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They were The Record's hot new act to look out for in our September issue. After our exclusive interview with Danish hip hop act Outlandish, we are even more sure that they deserve the honour. Band member Waqas Qadri talks to us about people living between two cultures, prejudice in the music industry, blending the East and the West and the power of what music can actually do. Watch out for the band in India later at the end of the year. Till then, read what they have to say.
The Record: Aicha is incredibly popular here, so tell us how you decided on using the track on your album.
Waqas: We always listened to the original made by Cheb Khaled which was a huge hit. We do hip hop music so for us to do a cover, it would be more natural to do it with someone we had a relationship with because what we're doing is melting two worlds together - the Arabic music world with the Western music world. So we decided it would be fun to work on the track for the album. We met him once a couple of years ago and asked him if it was okay and he said 'Yeah definitely'. We did an interpretation of the song, because we changed all the lyrics and only kept the 'Aicha' melody. We gave it an Outlandish touch and didn't make it into a love song like the original, but this is more like an encouragement song for women.
TR: Also tell us about the track Peelo - you have a very amusing vocal riff in the beginning. Where is that from?
Waqas: The track is inspired by a Kishore Kumar track - Dil Kya Kare and when I was a kid back in Pakistan, there was this little children's song they used to sing there, (whose lyrics went) 'peelo, gutter ka pani peelo'. I just started singing it on the track and people were like, 'Yeah we have to do this'! A friend of mine here teaches a child's choir mixed with Pakistani and Indian children so we got them in the studio and they started singing it and it turned out really good. And a lot of people love it because it's so innocent.
TR: When did you realize that you could blend sounds from the East and West and come up with some brilliant tracks?
Waqas: It started when my mother would be playing say a song from Sholay in the living room. Now that song is playing really loud in the living room and in my room I'm listening to rap music. I open the door from my room to the living room and suddenly you hear Kishore Kumar singing to the beat and fusion that happens for say like 30 seconds (when the two sounds overlap). And I was like 'Wow! What was that all about'. So we started experimenting with that because in hip hop we use a lot of samples. So I started by looking at my mother's records. I used to take it to the studio and the producer and tried to blend it in with a beat. And that's how the inspiration came.
This is our second album. With our first album, there was this movie called Teri Nazar from the early '90s and there was this song by Anuradha Paudwal and we sampled a part of the song and put it together with a beat, and laid some raps on it and the song was really appreciated. It was like a whole revolution. It was before Dr Dre and Truth Hurts made Addictive - this was around '97.
TR: What is your favourite track on the album?
Waqas: Besides Peelo, it's a track called Life Is A Loom as it represents the album well. Because the name of the album is Bread And Barrels of Water and it's something spiritual and simple - you don't need anything other than bread and water to survive. And living in a Western country, (but being) originally from a Third World country…we go back to our motherland and we see a lot of poverty. A lot of people don't have enough food to eat, they have to work (so hard) to survive, they have big families, but still they are really happy for what they've been given by God, they're really thankful. Once or twice a day no matter how hard their life is, they can get a smile on their faces.
Not a lot of people in the Western world can brag about that. Here in the Western world we focus on the materialistic things - it's all work, work, work, we don't think about our families or God, we're not happy with what we have, always complaining and saying 'We want more'. So it's just like a way of saying that 'Listen, we're living here, we've been given so much, we should be happy with what we have. Look at other people in other lands who are really suffering. So what the hell are we complaining about?' The song Life Is A Loom is about people who leave their home country for a better future and how it affects them. In India you have it, Pakistan too - fathers leave their children at a young age, to work and send money back home and how it affects the children. How it's really important for children to have a father, it's really important for a wife to have her husband so this song is about how it affects them.
You can read the rest of our exclusive interview with Outlandish in the November 2003 issue of The Record Music Magazine available at your local newsagent.
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