History (New CS)

Label: Veena Sounds

"Western education is often a sanitized account of colonialism that erases (or at least disregards) the rich histories of oppressed countries and people. Chicago-based producer/beatmaker Lapgan has spent his burgeoning career musically rectifying this wrong for South Asians everywhere. On his most recent critically-acclaimed project, the Bandcamp-approved Duniya Kya Hai, Lapgan unearthed rare and forgotten Indian and Pakistani music, revitalizing and recontextualizing the sounds of his ancestral home and musical predecessors with knocking and layered beats that traverse the Indian subcontinent.

The record is an imagined history and a musical thesis - a refutation of British colonialism through a tapestry of beats stitching together samples of Bollywood and Lollywood soundtracks, Tamil Film music, Marathi chants, flute-heavy Bengali religious music, and more. These are beats for fans of deep crate digging, meticulous arrangement, and drums that could inspire scholars railing against Churchill. For this project Lapgan linked with Nishant Mittal, @digginginindia, a Delhi-based music archivist and DJ whose crates are stacked with rare vinyl from across South Asia..."