Indian Vibes

Indian Vibes started in 1997 and then was the first Clubnight in Germany which was spreading the new “Asian Underground” sound. Still we are engaged in Indian/Arabic/Oriental influenced music of all styles and India's culture especially by 2nd and 3rd generation Indians and we are spinning on various club nights and festivals, organize events, do research, produce music and live visuals and publish articles. As Indian Vibes will celebrate it’s 10th anniversary in 2007 we are in the middle of preparing some specials for this big date.

In 1998 we started the monthly Indian Vibes radio show on the community radio station Radio X in Frankfurt, presenting interviews with Badmarsh & Shri, Nasha founder Ges-E, Mutiny co-founder Vivek Bald aka Dj Siraiki, Nickodemus, Nitin Sawhney, Natacha Atlas, Cleveland Watkiss, Cheb I Sabbah, DJ Ritu, Anoushka Shankar, Talvin Singh, Trilok Gurtu …etc. The two hours show is broadcasted worldwide on ww.radiox.de/live and also by Radio FSK in Hamburg and Radio FRO in LInz/Austria.

When we learned that India will be Guest of Honor of the Frankfurt Bookfair 2006 we immediately decided to come up with a special programme for this occasion. The bookfair's motto “Today's India” inspired us to the conference about Call Centers in India and to the screening of Ashim Ahluwalia's stunning documentary film “John and Jane”, to present current British-Asian art from London and of course to throw some parties.

As emigration was always a strong subject matter of Indian society and will also be in the future, we also consider the culture of Indian people living abroad being an aspect of "Today's India", especially the culture of second an third generation Asians in Great Britain, where the number of people originating from South Asia had reached a critical mass a couple of years ago. The young British-Asians appeared in media and culture strongly developing their own creative expressions referring both to their British cultural education and the South Asian heritage,. They created a new music genre, which used to be called "Asian Underground" ten years ago and now goes by different names, one of it being "Asian Breakbeats". This British music scene had a strong impact on the musical development in India itself. Encouraged by their UK colleagues Djs and producers for instance in Bombay started producing their own tracks and organising club nights which were as cutting edge as in London, even though we barely know about this scene. According to the 000ZeroZeroZero-Exhibition Galerie station/ presented in 2000 we will concentrate on the visual aspect, presenting digital art from young British-Asian artists again at the Galerie station at Mousonturm in collaboration with ENTER at the digital department of the highly accomplished Watermans in London.

Indian Vibes also wants to explore what it mean to be "Indian" in a 21st century globalised world and therefore takes a close look at a young generation of urban Indians. Nearly every day we are presented in the media with news about outsourcing and the loss of jobs in the western world. But how do the people live and work in the countries to which the jobs are offshored?

Approximately 250,000 young Indians live upside-down lives, sleeping through the day and working through the night at call centres. They're well compensated for their efforts: With salaries averaging between Rs 12,000 and Rs 15,000, they've got lots of money to spend and they love to party. But the stress levels are high and few are able to last longer than two years. Ashim Ahluwalia's stunning and awarded documentary "John & Jane" portrays six call center agents in Mumbai. We will show the film in collaboration with Orfeos Erben and invited everybody to the 1st international conference "Call Center India - Indian by day - American by Night", where our renowned international guests told us more about the souls of the outsourced and the left behind. We spend an exiting and interesting afternoon with director Ashim Ahluwalia and Vinod Shetty, both from Mumbai and Harald Weisbrod from Cell Center Forum Germany. A delicious Indian Brunch by “Curry Inna Hurry” put the visitors in the right mood for this exceptional afternoon at the Museum für Kommunikation.

No Indian Vibes programme without party! The conference was rounded up with the Call Center Lounge at Lala Mamoona in the heart of Frankfurt and due to fine warm weather everybody stayed outdoors until really late. Indian Vibes deejayed at the big Mousonturm bookfair party supported by the VJs 23dre and C.U.Eye and tabla player Wins and made a crowd of 500 people really dance in the nicely Indian styled ambience of the Cristallobar.