineer. Oh, my son is this or that. This translated into an expectation that you should follow suit. To me, there was this narrow definition of success and I could anticipate the guilt of not delivering.
It was hardly a dictatorship but if you had turned around and said you wanted to be an artist or footballer you would have been clipped round the ear and told to get a grip. For that generation, it was survival first, self-discovery second. As for risk, look the other way.
Daydreaming offered a means of escape. To pass the time in the shop I would read several newspapers and magazines front to back, particularly sports sections and music press. From an early age, I admired the ability of journalists to encapsulate key moments we were living through.
How the likes of Gary Younge would form compelling arguments in their columns, while I crammed and laboured over the structure of history essays. Perhaps this is hindsight kicking in here, but in the back of my mind I wondered what an interesting life that could be – to report and interview. Was it attainable though?
I did have a genuine interest in the law and jurisprudence (deluded though I may have been by repeat viewings of The Firm and A Time To Kill). How these rules are supposed to preserve peace and harmony in society, and when you have to challenge them. Leicester University, where I studied for my degree, had a top 20 law faculty.
The experience of being away from home, gaining the independence I craved, was as important as anything I studied. The text-heavy course felt turgid. But whenever case law touched on something high-profile, like Hillsborough and Jonathan Aitken’s libel trial, or culturally seismic like Roe v Wade or Augusto Pinochet’s human rights violations, I did sit up and take notice.
After five years of boarding school, I felt fatigued by institutions and academia. The year of solo travel around the world that I embarked on after university made me so much more alive to new opportunities and encounters. It would have put me in a far better position to make the most out of campus if it had come before the degree.
What that trip also did was open my eyes to arts and culture from around the world. I set off with my Walkman and an expanding collection of cassettes that I listened to more intently than any Spotify album or playlist in recent memory.
Books kept me company on long bus journeys and while idling away afternoons in hostels, anything from Alain de Botton’s Consolations of Philosophy and Kent Nerburn’s Letters to My Son to Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (essential en route New Zealand in 2002). A writer’s style and voice became ardent curiosities.
I kept a journal that I still have, where I aped the spirit of a modern-day Kerouac “on the road to anywhere”, in awe of the ones who are “mad to live … who burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”. Maybe not quite as poetic but just as verbose.
After returning to England, I started a postgraduate course in sports law. This was around 2003, a time of heated debate about doping codes and player transfers among other things. I did a dissertation on the Bosman ruling. But who was I kidding? There was no sipping Becks with Becks. Law was law, something to be applied not questioned, and it felt too dry.
Work experience and placements are quite formative experiences at the outset of a career and unfortunately mine at the Legal Aid Board and a medium-sized regional solicitor’s practice were full of mind-numbing admin. I wanted to express myself by writing stories and capturing illuminating conversations.
Magazines had been a big part of my upbringing – Men’s Health, Ring, Select, Q, Loaded – so I started an NCTJ course. My parents were disappointed, understandably, after helping to support me over four years of law-related study. Writing for free, or in exchange for music and tickets, hardly eased their concerns but I was defiant in my new direction. If only there were a few more success stories to point to who looked like me.
Eventually, I found full-time roles in a publishing house and marketing agency, but never quite got the validation I sought. Hey, mum and dad, here’s this feature about a musician you’ve never heard of, in a magazine few people have ever heard of. Or read this customer magazine I’ve planned and edited. Not quite a scoop in the Guardian.
My position on this has softened now, after developing a kinder perspective on my craft – as writers have to if they’re going to survive. My parents didn’t want me to struggle. Perhaps I misconstrued their concerns and hopes as disappointment. They had worked hard to put me in a position to be settled and on a steady path to progression. But the world of words is a precarious profession.
Mum is no longer with us and my brother passed away suddenly after a glowing career as a GP. Dad is frail and just wants peace at this point. As long as I am safe and comfortable, his job is done.
He urges me to not have regrets (like him) and to do what I want to do now. But I still hope that one day I will hand him a career-defining feature, a script, a book perhaps, and he will really know I made the right decision.
The freedom I have enjoyed to make that decision is thanks to my parents. So yes, they did their job. Just not in the way they imagined. But after climbing the mountain, the view is more satisfying when you can share it with your family.
Will future generations experience similar growing pains and dilemmas? It’s possible but I see strong communities of South Asian artists rising up in the UK including Daytimers and Burnt Roti. They are helping to foster a greater sense of individual identity and collective pride, while also providing role models for others.
Tara Joshi, the Guardian’s Ammar Kalia, Kieran Yates and Ciaran Thapar are among several writers of South Asian origin who I often read on music, culture and politics alone.
It’s harder than ever to make a living from writing and you may have to wear a few hats. But I wager that many more will follow – with or without family approval.
“They’re all dead. They just don’t know it yet”
Brandon looks like how I felt after watching that dreadful trailer for The Crow (2024), which arrives around 30 years after the original. It’s that classic Hollywood remake formula: bigger muscles, more guns, explosions, flesh and tats. Very little imagination, on the other hand.
The original was a cult, gothic treasure from the mind of graphic novelist James O’Barr. It held such fascination and mystique for me back in 1994 as illicit VHS copies were going around and rumours were swirling about Lee’s death.
The star was accidentally killed on set by a gunfire shot a few days before they were due to wrap. A set that had been plagued by misfortune including car accidents, electrocutions and a nasty incident with a screwdriver.
Although this ominous run of events is in keeping with the supernatural tenor of the film, it shouldn’t detract from what is an extremely well-made movie, realised against the odds using groundbreaking effects and old-fashioned filmmaking nous. Its unique mood quickly takes hold, casting a shadow that will follow you for days after.
Lee plays rocker Eric Draven who comes back from the dead to avenge the murder of him and his fiancé Shelley at the hands of Top Dollar’s henchman, one year after their slaughter on Devil’s Night in a grim and lawless Detroit. (They filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, however.)
Ostensibly an action thriller, at its heart The Crow is a love story. A love so powerful that it can transcend death. Shot in a monochromatic wash with high-contrast flashbacks and fast cuts inspired by director Alex Proyas’ early days in music videos and commercials, the film is a bold visual statement in 90’s cinema.
The Crow also features a suitably unsettling and abrasive soundtrack with tracks including ‘Big Empty’ by Stone Temple Pilots, ‘Dead Souls’ by Nine Inch Nails, ‘Ghostrider’ by The Rollins Band and ‘Snakedriver’ by Jesus and the Mary Chain.
Last word on Brandon though, who not only shows his athletic prowess and choreography skills here, but also his ability to connect to the softer, more vulnerable and innocent edges of his character’s tormented soul. And the ultimate futility of his vengeance.
Listen to this guy talk. The way he enunciates. So poised, thoughtful, charismatic. Reminds me of someone…
He would have been a huge star. Someone on YouTube mentioned him in the same breath as The Matrix. I could see that 🤯
Though no one does confused and dumbfounded quite like Keanu.
Not just a gigolo
It’s 1932 and we are at the Malmaison club in London. Elegant diners engage in eager conversation. One by one, their gaze turns to the suave gentleman with the tailcoat and Tinseltown smile as he glides into his seat at the piano.
His diction is immaculate. There is a pomp and rapture in how he sings ‘Close Your Eyes’ – accenting certain words with vibrato while breathing romance and verve into others. His torso veers to the right, his eyes to the heavens.
His touch is precise. The left hand swoops across the keys with a showman’s flourish. Then he launches into an agile solo and concludes with an impossibly high note. The well-heeled crowd applauds with genuine admiration. It’s 1932 and this man is black. Remarkable.
So much of what we hear about Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson revolves around scandal that the achievements are overshadowed. It reminds me of something Hanif Abdurraqib noted about Hutch’s friend Josephine Baker in A Little Devil In America.
Like Baker, Hutch “captivated and controlled” imaginations. It would be naïve to ignore the significance of race in this allure, an obsession with the ‘exotic’. But what about ambition, talent, an ineffable something extra that makes the spell linger?
In Hutch’s case, we should stop and consider what it took to reach the upper echelons of British society. To be holding court among smitten aristocracy, politicians and the Bright Young Things of the cabaret scene at a time of direct discrimination.
He would go on to make more than 400 recordings and become the highest-paid entertainer in Europe for almost two decades. That takes more than sex appeal, social climbing or whatever else has been used as an anecdote for his existence. Downton Abbey’s Jack Ross, he was not.
Read my full feature in Beyond The Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music, which accompanies the British Library exhibition of the same name. On until 26 August.
Prince 4Ever 💜 🎂
Yesterday was The Purple One’s birthday. I’ve always been more into celebrating arrivals than commemorating departures. But I had to show gratitude back in April because Prince has permeated the second half of my life, ascending from eccentric pop star to guiding spirit.
Someone who has, time and again, offered sensational musical highs and who represented the great potential of human endeavour through mastery and dedication to craft. That’s not to say he was of this Earth but he came to us as a messenger, that’s for sure.
There have been many great pieces of writing about the artist, from the encyclopedic to the ecstatic. Today, I insist you read/listen to Ian Penman’s seismic contribution to London Review of Books from 2019 – The Question of U. His prose in the collection It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track has been described as “mercurial”, “inimitable” and indispensable”.
Using two books as springboards – ex-wife Mayte Garcia’s The Most Beautiful and James Draper’s Prince: Life & Times – Penman navigates the smoke and mirrors of the superstar’s storied career with great measure and acuity.
He’s savvy enough to know that you might be able to plot the key milestones and turning points on a timeline but we’ll never get past his “image armour” to any sense of Prince as “a fully human presence”. Indeed, control is a big part of The Question of U – what is gained and lost by it.
We’ll never really know the person behind the persona. He didn’t step out of character, not even for Garcia. Part of Prince would remain beyond reach. Palpable but ineffable. Perhaps that is how it has to be. That’s the trade-off in the presence of extraordinary talent.
Though tinged with sadness, the climax to Penman’s feature is beautiful. So beautiful that it brought I’m A Fan author Sheena Patel to tears when she read it on Rough Trade Books’ Soho Radio show last year. Thanks to her for the recommendation.
“Just before his death, Prince was playing all the old songs again: just himself, a piano and a microphone. Playing the songs his fans wanted to hear, with appropriate lightness or gravity. People I know who saw these shows said they were something else: piercing, alive, unforgettable. And while it may not have been a meaningful solution to his long-term creative problems, maybe revisiting the emotions buried in those songs helped jog loose something inside. A breath of genuine memory, thoughts suitable for the age he was and not the silly, death-denying pretence of his Everywhere All the Time Party.
“Think of something like Mitchell’s collection Both Sides Now (2000): a mixture of torch songs, old standards, new takes on such early classics as the title song and ‘A Case of You’. She returns to these songs of her (and our) youth and sings them inside out, sings them with her 57-year-old voice and all it contains: all the love, desire, and disappointment; all the changes, choruses and chords; all the lessons learned from long hours working with brushes and paint. Cigarette smoke, lipstick and holy wine. A late Rembrandt self-portrait in song – and it’s absolutely sublime.
“Prince died alone, of course, in the middle of the night, between floors at Paisley Park, a heartbeat away from his studio. The middle of the night, when names and colours matter least. In the end, a painful reality triumphed over all easeful fantasy, and pain-numbing drugs emptied out the interfering dialogue of everyone and everything else. One morning you wake and all the time has melted away: no more hotel bedroom afternoons, light moving like seaweed over the pale impersonal walls. All your life, dreaming of the other side of the mirror, where the colours all reverse, and now you finally remember what it was you saw there, so long ago: clouds, full of rain.”
“No one said this can be art”
Jenn Nkiru’s short film Black to Techno is a standout piece of work from the Reverb show at 180 Studios in London. An exhibition celebrating the intersection of art and sound.
I first watched it a few years ago and am happy to see it revived in such auspicious company. The likes of Kahlil Joseph, Jeremy Deller, Julianknxx, Caterina Barbieri and Gabriel Moses also feature.
Brand-sponsored content is often met with cynicism and dismissed as nothing more than an exercise in vanity or mediocrity. But Jenn’s short film – originally part of the Frieze x Gucci Second Summer of Love series – goes extra deep into the relationship between Detroit and the music that became a global movement.
Black to Techno is more a state of mind than a film – an archaeology of sound and imagery. The city is presented as an Afrofuturist continuum of hope and exploration, stretching from the Great Migration to Motown, The Last Poets, The Belleville Three and the daring production of J Dilla.
Musicians there have been prophets and leaders of a revolution time and again, liberating body and mind. In the process, they found kindred spirits around the world, not least in Berlin. (Although, over in Frankfurt, it’s worth noting how the director of MOMEM, a museum of electronic music, appeared to question Detroit’s claim to techno in 2023.)
This clip about Detroit workers being in tune with the machine encapsulated the unique rhythm and intonation of The D. The track is ‘Hydro Cubes’ by the mighty Drexciya.
One to come back to - and there is no greater compliment in the digital age.
Respect to Bradford Young (Selma, A Most Violent Year, Arrival, I Called Him Morgan) for the stunning cinematography.
The perfectionism trap
I keep coming across articles about self-improvement at the moment. How to speed read without forgetting anything. How efficient people get stuff done. How to sleep better. How to argue better. How to make the best [insert latest food obsession here]. Is it just me or have we become perpetually incapable of accepting who we are and what we have in the present?
What’s feeding this prevailing sense of inadequacy? How does it relate to capitalism, competition vs collaboration, social mobility, the attention economy, the tyranny of the personal brand, the growing sense of individualism in society, what is expected of us at work and in relationships, and what we expect of ourselves?
This article by psychoanalyst and Goldsmiths professor Josh Cohen joins the dots in a meaningful way.
“Perfectionism may appear to spur us on to adult successes. But in truth it is a fundamentally childish attitude. It imbues us with the conviction that life in effect ends when we give up hope of becoming the best version of ourselves. On the contrary … that is the moment at which life can finally begin.”
Cohen also references the work of Michael Sandel, who was mentioned in an LSE talk about alternatives to neoliberalism that I attended earlier in the week with my mentee. Sandel is a fierce critic of meritocratic capitalism: how it’s corroded solidarity and the notion of common good, pitting hubristic winners against chronic losers.
It’s ok to want to improve, to aspire to grow. But when that ambition metastasises into a captive dissatisfaction, it’s time to resist. Maybe the key is to enjoy what we can produce instead of trying to squeeze more from less.