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Music documentaries, in-depth profiles and concerts featuring some of the biggest names

Music documentaries, in-depth profile pieces and concerts recordings featuring some of the biggest names from South Asia and the UK.

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Asian Network Presents: Make Way for the Indian - 25 Years of Apache Indian

Make Way for the Indian - 25 Years of Apache Indian

27/12/2015

BBC Asian Network - Asian Network Presents, Make Way for the Indian - 25 Years of Apache Indian

Bobby Friction talks to trailblazing British-Asian singer Apache Indian.

Twenty-five years after bursting on to the music scene, Bobby Friction talks to trailblazing British-Asian artist Apache Indian. First broadcast in 2014.

25 years after bursting on to the music scene, Bobby Friction talks to trailblazing British-Asian singer Apache Indian. With 7 top forty UK hits, including 'Arranged Marriage', 'Chok There' and 'Boom Shack A Lak', Apache Indian was the first British-Asian artist to have had any sustained success in the mainstream charts.

After a childhood heavily influenced by his ethnically diverse local area of Handsworth, Birmingham, Apache successfully fused together elements of his Punjabi mother-tongue with Jamaican reggae and dancehall to create a new genre that has seen him become a platinum-selling artist.

In this in-depth interview, Bobby hears how Steven Kapur went from Steve the steel worker, to Steve -the-man-with-a-van to eventually Apache Indian.

Apache will also talk about how he was breaking barriers even before entering the reggae world when he became an 18-year-old unmarried father, which was hugely shocking to a deeply conservative Asian community in the 1980's, to then entering the world of Jamaican soundsystems where he was the only Indian face.

First broadcast in 2014, presenter Bobby finds out what makes a 'good Indian boy' immerse himself in a West Indian environment, grow dreadlocks, learn the language of patois, to being signed by legendary label Island Records to becoming the UK's number one reggae music export.

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