The Brown Sound

I've always lived in predominantly Caucasian areas: Toronto (although by the time we moved away, it was by far the most diverse place I've ever lived in), Washington state, New Hampshire and now here just north of Boston. There certainly have been times in my life when I've been acutely aware of my non-whiteness, but for the vast majority of the time, it hasn't been an issue.

As the child of immigrants, I grew up entirely North Americanized: food, pop culture, sports, music, movies. It's not that I wasn't exposed to Indian food or culture, but I gravitated towards the stuff that was around me. Hence, I'm a big hockey and baseball fan, I liked hard rock and metal and now indie rock, alternative comedy...you know, stuff white people like. Fact is, I don't have a whole helluva lot in common with Indian dudes other than the obvious stuff. I also enjoy that I confound a lot of common stereotypes over here about Indian guys: I'm not a doctor, I don't have an accent and I don't smoke copious amounts of weed like the dude in the friggin' Harold and Kumar movies.

So it was with interest that I read a Pitchfork column last week on the lack of minorities in indie rock. The author made some decent points, and certainly it is pretty white, but I don't get the sense that there's some big conspiracy preventing indie rock artists of color from succeeding. I just think there aren't that many of them. I also think the author undersold the number of brown artists or members of bands who have emerged on the indie scene over the years by just focusing on the four who "look like" her: M.I.A., Heems, Dapwell and Natasha Khan. She couched them as the only "prominent" ones, and that may be true, but prominence isn't easy to achieve in these days of easy access to everything and drastically reduced music sales. And there's a smattering of brown peeps working in rock these days: Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Tony Kanal of No Doubt, The Kominas, Amal of Big Ups, Sonya Balchandani of The Big Sleep, Supriya Gunda; and beyond the rock genre, you've got Norah Jones, the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and that dude who just left One Direction.


Still, that's not a lot when you consider how many white faces there are in indie rock and rock in general. But how do you get more diversity in these scenes? More kids need to be inspired to make music. Culturally, I think it's happening more now than it used to, but Indian kids (at least me and the ones I knew as a kid) were encouraged to focus on academics and not so much the other stuff. It's also why you don't see a whole lot of athletes of Indian descent in North American sports (although an Indian dude was just signed by the NBA's Sacramento Kings). It's just not a priority for a lot of Indian kids. Plus we tend to be on the pipsqueaky side.

As for me, well, I'm just your typical old Indian guy who goes to indie rock shows, plays hockey and runs a lot. Nothing to see here.

My Reality

Back to the grind this week. It wasn't as bad as I expected. It helps that there wasn't a ton of work to do this week, which helped me ease back into things after a week off. And it also helped that the air conditioning was blasting away so I didn't have to deal with the 90-degree temps outside.

I was going to go for a 13-mile run this morning, but my legs are a little sore from the last few days so I'm going to run tomorrow instead. I had a couple of lunchtime 5-milers in Marblehead early in the week at the height of the heat wave, but they didn't seem so bad after running in Hilton Head. Then I played hockey Thursday night for the first time in six weeks. We had about half as many players as we did the last time I was there, so I had double the ice time. I felt pretty good and popped in a goal and an assist, but my timing was off; I should have had three or four goals. All the high school kids were gone, so it was mostly the older dudes. My legs were pretty sore from hockey yesterday, but then I ran the Derby Street Mile in Salem last night. I was worried that the tightness would slow me down, but my time was almost identical to last year's. I didn't start out as fast, but finished strong in an official time of 6:01; my actual time was 5:59. Not bad, though; 58th out of 269 runners. My friends Jon and Kerry both kicked butt; Jon was fifth overall with a 4:45 (wow!) and second in our age category (I was 17th) and Kerry won her age group with a 5:54. This year, they split the race up into competitive and family events; my buddy Rick ran the latter with his kids.

Next week, I'll be doing the Lynn Woods relay with the Striders, which is a 2.5-mile leg through some hilly terrain. Should be fun. Speaking of relays, Reach the Beach is less than a month away. I plan on doing some two-a-day runs to get my body used to that, since I'll be doing three legs in 24 hours. I imagine a lot of it's going to be adrenaline-driven, but I don't want to be unprepared, either.

Feel the burn:

• I've gotta say I was shocked that the British government released the Lockerbie bomber this week because he's terminally ill. The 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. It's about as despicable an act as you can imagine. I have no sympathy for this guy; they should have let him die in prison.
• Must be tough to be a Minnesota Vikings fan. The last bunch of years have been awful, and now they have to root for once-hated rival Brett Favre. Well, at least they have nice weather there.
• I make fun of Pitchfork at times, but they have some cool stuff up there. This week, they unveiled this massive Decade in Music package featuring their top 500 tracks of the '00s. I need to dedicate several hours to sift through it. Unlike 10 years ago, it seems as though folks aren't as hyped for the end of this decade. Granted, there was all that Y2K hysteria going on then, but believe it or not, we've zipped through yet another decade fairly quickly. I'm going to start taking a look back at the decade in the podcast over the next few months in terms of music, movies, news, sports, etc.