Talvin Singh has staked his claim as a musical diplomat. With his debut album last year, the drum and space compilation Anokha, Soundz of the Asian Underground, Singh brought an Eastern vibe to Western dance floors. |Though only two tracks on Anokha (Urdu for unique) were fully his creations, his remixes captured the spirit of both worlds. Singh, who before Anokha had already worked with the likes of Bjork, Future Sound of London, Sun Ra and Bim Sherman, released Anokha at the height of his weekly gig hosting a club in London, also called Anokha.

On his new album, O.K., the twenty-eight-year-old proves his mastery at melding sounds from different parts of the globe on his own songs. During his travels in making O.K. -- Bombay, Madras, Okinawa, New York and London -- Singh employed a number of musicians and performers from these far reaches, including bassist Bill Laswell, in his attempts at joining organic old world beats with more technofied dance floor rhythms. Singh layers the disc with classical Indian instruments, like sitars and flutes, alongside bold beats.

Recently Singh, who is considered a tabla virtuoso, helped make a television documentary that delved into the history of "undiscovered" Indian drums. Singh spoke to the Rolling Stone Network from his car phone while driving through the streets of L.A. where he was kicking off a short stint in the U.S.

You have said O.K. is an album that took something like ten years to make. What exactly do you mean by that?

All it means is, everyone buys into product, but everything is commodified. No one buys into what goes on in a musician's life -- the thirteen years before the time he's actually delivering on an album or painting on a canvas.

You recorded with several different people in India. How did you meet Ajay Naidu, the one who does the spoken word on "Soni" and "Decca"?

I met him in Atlanta. There was a gathering of something like 8,000 American Asian students, as in Indian and Pakistani. I met him there and he just did my head in. He had just spent six months listening to the Anokha album in New York in the subway on his Walkman. We got talking and he wanted to MC, like rap on my album, and I said "Look, you're an actor." He was the young Asian shopkeeper in Suburbia. He came and I said, "you're an actor, so you should just play characters." On "Decca" he plays a character.

With respect to the track "Eclipse," were you in India for that solar eclipse in 1995?

Yeah, I experienced it. It was wicked. It's amazing, especially in a place like India. I was in a desert in the middle of nowhere at nine in the morning and I [went to] a Hanuman temple on the way back from this remote place to Jaipur. The Hanuman temple is always surrounded by monkeys, and these monkeys were really panicking. They made this amazing noise. I'm talking about 600 monkeys or so. And they were frightened by the eclipse.

I've read that the track "Mombasstic" refers to your father not being accepted growing up in Uganda.

It's like the press has just made a big thing about it. It's a theme, you know? My father grew up in Africa. It wasn't that much of a suffering, you know. But it was the theme of the track; it's an emotion. I don't know if there is a message behind it.

Is your music your way of trying to cross cultural boundaries?

Not necessarily. Music for me, I just love it. I just enjoy it. I think at the end of the day, your life and your personality are not separate from your music. But first and foremost my music is just pure. But it just seems that everyone needs a big story behind it. It's not really a big story.

When you were in India did you find that people were more interested in their own musical culture or Western music?

India is such a huge place it's hard to talk about the people. Some people just listen to nothing but Indian music, and some people listen to nothing but Western music. At the moment, we're the only people making music that lies in between, and there's a great balance and chemistry of the vibe.

I heard that your club in London, Anokha, closed.

It opens and closes all the time. For me to have a weekly dance club isn't really where it's at any more. I've done that for years. I'm more about programming Anokha's special kinds of events. In London, club culture is pretty much dead apart from techno clubs. If you're talking about doing new things, doing a weekly club isn't really a new thing. It's just a bit of a clichT really.

So I've read you have declined working with people like David Bowie and members of Led Zeppelin. Is there anything else big that you have turned down?

Loads of shit. Especially when you get to this level of your career. It gets really difficult because I'm a really focused person, and the thing is sometimes there are days when you deteriorate from your focus and that's when I get really low and I say I'm not doing that shit. It's so easy being in that position where everyone wants you to do shit and you go around doing it and you forget about yourself and who you are.

What do you think of other bands using Indian music like Cornershop and Kula Shaker?

Kula Shaker, forget that. Cornershop either. They have nothing to do with Indian music. In India you spend years before you even play a concert. I come from that kind of background, but people forget that.

MARLENE GOLDMAN(December 8, 1998)