'This is the Digital Underclass': Asian Dub Foundation and Hip-Hop Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

After being eclipsed for years by binary black-white definitions of racial difference, Asians have become an increasingly visible and self-assertive part of Britain's vibrant cultural scene over the past decade. From television comedy to movies like East is East , cultural production by second-generation Asians has become a central element in definitions of British identity. Nowhere is this more true than in music, where deejays like Talvin Singh have become particularly prominent promoters of the recombinant grooves that characterize contemporary dance music. This paper focuses on the appropriation and adaptation of hip hop's hybrid musical form and subaltern nationalism by Asian Dub Foundation (ADF). Stressing the group's origin in grassroots anti-racist organizing efforts in London's East End, the present paper explores the increasing centrality of struggles over space in contemporary youth subculture. At a moment when some commentators are proclaiming the eclipse of the nation-state, the work of groups like ADF underlines the importance of cultural ascriptions of belonging for ethnic minority communities in Britain. ADF draw on diasporic connections with militant African-American hip-hop artists like Public Enemy as well as on the struggle for independence in India as important precedents for their anti-racist rap. These outernational predecessors are, however, consistently invoked as part of demands for civil rights on a local and national scale. ADF's music is thus a potent example of the multiple spatial scales that characterize the subcultures of diasporic youths in contemporary Britain.

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