Artist: Yung Singh and Lamsi
Title: 'Jang Riddim'
Label: EKTA
EKTA is the Panjabi word for unity, and that is exactly why Yung Singh picked it for his label. His own note on it says the point is to use music and the arts to bring people and cultures together. The record he has just put out on it is called 'Jang Riddim', and jang is the Panjabi word for war.
He made it with Lamsi, an Amsterdam born producer and composer who works from Surinamese traditions. The sessions started in December last year, and by his own account this track came out of the first of those sessions. It kept going until there was a whole EP, 'Makandra', with this as the opening shot.
The title has something under it. The label's note names the sarangi as the lead instrument, a stringed one with a long history in Panjabi war balladry, set against dhol and nagara percussion and the bubbling drums that belong to the Dutch Surinamese and Curaçaoan communities Lamsi comes out of.
Yung Singh arrived properly in 2020 with a Panjabi garage mix recorded in lockdown, built out of CDs from his childhood. He has said he made it as a pushback: the UK garage revival being talked about at the time gave no credit at all to the Panjabi artists who had been doing it in the Midlands and the North since the late nineties.
DJ Mag named him Breakthrough DJ of the Year the following year, and the Boiler Room he curated for Daytimers was the first all South Asian line up the series had run. He picked the order, and he wrote the guest list himself. That set now sits in Boiler Room's own classics playlist.
