DJ Rekha's More Than A Woman
Tuesday March 25, 2008 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

DJ Rekha

Even though DJ Rekha Presents Basement Bhangra is Rekha Malhotra's first album, she's no rookie when it comes to turntables. The South Asian Brooklyn, N.Y. resident has been spinning for more than 15 years, so the 17-track compilation is essentially a slice of what people have heard at the party she's been headlining once a month for more than a decade at the Greenwich Village hot spot, S.O.B.'s.

"The idea behind the album for me was to sort of encapsulate the vibe of the party into a disc," says Malhotra. "I just wanted to give the feeling and the experience of the party because it's time-based. If you don't go there prior to this album, there's no way to experience it, so I really wanted to pick one really hot set."

While DJ Rekha hesitates to call her music a Bhangra 101 primer, she's been instrumental in popularizing the genre that originated in Punjab, a region that borders India and Pakistan. Bhangra's most pronounced elements are its heavy percussion and rhythmic beats produced by the dhol drum and stringed tumbi, among other instruments.

There was a time when Malhotra would turn heads as a woman in the male-dominated DJ world, especially one with her technical abilities.

"You have to be good at what you do and be professional about what you do, and find cool people to work with," she asserts. "Dudes will almost literally piss and mark their territory, you know, and that's how they play it. But I think that the way to transcend that or get past it is to know your shit."

To say that Malhotra knows her shit is an understatement. As one of the first DJs to blend the melodic sounds of bhangra with hip-hop, she's shared the stage with Pete Rock and Kid Capri, and her debut LP includes such international stars as Wyclef Jean and Panjabi MC. That said, DJ Rekha doesn't want anyone to put her in a box.

"Even though I'm proud of it, even though I'm spinning bhangra and it's my most prominent party and stuff, musically I'm broader. Most people are. You don't listen to one kind of music, you know, so I also don't want to be branded as just a bhangra DJ or an Indian DJ."

—Cheryl Thompson