Strand Three Profiles and Interviews - Mr. Shohid Jolil

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Mr. Shohid Jolil

Age: 33

Interview date: 15 _ Jun _ 06

Interviewed by: Jamil Iqbal

Mr. Jolil, also known as Osmani Soundz, started out as a member of ‘Osmani Knight Soundz’ – a collective of DJs, rappers, dancers and visual artists based in London’s East End. By the late 1980s ‘Osmani Knight Soundz’moved into the ‘rave’ scene, playing alongside top DJs as well as organising peace raves and cultural events in the Bengali underground music scene.By 1994 he had created the very first Asian Drum and bass track titled ‘Spiritual Masterkey’. He currently holds a residency at Nasha’s monthly club night ‘Eastern Drum and Breaks’ at Herbal, London and is working on producing The Nasha Experience live project.

Shohid Jolil

Q: How did you come into music?
In the very early stages when I was in school coming up to the third and forth year, I was looking for something broader, something creative. I was listening to different types of music at that time. Music was in some ways banned at home when I was growing up. I was listening to music through watching either a Bengali movie or Hindi movies. Video was difficult to get hold of and had to watch movies during weekend. So at some point I actually had to learn the language Hindi from watching films. But it was the music that got me interested. Mum (would) wake up in the morning and there was a Hindi music playing and probably some one put the radio on, and there was some English music happening there. So it was already happening, there was blending of different styles of music already happening. You walk from one room to another room there is a different style of music.

From there the idea started for me. At school, it was more about having parties. You just finishing exams, we used to have the day time parties between 11 O’clock until 4 O’clock, before everyone finishing school and go home. So we were organising events in schools and then eventually in youth clubs, age group was from like 13 to about 18, that sort of age group; started mixing different types of records at that time I got hold of some hip-hop, soul, R&B, Michael Jackson. I started experimenting with few traditional records of Bengali music and Hindi film music. I just worked on some ideas of mixing and blending and playing this when I was actually performing at the club or the youth day centre and see how the crowd would react. It was a bit of techno music eventually as it progressed. Technology was playing a big part as well. At that point to get hold of a studio to work and experiment with music, you were looking at tens of thousands of pounds. So we were very limited of what we had. So being in the youth club, getting hold of some funding, to get hold of some turn table and a mixture and speakers to go along with that, was quite difficult. But it was a starting point and in the last ten years, the technology progressed so much, sound players were more accessible, prices came down on a lot of stuffs. Then eventually laptops came, computers really help us a lot. The first computer that I got hold of was in 1991 and so I was messing about with actually programming music rather then playing records, and trying out different ideas.

Shohid Jolil of Osmani Soundz

In 1994, I officially got a track together through a youth project from the area. That was my first time in a proper studio and recording a track. From there I just got involved with the club nights. In 1996 I started working with quite influential people, a friend of mine called Talvin Singh started a night around the area, Anokha, which we got involved in. Lot of music was happening before that as well, that led to that. No one taught me till that point, it was just basically watching, going to events and basically learning from there. There was no one actually there or a tutor to tell you, “This was what you do”. Basically you are on the street, you got to learn in the street level, there is no one going to teach you. Either you want to learn or you don’t want to learn, if you want to learn, you are going to learn anyway. So that’s all what was happening at that point.

Q: Were you a part of Joi Bangla?
I personally was not a part of Joi Bangla. But I did come to a lot of Joi Bangla events and I liked what they were doing. We were on the same wave length you can say. It was great for another generation to work around same sorts of ideas and keep hold of some musical heritage and to work in with modern dance music. What Joi was doing at that point was great. I think it really opened up a new avenue.

Q: Were you all on your own?
Basically, you have to get hold of the record first, the type of music you want to play and experiment with it. I was very fussy at that point. I was very particular of what sort of music I got hold of and I can do with that. So I was experimenting with the mixture, turn tables and just running some ideas. I didn’t really learn too much about music, like the key and stuff like that just basically what I heard, which sounded good to my ear and the rest of my friends and they were there as well, listening to what I was doing.

Q: Were you part of any group?
In the early stages, coming out of the schools, there was a group of 12 friends who came together and worked around music ideas. There were two of us really worked on the musical ideas and the rest were performing either through vocal or through dance and through graphics as well. It was in the late 1980s, 1988 – 1989 we started off getting ideas together. We came up with so many names what to call the group. We were more of a promotional company at that point you can say. Early stages working for youth clubs to schools, as a whole collective movement of young youths really, we focused our energy into the creative side of the music, arts, graphics etc.

Q: What type of music do you create?
I don’t personally play any instruments but hip-hop, soul, bit of Michael Jackson we used to play around. A lot of old Decca-records made from Calcutta so it sort of came through and from that rhythms, melodies and instruments I just got more familiar with and then just taking the best bits out of it. We were using tape recorders, recording samples and just looping something and just working on ideas from that.

Q: Did you produce any album?
I personally have not produced any album. I have been more track based, I have done lots of tracks which have gone through various compilations, that people has asked for over the years. Lot of people ask, why don’t you do an album. I find a collective effort stronger than personal. I haven’t come to that stage where I am going to make something personal. For an album to be made it must be very personal. At the moment what I do make is sort of club based. I used to play in clubs and that’s what people want. There is a sort of formula working and I am following it what I am doing. There is another side that I haven’t explored yet, that is my personal side. Eventually I have to do it because idea is building towards that. There was a point where myself and a friend of mine wanted to put an album together, we found it more club based, it wasn’t personal.

Q Do you have any role model?
I wouldn’t say role models but music artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Shankar Mahadevan, Rashid Khan and some Indian artists. I have been exposed to these artists over the years. I have also been influenced by all sorts of genre of music and ideas from different type of music which comes up once in a while. You don’t realise it but music which comes around and goes around.

Q Tell us about the social conditions around Brick Lane?
I haven’t got much support from the Asian community music wise as much I got from the English community. The Asian Community didn’t want to know. The Asian community was still exposed to Indian film songs from Bollywood, that’s what kept them occupied. We had lots of European and Afro-Caribbean who came to our events. Our community wasn’t going for that at that point but they did back us in some ways. We have to remember the community was also going through the religion aspect as well and it was getting bit stronger and some people didn’t want to do anything with music. It was OK for our community to listen to Hindi music.

Q Did you get any sort of funding?
The youth clubs we used to go to and these were the funding the youth clubs got for the decks, speakers, leads. We were learning what sort of leads to get for the amplifiers. It was good learning process. Personally there was a lack of funding. There wasn’t any funding at all. We used to go to different youth clubs including Progressive Youth Club (organisation) (PYO) and host the night of music and entertainment. In some way it was bringing the community together because there was lots of trouble and fighting going on with youths around the area i.e. Shadwell, Stepney Green, Whitechapel, Brick Lane. There used to be youth groups everywhere and there always used to be clash through football, it used to take place at Chicksand Square and there used to be lots of conflict between different groups, Bengalis against Bengalis and at the same time trying to fight racism. Youths wanted to create names for themselves through violence and that’s what we wanted to solve. Violence used to start with little petty things like little things as what part of Bangladesh you are from or say someone kicked someone too hard in the football pitch or say someone stared at someone for too long. The influence of TV played a part. It was the influence of American TV and films that were coming out from Hollywood had a big role at that point.

Q Do you think your music was uniting the community together?
What I think during that point we got a lot of people together. Even I got people who myself and my friends had problems with. We had people who came out to our events to show off their dancing skills. That was another way of getting your aggression out on the dance floor, so it used to be a competition between each other.

Q What type of dance was popular then?
There was a lot of hip hop based dance moves and fusion of break dancing. The dance which was coming out was very street level because everybody used to practice in the street. You could walk down in the street and someone in the corner there was trying new moves, there were also ideas from television or whatever. We did some good dance choreography with our guys with new ideas. Fusing Indian katak dance with modern dance and the transition from one to the other, how do you do it i.e. putting your fingers together, you make a symbol there. Someway it was through movements, fashion and music, trying to sort of create barriers. Base Clef which became Blue Note used to be a club where Joi, Haroon and Farook used to play where lots of raves took place. It was underground where people used to break into warehouses where they used to put up their own speakers until it used to get raided by police and you packed your bags. Law changed and if you got caught in illegal raves police would come and confiscate all your equipment until they started playing in basement of old jazz clubs. In Base Clef, Joi was doing a Thursday night there and I was doing Tuesday night there. The capacity was about 350 people and there were couple of floors as well. It was one of those underground places where no one knows you and you don’t have to worry about your uncle to be there or any of your elder to be there and where you could chill and the music was good.

What happened now with all the clubs around the area had a big part to play in breaking barriers because people started to think what’s happening there and they come from all areas. Creative people from film makers to designers were coming out to see what was going on and that’s what has happened to the area now with all the creativity that has been going on, that had an influence from the night clubs and so on.

Q. Did you participate in any Melas?
I did a few Baishakhi Melas, some of the earlier ones. Around here I did Wanstead festivals, Stepney Mela. Couple of occasions it was raining and people had to duck and couple of occasions it was really good. People really felt the music. The feedback was good. I have been playing lots of festivals abroad as well not only here in London.

Q Are you in a group?
Currently I am working with a record label called the Nasha Records which is a collective of artists who have worked with other artists like Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh. In the past years we found out that we need to actually have a different area solely to do with dance rather than chilling out so we went through the phase of changing music style into a heavier, melodically and rhythmically faster than what we did in the past and we released couple of albums in the last three/ four years. My first trip abroad was in 1997 around Europe and I am still doing it. First I did it with Anokha, sounds of Asian underground music and through that demand for the music to go abroad. The demand is in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. The audience is not Asian but the Asian community will come out because there is something Asian happening. The good thing about going to these places is that it brings out pockets of communities who haven’t heard the music and it is something which represents them as well.

Q Do you have any memorable event?
I have so many but India was my favourite. I went to Rajasthan couple of years ago for the Jaipur festival. We did the Nasha experience, the whole collective working with the local folk musicians in Rajasthan and performing in places like hotels and on top of 16 floors high building, open top with no roof, playing out to people. We had the police knocking at the hotel door because whole of Rajasthan listening to our music. We also did it at the Rambhag Palace hotel’s gardens with the maharani and the prince of Jaipur with royalty. That was really nice. Beautiful palace but now it is a hotel. The third event which we did was the old steel factory which is converted into a night club for one night, we got the kitchens in with caterers. They really turned it up. It is a place you would never think of changing it into a night club. We were there for two weeks. We met lots of other artists we heard of but never seen and met lots of connection through the Rajasthan connection. I got to meet a few Bengali people from Bangladesh who got to settle there. We celebrated our Eid there with the people of Rajasthan and it was a great feeling really.

Q. What is the focus of music regarding the younger generation here in East London?
At the moment it is on MTV. It is very MTV based. You can tell by the music they listen and the accessories they carry. We were finding our identity at that point. We made it easier for the next generation. The seriousness has gone way from music. When we did it there was soul and a spiritual element to it. Nowadays girls in mini skirts dancing to music which is all diluted. It is working for a different generation. It has watered down a bit and somewhat lost. We kept some of the heritage going but nowadays you can carry music on your phone. Music does not have any value now. It is so accessible now. You can listen to music on the internet and it is easy to find. In our days we had to run from record shops to record shops, we had to travel all the way to Southall just to track down a record. Milfa (Bengali record shop) had a record company and they used to keep records of Runa Laila. For us it was going around and finding these materials. Nowadays, you sit in front of a computer and you get it easily. It has no value, it is disposable.

Q. Do you think when you re-mix you lose the essence of the music?
When you re-mix people are not sure of the content of the music. It really depends on the re-mixing. You really have to understand the classical element of the music. Some of my friends are trained in classical music and when I do it, they are there to give me opinion of what is right and what is wrong. The classical scale is different to modern beats and you have to find the right base line and the right keys. You have to see if it is justified or not. I can take good piece of music and put wrong beats and take it out of content. A sad song can be made into a happy music and put it into a wrong content. A person should understand what he is re-mixing.

Q Have you played any instrument?
A turn-table is called an instrument. I can’t play drum or keyboard but I can follow rhythm and sound and am still learning. I have always thought of playing a flute or a guitar but never had the time.

Q. Any encouragement from your parents when you were young?
My parents wanted me to be family oriented. They wanted us to go to school and do your homework and go to your Arabic classes. They wanted me to stop hanging out with lafangas and luchas (yobs). We were disciplined in some ways. We never got the push to go into music. I used to study arts and graphics. That was my outlet for my creativity. I also got involved with fashion designing and textiles. We used to design our own flyers and posters. Cut, paste and photocopy but after computers it made our life easier.

Q Do you have any complaints from your wife regarding your music?
I have been married for 15 years and she has been brilliant. She has always given me my space to do my work. She understands what I do. She is of mixed race and this made it a bit easier in some ways. She has been very supportive. I always try to find a quality time to spend with her with a hectic lifestyle I am running at the moment. I worked in a hotel for ten years until last year. I came out of there because music was looking good and things were happening. I was doing travelling and stuff. Music I think was just bubbling inside me and I needed to spend some time in the studio and was getting so many opportunities. Now I am doing it fulltime.

Q What is your future, where is it heading?
I want to work in movies. I have been given some opportunities to work on films as well as film making. I sometimes do some film editing. Anything that I can create and have an outlet i.e. music and film. At the moment it is blurry. There is lot of opportunity to work with some great musicians along the way. So far I can see is music and be creative.