I’d met Kushan a few times socially and didn’t realise until he called me up asking me to record a few tracks for his album that he was a rapper. I was about to go on holiday for a week and he needed the tracks recoded before he left for Canada a few weeks after that. We would record two days after I got back from my trip. I had a deadline, and deadlines are good for me. What I also had were titles to the tracks, which was also a great help as I tend to be lazy about finding material. It’s not that I don’t care about things enough to write about them, it’s just that I’m usually a bit lazy to root through material or to find a unique angle on what it is I want to write about.
The first two tracks were obvious enough. One, Congo Patrol, immediately had me thinking of the colonial era and the Heart of Darkness – even though the track was apparently named after the instrument – there were live congos in the percussion line. It was a nice coincidence for me and in no time my verses for Congo Patrol were written. (There are early recordings of the tracks on my spoken word page. I’ll be adding the recent versions as soon as I get my hands on them.)
The second, Showbiz, was far lighter and I soon had a few satirical verses about the current Hollywood absurdities.
Material for the third track, Super Drummer, was less obvious for me. Nothing sprang from the title and I ended up drawing on my own current frustrations to fuel me. I was at the time in a destructive relationship with a highly hypocritical “religious” Bangladeshi man who was enjoying trying to take my liberties from me in terms of dress.
While on a little private boat floating through the Sundarbans we’d gone for a swim and I’d emerged damp but fully clothed. As I toweled myself dry the trousers I was wearing had apparently become see-through and though I was wearing a long kurta my companion deemed them immodest. He angrily railed at me as I refused to cover myself further, asserting that my “lack of modesty and basic shame” didn’t suit me. The track I wrote in response however, I feel suits me just fine.
On return from the trip I had a day to get in order then suddenly found myself in a studio for about the second time in my life, recording material I’d only just written and never rehearsed. The result is, to my mind, a little rushed and I’m often behind the beat. Some words aren’t audible at all and as I often think when listening to live rap, the words need to be brilliantly articulated if people are to understand. In my writing I hadn’t allowed myself much time to breathe so we ended up cutting short phrases together instead of taking the whole rhyme in one. The results were passable but I wished I’d had more time to prepare.
A year passed and I didn’t think much more about it but when Kushan came back to Bangladesh and decided to put on a live show I was excited to be involved. The aforementioned relationship with the crazy hypocrite had finally come to an end so I was hightailing it back to England in order to get on with my own life. My visa expired on the 14th June and I didn’t intend to stick around a day longer. The show was set for the 16th and 17th though, so after a little research into the fine points of overstaying the expiry of one’s visa in Bangladesh I decided to stay. It would be a great way to go out and something solid to concentrate on in the final days there when otherwise I would simply have been packing bags and tying up ends.
I was somewhat nervous at the first rehearsal – I still have the feeling that as a non-professional musician in these scenarios I will get “found out” or disgrace myself in some way. But rehearsals were great fun as we worked our way through each of the songs and Pandu White created beats for them on his laptop. The gig was to be performed with a full band, but the musicians were not always available and it proved easier to create beats with just the two rappers and the laptop, with tunes being passed on to the musicians later in the week when we knew exactly what we needed.
One evening at home after a rehearsal I started trying on clothes to figure out what I might wear – I didn’t have a very varied wardrobe as most of what I had with me was “modest” Bangladeshi-style kurtas and scarves. These are adaptable however, and a scarf makes a good top if you play around.
As time went on my confidence grew and whenever a new track came up I would see ways of integrating other pieces I’d written, or coming in with new rhymes that came to me as I heard the music. The week went quickly though, and even my insistence on daily rehearsals left me feeling under-prepared. I had little time to spare between rehearsals as I was doing a course in Reiki, editing footage of all the work I’d done over my 2 years there and arranging packing and shipping everything home. Rickshaw and CNG rides became line-learning time and I walked the streets or sat in cafes rhyming to myself. Gradually the words sank in and it began to feel like I could make it through a show without too much error.
Two other rappers guested at the show and had written rhymes to the instrumentals of the Jay-Z song “Feelin’ It”. I was to sing the hook and write a 16-bar rhyme for it. I knew immediately that I’d write something about The Hypocrite as it was what was foremost on my mind and I felt a little disclosure would help me deal with my feelings of betrayal. I kept it kind and didn’t reveal too much – but I feel there are other verses to be added before I’m done with it altogether.
We also found space for a rhyme I’d written some months previously when contemplating my view of the spiritual. I’m not a religious person but certainly feel guided by some energetic pull. The words in the rhyme are some of the various names by which I would call that energy.
Initially I only had a first verse and Pandu suggested writing a second as I was repeating it at different speeds. The last time round it should be new words, he said. That night I went home and was reading a journal entry from earlier in the year where I had started writing about my perception of this energy – and I came across a list of just enough words to make another verse. Each word I came across I thought – that must be in there already – but it wasn’t. Every single word was obvious – as if it needed to be included – but new. The verse was there already written, just waiting to be found, and the very moment I was in need it revealed itself to me. It was a happily received gift.
The first show was a little like a rehearsal. There were few people in the audience, and in a way that was good. We had a second gig the next night when many more people attended, and it felt like we were only then ready for the show. I was much more relaxed and could connect much better with the audience and the music.
Just before the first show we’d agreed for a film crew to come in and shoot some footage of us rehearsing. Shot against a green screen the footage was later to be used as part of a music video with animated backdrops. I have no idea how the footage will turn out, but it was a lesson, if nothing else, never to try to shoot a music video an hour before a live show.
Tags: average white female, dhaka, hip hop, kool krew, kool kush, old school, pandu white, rap, rhyme, spoken word, spokenword
