A tiger, by the tale

>> Sam "State of Bengal" Zaman toughs out a joint with his hero

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

At long last London producer/bassist/DJ Sam Zaman, aka State of Bengal, has a full-length album coming out on these shores. Zaman's been a major figure on the Indo-tronica scene for some years, but his hands have been full with other projects, delaying the completion of the album.

Visual Audio hits racks in a week or two, packed with lush, Bengali-infused drum & bass tracks, including reworkings of "Chittagong Chill" and "Flight 1C 408," which originally popped up on the Anokha comp of '96. That compilation represented what was going on at the now-historic Anokha nights, Mondays at London's east-end Blue Note club. There, Zaman joined Talvin Singh and others in bringing the so-called Asian breakbeat vibe to life, leaving increasingly archaic bhangra in the dust and schooling the rama-rum-raisin electro-hippies in how it's really done.

But who schooled them? One important name was Ananda Shankar, nephew of sitar hero Ravi and a wicked sitar player in his own right. In the early '70s, Shankar threw the rulebook out and fused his Indian classical stylings with jam-rock riffs, funky grooves and bonus futurama Moog action. He passed away last year, but not before completing his swan song, a collaboration with Zaman.

Mirror: So tell me how Walking On, the album with Ananda Shankar, came about.

Sam Zaman: It started with me doing a tribute to him at Anokha. We were always figuring out ways of educating people about certain people's music. For me, it was Ananda Shankar. A month later, Ananda had heard that someone had done a tribute, but didn't know who. Some friends of his over here told him about it and said it might be interesting to see where I was at. He wanted to, but didn't know who to get in touch with--we were still pretty elusive and low-key then. Finally, about eight months later, someone named Alan James, who was working with this woman named Piali Ray for the Midlands Arts Council, was scribbling Ananda's name on a pad of paper. She saw it and said, 'Oh, I know Ananda Shankar.' They got talking about bringing him over, because he's big over here but hasn't really played before. Alan came down to see me DJ at this club in town and kind of set about from there, asking me if I'd be interested in working on the project. I said, 'Hell yeah!' I'm not stupid. This is one of my all-time favourite whatever-you-wanna-call-it. He's the one.

M: So how did it go?

SZ: Once we started working together, it was all right, it was great, it was good stuff. It took time, and why shouldn't it? But we were under pressure to deliver the album pretty quick, and it was on my shoulders more than anyone else's to make sure that got done. The musicians were moving around a lot, and some had to go back to Calcutta and stuff--they couldn't stay around. I had to deliver 10 or 11 tracks of recorded material in the space of two weeks--madness, pure madness. I don't envy anyone who'd want to take my position. I got really ill, I collapsed in the studio three times in the space of a week, just recording the musicians.

M: Aw, jeez.

SZ: But it turned out to be bloody good. The whole thing was good fun, and it took me to somewhere I'd never been, musically and otherwise. It's one of those dreams I always wanted to fulfill. To this day I don't believe that I ever managed to do that. The next dream, which I never thought would be possible, is that we're going to Bangladesh. We'll play live there in February. And it isn't just Bangladesh, but also Calcutta. The whole ideology of State of Bengal was always about unity, not separation. The fact that we play both places--I mean, it's called the State of Bengal tour.

The Ghosts of Anokha

M: Let's talk a bit about the Anokha nights, which are sort of legendary over here.

SZ: It's still legendary here in England.

M: There's no real equivalent to it, to my knowledge, in North America.

SZ: No, there isn't.

M: Some kids in Toronto have started a night called Masala--

SZ: Yeah, I know them. We played at Masala last year. They've said that since then, the nights aren't doing as well. I think it's because they've stopped bringing over artists. That's obviously going to make a big difference. I'm going back there at the end of October, to DJ. It's a great night, though, and it's great to see nights like that, because it says there is some kind of development of the whole process, and that it didn't just finish with Anokha. That was always the aim, that different people could carry on. :

With DJ Ram at Jingxi on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 10pm, $8