DJ Rekha (née Rekha Malhotra), the nation’s foremost purveyor of Bhangra music and the founder of Sangament, Inc., speaks to creative.reconstruction about the business of popularizing an art form, and the art of sustaining Basement Bhangra — New York City’s longest-running music-and-dance party.
CREATIVE.RECONSTRUCTION: Can you briefly describe the enterprise that is Sangament, Inc.?
DJ REKHA: Sangament is the name I’ve given to my company. It’s a combination of the words Sangam and entertainment. “Sangam” itself is a north Indian Hindi word meaning the confluence of rivers; it’s where the rivers flow, in essence. Sangament Inc. is the entity through which I do all of my work — as a DJ, as a marketer and as a consultant.
Do you recall your initial investment?
It’s a bit difficult to say, because the entity has been evolving ever since my cousins and I bought some DJ equipment in our late teens, and I consider Sangament to be an extension of that. But with that being said, the initial investment was about $300. Sangament, Inc., the formal corporate entity, has been in business for about six years.
How would you describe or characterize Bhangra?
Bhangra is a music and a dance that originally comes from Punjab: A region — and an ethnicity — divided by India and Pakistan. It’s one of the forms of music that’s indigenous to the area; it was transported to the UK through the immigration of Punjabi peoples that came to the UK post World War II. And now, roughly three generations later, the music has taken in its environment and developed and transformed in a unique way.
What was it that drew you into that cultural space?
The cultural space was my household in many respects. I was exposed to the language via my parents. I didn’t have much exposure to that music. I grew up on Bollywood, which is a Hindi language-based music that emerged in the Hindi-language film industry. I was initially exposed to the music by my mother; she brought back a tape from England after a visit there. This was around the time that the Bhangra scene really started kicking-off in the UK. I heard it and it really blew my mind. At the same time, my cousins and I just got interested in DJ-ing and forming a crew.
How was Bhangra initially received in India, and how is it received today?
I think initially, in India and maybe even in Pakistan, Bhangra was perceived as sort of regionally based folk music: very specific to a locale, very jubilant, very lively and very festive. It was and is the music of north Indian weddings. In the UK, in the same way, it was brought over and it kept going through cultural practices. Especially because of the political context in which it sort of incubated in the UK: you had these communities of color that didn’t really assimilate or mix and they really held on to their cultural traditions, so they kept it alive. And in terms of its perception, Bhangra has been like House [music]; it keeps having waves in the UK, of breaking and becoming mainstream, and then disappearing.
There was actually a hit a few years ago with Punjabi MC [“Beware of the Boys”]. This record that broke in Europe, and then Jay-Z actually rapped on it here [in the States] quite by accident. The whole idea has been that this music is really going to break and go somewhere. And it does a little bit and then it doesn’t. But there’re still a lot of barriers to entry to south Asian artists in the UK. Even though it’s a community that’s embedded in that cultural landscape, I think that artists there tend to have a hard time breaking out. Society there is still kind of insular and the industry is kind of shallow. So we have yet to see the corporate forces that encourage, discourage, exploit and co-opt these cultural forms — all of which are necessary for a genre of music to become “mainstream.”
India, China and America seem to be three nations with large enough, and wealthy enough, populations to sustain their own independent cultural forms — commercially speaking. Why hasn’t that seemed to happen with Bhangra in India?
Well, it has. But you have to understand that Bhangra is a very specific kind of music, and in India it’s popular now, to some degree. But in India, Bollywood and Hindi-language culture is more accessible to people; it’s not simply that Bhangra isn’t popular. Also, where you have a community and you have a large diaspora, what works in India — and I know first-hand as a DJ — doesn’t fly in the UK and it doesn’t work here. People’s tastes are different.
There was a moment in the early 90s where these Bhangra bands were becoming quite popular in the UK. They went to India and didn’t get any traction. Because India is so diverse culturally — so many languages, the largest middle-class in the world — it’s hard to generalize peoples’ preferences. Only after Punjabi MC’s track broke internationally did it break in India, very much in the same way a Madonna track would break in India: It got put on a soundtrack in a Bollywood movie.
You mentioned that you got exposed to Bhangra music through your family, and that, in turn, stimulated your interest in DJ-ing. Is it accurate to say then that this enterprise proceeded from that interest in DJ-ing?
Well, I grew up in a business-oriented family. So I have this little entrepreneurial…problem. Growing up, I always worked for my dad; he had several businesses. For several years I worked at his store in midtown Manhattan and, you know, that was my business education. So there’s something very innate in me about not working for anyone, having a certain kind of hustle going. And having done it a lot — having dealt with cash growing up — that was always inherent. I always found a way to maintain some autonomy. So when I started DJ-ing, it was a hobby that I always took seriously as a business. It took a while to get it down on paper and what have you, but the minute money was exchanged, it was a business to me. It started with my cousins and just grew from there. I have a real keen sense and interest in branding and remaining a viable entity. I came to it through Bhangra music and as a DJ, but I see it as a larger thing, a larger idea.
Did your experience with the family business help to allay the anxieties that entrepreneurs often feel in starting a new business?
Unfortunately, I inherited some of those anxieties. Working in an environment like a family store, it’s very informal and there isn’t really a sense of making or not making money. And because the income tended to be so inconsistent, we were told that we needed to watch it. So I picked up that anxiety, but I also picked up some practical things, particularly on the management side: like working with people, and understanding that there’s going to be turnover. In my dad’s business, people were constantly leaving. So I recognized that you always needed to be ready for that and other semi-unpredictable things. Also, working as a DJ, in clubs and private events, you just develop a thick skin about things and problems. And I’ve noticed that the best-run venues I’ve worked and partnered with over the years were those that were managed by people that just knew how to deal and didn’t get overly excited or panicked when problems arose.
What have been some of the challenges you’ve encountered in sustaining Sangament?
The problem with our club nights, is that we don’t sell advance tickets, and so you never know what’s going to happen on any given night. You don’t know if the rain is going to make the people come out more or less. And between the managers and the bouncers, everyone is Monday-morning quarterbacking: “You know what it is, it’s because…” fill in the blank. I guess we’re just really affected by seasonality and by things that are happening in the world. Club-going is a very particular kind of entertainment. We survived 9/11; we had to, and we had to determine what to do in that instance. Can you have a party after something like that went down? On the flip side: Can you just abruptly stop? How do you as a business keep going when what you do is provide X kind of service and it just doesn’t seem appropriate, in a given moment, to provide that service. How do you get through that?
How did you choose to handle that situation?
Well, one of the things I seek to do as an artist, when I’m wearing my artist hat, is to going beyond just playing music. My feeling is that we create spaces, so there’s a lot of care invested in creating spaces that are open to people. We do a lot of physical things: We create flyers, we project images on the wall, and we make all these little choices that result in an experience. So we had a night scheduled 9 days after 9/11. And we were at a loss to determine what to do. Do we say No? Do we say Yes? What do we do? And I ended up making a decision to open. We didn’t do anything in the way of promotion; we simply said that we’re open, because everything else was shut down. We’d been watching CNN, and everyone was in a daze, but I was just like “come down and have a drink with me.” And we gave a lot of money way, because we felt it was the right thing to do. We just dealt.
But that being said, the biggest challenge hasn’t really been the event side; that’s almost second nature at this point. My biggest challenges have been cash flow: I feel the frustration of wanting to do more but not having the resources. I learned business through working at a candy store. I’ve never had to raise capital. And just the persistent challenges of being efficient and handling the minor annoyances that tend to slow you down — essentially, the basic “Business 101” stuff that I’ve had to learn on the job, so to speak.
We recently launched a formal recruitment process to hire someone. Usually it functions on word-of-mouth, but I really didn’t just want to hire anyone. But now I know why companies pay their employees thousand-dollar fees to refer good people. It’s tough! We ended up having to re-evaluate our plan. We were going to have two people: one person doing operations and another doing marketing. I liked the idea of separating the functions and roles, but I kept getting the wrong kinds of people: people who really wanted to do the marketing stuff, people who weren’t anal enough or just didn’t have enough experience to handle operations. In the end, my marketing person was like: “I’m here, I can just work full-time.” And we just opted to hire a temp to fill-in the gaps. I just don’t have the energy and the resources to recruit somebody at this point. So it’s things like that I didn’t think that I’d have to deal with.
So lack of capital is a persistent challenge. Does anything else come to mind?
I have the general feeling that there’s a lot of potential. And I’m not worried about sustainability, but growth. And to me, growth includes capital. But I feel like I’ve done a good job of building a brain-trust of friends, of people who are informal consultants to me. People who work in consulting firms or other related fields and are lending their expertise to me. The frustration is that they’re available when they have time. I haven’t really tried to raise capital because I’m waiting for that one big thing. In the meantime, I’m cultivating the network and resources that will enable me to do that when the time comes that we really think Sangament is ready to grow to and develop a really strong venture. The areas of the business that are growing are the marketing side and the consulting side.
And those sides of the business help companies penetrate the south Asian market in the US and Europe?
My clients tend to be more boutique-oriented. I find myself attracted to those projects that I have a real connection to. We don’t really have the resources to deploy international-scale initiatives, but we are working with record labels and certain kinds of media services. What we’re really good at is viral marketing and using our existing brands and channels to engage tastemakers. As the face of the company, I have to be very selective about what kinds of projects I take on. I can’t really risk losing my credibility. So by default, my client roster is comprised of record labels and people doing very culturally specific stuff.
What’s your relationship — and the relationship of Bhangra — to the American music industry?
To the American music industry, if anything, I’m just a squirrel trying to get my nut. I’m not overly interested in a “grand-success” model. I believe that slow and steady wins the race. After nine-some-odd years, I just signed a deal with Koch Records, and I’m really happy with it. I like the company. I like the way that they work. I also don’t see it as my meal ticket; it’s just adding something to my enterprise. Koch tends to align with artists that already have their own following. And I think that the most important thing that a label can do for you is to get your music on the shelf.
One of the benefits of actually having a business of my own is understanding the other side of the equation, is knowing that the label is a company: They have X amount of resources and the things that will give them a return — and the people who are nicest to work with — is where the energy is going to go. So make it easy for them, and it will be easier for you. In the case of the Punjabi MC record, that song was licensed in this territory. The licensing label made tons of money on the song, but you couldn’t find it in the stores. I say that to illustrate that several strategies exist for monetizing music. As an artist, it’s key to understand the tendencies of the label you’re affiliated with.
A few moments ago you mentioned that you didn’t have a grand success strategy for Sangament….
No, I didn’t mean to suggest that. I do have a large-scale vision for the company. What I meant to say is that a lot of music artists want get on MTV; they want a Grammy; they want platinum sales. I simply want people to like the music enough to buy it. I don’t need the validation of platinum sales, or Grammy awards or video-music play. That model seems to serves X segment of the population, and what we’re seeing in the music industry is the realization that to sell products to different demographics it’s important to realize that people want things in different ways. Starbucks sells a lot of CDs; Oprah sells a lot of books.
So you have no objection to Sangament, or DJ Rekha, becoming a recognizable brand?
Uggh! That sounds awful! [Laughs.] No, bring it on. I mean there was definitely a moment when I was like “Buy me out, give me a salary, and let me just have creative control.” And that was borne of the frustration of not having the resources to do stuff. And frankly, I’d still entertain offers of that nature. I realize that I have a certain way of doing things: ethics, integrity and fairness at every corner.
For instance, it’s fairly easy to get people to volunteer to be in the creative industries. I don’t believe in that, for lots of reasons: one of which is that if you’re going to transact with someone, you need to break the bread commerce. I just believe that. I certainly want to get paid when I do something. I get offers to do fancy benefits and they’ll be like, “We can’t pay you.”
It’s funny — it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished, someone will always ask you to do something for free. They’ll say things like “We can get you a car service,” or “We can get you a this.” And I’m like “Don’t get me that, get me some money!” In the same regard, if Sangament ever were to become “big,” I’d want to keep those kinds of things in mind.
Does Sangament have much of a presence or foundation in India?
Sangament doesn’t really. I do, and Basement Bhangra does, but not Sangament. And again, one of the challenges I have is creating a name for the company that’s independent of me. And that’s important because as a company, we can do a lot more — brand consulting, promotions, marketing, CD song arrangement — than one might associate with DJ-ing.
In closing, what are your hopes for Bhangra? Would you like to see it become a cultural institution in the way of, say, Hip-Hop?
I don’t know. I find a lot of similarities between Bhangra and Dancehall, insofar as they both come from a very specific cultural experience — as does Hip-Hop. Not to discount Hip-Hop in any way. Arguably, Hip-Hop references Dancehall in many ways. Many of the Hip-Hop pioneers were second-generation Jamaican and Caribbean immigrants. But the whole notion or structure of success may be problematic. The music is powerful; it has a certain aesthetic and I think it will always have an audience. I’d like to see it exposed to a wider audience in whatever way possible.
Have you contemplated an exit strategy for yourself as a DJ? As a businessperson?
It’s funny, for many years I said that I would stop Basement Bhangra after 10 years, because 10 years is good for a club night. And part of me still wants to, believe me. I am not lying. I’m like: Let ‘em crave it, let ‘em want it. Go out when you’re on a high note! The party definitely requires a large commitment. People have counseled me to hand it over to someone else to run, but I can’t do that. In nine years — and we do 18 a year — I’ve only missed two nights. If the party starts to weaken, I’ll be the first one to say stop. Everything comes to an end; it all functions on a cycle. If the other facets of the company continue to grow, I’ll be more inclined to step back.
Have you been approached by other companies seeking a collaboration, partnership or merger?
Not yet. But my feeling is that if we focus on the things that are meaningful to us, and the things we do well, those things will come eventually.
So, in theory, you’d be open to it?
Maybe. Maybe. I mean … yeah, maybe.
This article was originally published in a spring 2007 edition of “The Opportunity,” the newspaper of the NYU Stern School of Business. It was later included in a collection titled “Voices of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Experience,” published in December 2010 by Greenwood, an imprint of ABC-CLIO.
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