About Me
Deeder Zaman Debut Album Info
Deeder Zaman (Minority Large) now released on Beat Ink Records (Japan)/ Simple Tings Records 2007 - Label/s for rest of territories' to be confirmed
Now available on iTunes
For more info visit
www.beatink.com/br/brc183/index.htmlBIOGRAPHY
Greetings and welcome to the site. My name is Deeder pronounced Deedar Zaman. People also know me as Master D. I teach music technology to kids, currently running workshops at Children With AIDS Charity (CWAC) in London's east end. I am also one of the co-founders and original lead vocalist of the band Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) I was born and live in London, United Kingdom. My parents are from Bangladesh.
I started rapping at the age of nine and performed one of my first shows at the Half Moon Theatre in Mile End with a band called Joi Bangla in a fundraiser for HIV/AIDS. During that time I also performed shows with my brothers band, State Of Bengal with early Fundamental Rapper MC Mushtaq and my sister PK. I am an all round musician, currently playing live bass, keys, melodica, I also produce, compose and program beats. The music I make IS HipHop, amongst Reggae and Jungle.
In 2001 I set up my own band under the name Rebel Uprising and recently set up my own record label, Simple Tings Records. I have written over fifty tunes in the last five years and am currently compiling the best ones for an album. It's been nice having the space to experiment. Lyrically and soundwise the ting sounds doper than ever but I might need to hit round-a-bouts 40 before I really get to feel the vibes. YUSH! The album is to be licensed to Beat Ink Records in Japan who put out a lot of reggae from Jamaica and hiphop from the UK, they also deal with homegrown talant such as Audio Active and Dry and Heavy. They will be putting the album out in Japan alone. Other labels to deal with the rest of the terrorites are currently being looked into. Check back for updates or alternatively you can sign up to the mailing list.
Over the course of 8 years I performed on the first three ADF albums, Facts and Fiction (Nation Records 1995) R.A.F.I's Revenge (FFRR Records 1998) and Community Music (London Records 2000, NME, the leading UK music newspaper gave it a 10 out of 10) All of these records were also released by Virgin France, Labels. We toured the world, the main fan base being France and Japan. Have supported Primal Scream in the UK, The Beastie Boys in the US (In massive arenas) and Rage Against The Machine in Europe. We came runner up at the 1998 Mercury music awards with the 2nd album R.A.F.I's Revenge and was best band at the 1998 BBC Asian music awards. We were tagged as being one the best live acts.
In that time we met people like Writer Irvine Welsh who wrote the film Train Spotting, Investigative Journalist, Comedian and Writer Mark Thomas of Channel 4 who did the Mark Thomas Comedy Product (MTCP) TV series, that's right the guy who lit up a big phat ganja spliff in the then home secretary Jack Straws office after we all found out his kid was well advanced in the marijuana trade, amongst other crazy acts like hiring and parking a tank outside Brixton police station with an inflatable pig on it. The New Statesman magazine asked him who he would consider Best young brit and like a nutter he says me, man you know I'm applying for an OAP bus pass - by the way all old people ain't pensioners.
During the same time, we collaborated with many other artists, notably, MC Navigator of London's 1st Jungle radio station Kool Fm. He was part of the A-Team which involved MC's Moose, Five-O and the Ragga Twins, producer and soundman Adrian Sherwood with the band Audio Active in Japan, vocalist Leeroy of Saian Supa Crew. Remixes include Assata Shakur (Tupac's aunty) who was a prominent organiser of The Black Panthers Breakfast Club program for street kids. Assata was pulled over by the New Jersey police, shot twice and then charged with the murder of a police officer. She spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of a maximum security wing and is now hiding in Cuba. The US government has put a one million dollar bounty on her head, Lee Perry's Return of the Django which was used in the film 'The Beach' demolished by Harry Beckett, BLOW HARRY BLOW! reggae singer Junior Delgardo (R.I.P) the late great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, faster than Twista, writer Ambalavaner Sivanandan, director of the British government's Institute of Race Relations (IRR) best known for his quarterly journal Race and Class which, in the 1970's was one of the key academic journals in the British New Left and was extremely important in developing an indigenous British anti-racist movement, singer Tanita Tikaram, the band Zebda, the amazing Fabulous Troubadours, two guys who make music in their native French language Occitan and the dub band Dreadzone. We we're also remixed by a number of artists, some of the best stuff coming from Japans Audio Active and Dry & Heavy.
ADF formed because in 1993 the British National Party (BNP) The UK's racist follitical' party won a seat in the east end's Isle of Dogs. Mukhtar Ahmed, a Bengali youth was attacked by a gang of this lot who beat him to an inch of his life as was Kudas Ali, another Bengali youth the same year. Them times weren't good.
In 2001 I helped out at the National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) organised by solicitors Suresh Grover and Imran Khan, Imran is the solicitor for the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign. Stephen Lawrence was killed in Eltham, South London in a racist attack. His killers are still free, painstakingly. Whist at NCRM I covered the Zahid Mubarek and Safraz Najeib cases. Zahid Mubarek was put in the same cell with a well know racist and was battered to death with a table leg. The home office recently offered his family a twenty-five thousand pound 'settlement deal'. Safraz Najeib was brutally attacked outside a Leeds nightclub by well known british football players - my local football team and whom I have supported all my life West Ham United, recently brought one of them, I am ashamed that such a club would buy such a player. Upton Park has a big asian community and buying this guy (and they all know it) is a blow under the belt. Sort your sh*t out guys, look to Eto'o and Ronaldinho.
I also helped out at Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) with Arun Kundnani, interviewing community leaders after the Oldham race riots. Where I did most of my work was at the Miscarriages Of Justice Organisation (MOJO) which was set up by long time inspiration and friend Paddy Joe Hill, more commonly known as one of the 'guys' from the Birmingham 6. It was there I helped get together actions against the parole board and home office for the case of Satpal Ram, Satpal defended himself in a racist attack in Birmingham and was jailed for 15 years. He's been to nearly every prison in the country if not all of them.
I then started making music again. Whist at RU I've worked alongside many musicians (what Eek-a-mouse would say now is "me won't mention all yu name co' yu name too nuff") but i'm a bit kinder than he is, so here goes. Rasta poet and children's writer Benjamin Zephaniah, reggae vocalist Ghetto Priest from Adrian Sherwood's ON-U Sound camp, my eldest brother, dj and producer Sam Zaman of State Of Bengal, ukulele player and vocalist Tony Penultimate of the British Ukulele Orchestra, a very witty and very tall bloke, tabla player Alok Verma, producer Brendan Lynch of Lynch Mob Productions who has worked with Paul Weller and Primal Scream, he also did some production on early ADF tunes, Free Satpal Ram and Buzzin', rapper and musician Clotaire K, The Crispy Horns section, a wicked three piece, and up and coming producer Freshmints. I have also written tracks and recorded the vocals of two wrongfully convicted prisoners, the first being Rob Brown who at the age of 19 was beaten into submission by detectives and forced to sign a bogus confession for the murder of a woman named Annie Walsh, he received 25 years. And Paul Blackburn who at the age of 15 had been interrogated for 5 hours without a solicitor present for the attempted murder of a nine-year-old boy, he alleges that he would have confessed to ‘anything’ given the oppressive nature of the officers’ questioning. he also received 25 years. For more information on Miscarriages Of Justice check out LA Naylor's Judge For Yourself published on Roots Books.
At the forefront of these collaborations is reggae singer Trevor Boucaud aka Passion. In his early days he played drums for many international reggae artists and bands like African Head Charge and the Mighty Diamonds. We also work closely with bass player Dennis Rootical of the Irration Steppas Sound System who is a very experienced bassman and whom you might of seen pop up on the telly now and again. And last but not least, soundman Louis Beckett who has been an inspiration to me all my life, he helps co-produce and arrange some of the tracks. You might if you're lucky catch a whiff of him at a show near you one day cos my god don't he sure smell good. We call him Louis the 8th because he can't afford anything heavier. BLAZE UP! an feed da poor now Iya
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