Not just for Asian guys and dohls RADIO A new Radio Scotland show

THE BIG EVENT

ASIAN OVERGROUND

BBC RADIO SCOTLAND

4/5

IT'S a summer evening, and the sunshine sticks around until past 10 o'clock. This is the kind of time when you hear snatches of dohl, the Punjabi drum, jumping out of passing cars and open windows in Scotland's traditionally Asian enclaves, and it seems more infectious, more universal than ever.

Summer also means a break in the football season, and for the BBC that signals time to experiment. This year, head of BBC Radio Scotland Jeff Zycinski has turned the coveted Saturday teatime slot over to that ubiquitous dohl beat, the one that gives so many kinds of south Asian music its particular propensity to, well, get a little bit jiggy.

Manning the controls are young presenters Manjot Sumal and Rupa Dilber, a boy-girl duo who reckon their show, Asian Overground, is clearing the ground for the music they love to reach listeners in every corner of the nation - including, as Dilber says, "that wee old granny in Stornoway".

This is not a genre show. If you're looking for world music, switch back to Radio 3 and wait for Andy Kershaw to come on.

Asian Overground's first hour-long programme, aired last night, clearly sets out to be an introduction to a massively wide gamut of young, modern Asian music. Dilber and Sumal place the earnest compositions of Nitin Sawnhey next to bhangra-lite from MTV darlings Raghav and Jay Sean, then throw in a couple of tracks from Outlandish, who hail from Denmark and sing in Spanish, before moving on to the club-driven beats of current dancefloor favourite Ms Scandalous. It's a range that, while in some ways diluting the best by placing it alongside the bland, is astutely planned. You don't have to like Jay Sean - "he's the guy who's stolen everyone's heart", says Dilber; "not mine, " quips Sumal - but loads of people do, whether they are housewives or teenagers, Asian or not. And that's the point.

"If you listen to Chris Moyles, he doesn't just play all indie or all rock, or all R&B, " says Dilber. "I think it's unfair to assume that Asian music is all the same." Sumal nods - he takes the back seat to the supremely chatty Dilber in person, just as he does on the show. "If Chris Moyles can play everything, then why shouldn't we?" Sumal, 24, and Dilber, 26 are both regular DJs on Radio Awaz, Glasgow's hugely successful multilingual station which is aimed expressly at the city's Asian community. They were picked for the five-show run of Asian Overground by its producer, Neon Productions' John Collins, who met the pair while tutoring at a local radio skills course. They're a natural double act, with an everyday humour that unwittingly reverses the traditional brash boy, sensible girl combo, la Radio 1's Colin Murray and Edith Bowman.

Dilber's day job is employment law - "I suppose I've ticked that Asian box and I've become a lawyer" - but she relishes the fact that she can do both, adding that while stereotypes of the bashful Asian woman may have all but died out, she's happy to extinguish any remaining embers. They're inoffensive, family friendly - and, the BBC evidently hope, appealing to as wide a sector of listeners as possible.

As an organisation, the BBC likes to wear its diversity badge on its sleeve.

In London, Radio 1's Bobby Friction and Nihal show has been a breakthrough since it began in 2002, winning just over half a million listeners each week. Likewise, the Asian Network's Adil Ray has cultivated a sound that comes straight from the clubs and is, in many ways, more relevant to young Scottish Asians than community stations like Radio Awaz. Glasgowbased DJs and producers Tigerstyle get regular airplay on both shows with their acclaimed UK bhangra/ dancehall crossover, and Tigerstyle's Pops is, perhaps rightly, dubious as to BBC Scotland's ability to reproduce that credibility north of the Border. The organisation has been present at the summer Melas but it doesn't seem to be plugged in to the DIY club scene springing from the young Asian community, he says.

Previous attempts to reflect the country's multiculturalism, like bitparts on Session in Scotland and the long-running Ghettoblasting, failed, Pops believes, because "its presenters didn't really have a clue about what young Asians were listening to, and none of the Asian kids knew when the shows were on". Even one-time Ghettoblasting presenter Sanjeev Kohli has admitted that the show fell short by trying to push too many "ethnic" buttons at once.

But Asian Overground's aim is not to be a catch-all, multicultural showcase, nor is it to reproduce Bobby and Nihal for Scotland, but to reflect what is a very different scene north of the Border, where traditional Indian-influenced desi beats still reign over the more Westernised R&B of the Jay Seans and Raghavs. The show is at its best when it does just that - with Edinburgh's DJ VIPs, who's tipped as one of the best purveyors of that hip hop influenced UK Bhangra sound, and with a brilliantly slick mix by DJ Bobby B, himself a Radio Awaz regular.

As this is the first show, Sumal and Dilber slam on one particular song early in their set which sums up that sound in one handy loop. Panjabi MC's Mundia To Bach Ke has been around for at least eight years, but more recently it hit the mainstream via pretty much every club in the country.

It's still a fantastic track, immediately recognisable for its confident bhangra take on the Knight Rider theme tune. A pretty obvious choice, admits Sumal.

"Asian music is like hip hop was a few years ago, " he adds. "Not a lot of people listened to it, but gradually it built up and now it's the biggest music genre in the world. I think the same will happen with this. The past couple of years there has been that 'Indian summer' hype, where you'd hear Panjabi MC in a club, or a sample on an Eminem track, but I think it's here to stay now. People like Jay Sean and Raghav have totally changed things." While white- label acts such as Tigerstyle might wince to say so, those big names are bringing in new listeners, consciously or not. Whether those listeners will go a little bit further and discover real desi sounds remains to be seen, but Dilber and Sumal certainly want to tempt them, aiming to "go deeper" in subsequent shows. It could prove a good middle ground, as back at Radio Awaz, the bhangra fanbase don't have too much of a look-in either, restricted to some late-night slots while the bulk of the station's output sticks to its successful formula of Bollywood and traditional.

Crucially, though, Radio Awaz has the audience that the BBC so desperately wants. They'll keep the usual Radio Scotland punters with ease if Asian Overground's first outing is anything to go by, but what they really want is the Asian audience, too.

Although using Awaz presenters to front its flagship Asian show may seem a no-brainer as a way to bag that demographic, it seems to have taken this long for the radio execs to figure it out. Thankfully Neon productions suggested Sumal and Dilber, without whom we'd probably be condemned to another summer of tokenistic "world music". As it is, though, they're here, and they're very excited.

With only five weeks to prove itself, Asian Overground might find, like Ghettoblasting, that it is reaching for too many buttons at once. But push the aims to one side and you're left with a fun, pleasant way to toe-tap away the summer evenings. Driving back from the studio, Dilber finally explains what desi means. "It's a word we use all the time, it means true to the roots." Not all of what she and Sumal play is strictly desi in musical terms, but the over- riding feel of their show certainly is.

We pass a silver Merc with three trendy young men inside, sunglasses on, obviously out for a cruise. "They're what we call typical Asians, " laughs Dilber. "We want them to listen too, and to think it's a great show." It's a shame the football season couldn't be put on hold for longer.

Asian Overground, BBC Radio Scotland, 6pm, Saturdays, until July 9

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