The scene that played out on a quiet evening in Southall in 1982 would be familiar to any South Asian immigrant home: a family gathered around the dining table, loose sheets of paper scattered across its surface, a mother lovingly exhorting her son to eat proper food. Nothing in that image announces that history is being made. But in the Bhamra household, the kitchen was also a songwriting laboratory, where Mohinder Kaur Bhamra and her sons were quietly cooking up a radical new sound, one that reflected the hybridity of their émigré existence.
Armed with the SH-1000—the first Roland synthesizer—and a Compurhythm CR-8000 drum machine, 22-year-old Kuljit Bhamra would spend all day crafting siren-horn loops and bubbling basslines, melding disco and funk experiments with the rhythms and melodies of Punjabi folk. His 11-year-old brother, Ambi, would often sit in on the drum machine. In the evening, they’d play the demos for Mohinder, who’d pen Punjabi lyrics to sing over them, delivering songs of love and yearning in a melismatic, full-throated voice. Those sketches would crystallize into Punjabi Disco, the first-ever British Asian electronic dance album—a joyous, loose-limbed romp through Punjabi-tinged disco, funk, psychedelia, and proto-acid house.
The family kitchen is an odd birthplace for a pioneering dance music record, but in the context of the 1980s British Asian experience, it’s also a fitting one. The dancefloors that would usually be the crucible for new sounds hadn’t materialized yet—racism and the conservatism of the community’s elders kept young South Asians out of London’s nightclubs, and the daytimer bhangra-and-bass raves of the late ’80s were still a few years away. Outside the home, the only places where music was regularly performed were gurdwaras and temples—where the songs were strictly devotional—or during community weddings.
Those were the arenas where Mohinder—trained as a gyani, or Sikh devotional singer—honed her voice after moving to the UK in 1961. As the first woman in her community to sing at the local gurdwara, she was already a quiet trailblazer, moving between kirtan, Sikh wedding ceremonies, and secular repertoire: Punjabi folk songs, ghazals, Hindi film music. Kuljit, her eldest son, accompanied her on tabla from age 6; his brothers Satpaul and Ambi later joined on the mandolin and accordion.
