« India’s Heroes :+: Goldspot goes to India. »

Brown in America

The Thursday morning Boston Bhangra Blast

By: Karthik :+: Under: Brown in America, Culture, Entertainment, Music, Radio
On: ⋅ August 16, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
Discuss in our off-topic forums

Looks like you are new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Komal Trivedi
Photo from Boston Globe (Globe Staff Photo / George Rizer)

Ever so often we come across people in the entertainment industry who take the South Asian diaspora to the next level. With one foot inside the door, they make our cause of being heard and understood easier.

Meet Komal Trivedi, A British DJ, who has made Boston College her home. Sipping Chai and spinning Bhangra, Komal is on WZBC, 90.3 from 7 A.M. to 9 A.M every Thursday. Like everyone else, I have to switch to the “International” radio or TV station in a Major city, at the right time to even hear Desi music, but being on FM, she is making waves.

When you cant find what you love, you go ahead and create it, and thats exactly what she did.

Asian Underground burst into the British mainstream in the 1990s, but Trivedi says that when she moved to the Boston area three years ago, this type of music was difficult to find, especially on the radio.

Trivedi was eager to fill the void, so a colleague at WGBH, where Trivedi is an executive assistant, suggested that she approach the Boston College station, where the colleague worked as a DJ in his spare time. The colleague showed Trivedi the ropes at WZBC, and just over a year ago “Bricklane Beats” was born.

In her interview, she talks about her show “Bricklane Beats”, how she started the show and about borrowing tapes from her dad, which is a collection of songs from old Bollywood movies.

What stuck me was her thoughts on reaching out to US artists and to use the show to disperse information about the South Asian diaspora in the Boston area and to America in general.

I think it is time for us to upgrade our smoke signal systems, because we missed this piece of news

It would not be the first time that Trivedi has been exposed to an audience outside of Boston. This summer, she was selected as one of 10 finalists, from some 1,452 hopefuls, in the nationwide Public Radio Talent Quest.

As this Thursday morning’s show comes to an end, Trivedi breaks the disappointing news to her listeners: she has been knocked out of the Talent Quest competition.

Next time sister, use the power of the Desi blogosphere and drop us a line. After all we “made” papaya stay in the hunt for a very long time.

If you are not ready to move to Boston, then you can listen to “Bricklane Beats” live at http://wzbc.org/listen.html and download it at http://underheard.org.

« India’s Heroes :+: Goldspot goes to India. »
Discuss in our off-topic forums