Riz Ahmed spits straight fire at South

Asian music fest

8/01/16 4:00pm

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Last night, when Riz MC held the mic in front of a packed room at Brooklyns
Babys All Right, I don't think anyone expected the degree to which he would
tear. That. Shit. Up. With swagger on a hundred thousand trillion,
the emcee served up aggressively poignant rhymes on racism, politics,
Islamophobia, and the general South Asian diaspora condition at about a
mile a minute, basically a drone strike on your concept of "woke bae."

With rhymes like, "So see it aint religious faith thats causing these crimes /
Its losing faith in democratic free market designs," Riz killed it.

Riz MC, the stage name of British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed, is better know
for his starring role in HBO's The Night Of. On Sunday night, though,
he served as the headlining act of Function, a 10-hour mini-festival
spotlighting South Asian performers. He was joined by event
organizer, former Das Racist member, and Greenhead Music label
founder Himanshu Suri, or Heems, rekindling their 2014 collaboration Swet
Shop Boys.

Function kicked off with a screening of Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music,
which was followed by a litany of musical performances, starting with
woman-fronted pop punk band Awaaz Do. Other acts included Pakistani
neo-Sufi vocalist Arooj Aftab (whose gorgeous singing had the room in pin-
drop silence), Bollywood-meets-Beach House psychedelic band Humeysha,
Desi punk veterans The Kominas, and DJ Rekha, who is the only DJ Ive ever
heard mix Nas and northern Indian Bhangra music. Sure, that sounds like a
lot of acts, but the largely South Asian audience couldnt get enough,
despite the lack of samosas and the single functioning bathroom.

Ive been playing the role of Uncle tonight, Heems said to a crowd of more
than a hundred (mostly) millennials with roots in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and other South Asian countries. Before joining Riz
onstage, he launched into his own set with Kevin Lyttle Roti, a group that
also features drummer Kassa Overall and guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and is an
experimental amalgamation of improv, jazz, rock, rap, and poetry.

If you grew up in the States (or, probably, in England or Australia) and fall
under the blanket, sometimes reductive, label of "South Asian," chances are
you have been to some sort of cultural function. For much of my childhood, I
would get dragged to high school auditoriums once or twice a year to check
out a four-hour show of dances (Id usually perform in one or two),
instrumental music, singers, short plays, and sometimes a fashion show
which basically featured whatever Aunty Joshi brought over from India the
last time she visited. Sure, it was a chore, but I look back it fondly, as a pure
celebration and enjoyment of my culture, a rare instance of nostalgia that's
hard to come by living in white America. And for the first time in my three
years in New York, I found a place where I could connect with dope brown
folks and celebrate their talentsand make white people feel othered for
once. Jk, kinda.

As I walked towards the bus stop in the rain, I couldnt stop thinking about
what Heems said: What kind of Uncle or Aunty will you be?