Cornershop’s Tjinder Singh on Enoch Powell, how making guitar music was sacrilege and the meaning of ‘Brimful of Asha’
Words by PUJA NANDI
Artwork by Ami Patel
Puja Nandi speaks with Tjinder Singh of the influential British band Cornershop who formed in the 90s. This interview is part of WEIRDO’s ‘We Are The Weirdos, Aunty-ji’ series.
Cornershop is a hugely influential band for South Asians in British music, and I had the pleasure of interviewing frontman Tjinder Singh. “I’ve not heard of an Asian name such as yours associated with a zine before. It’s not common. There’s clearly a gap for weirdos!” he laughs as we begin the interview. He’s speaking from his home in north London after just having caught up with his bandmate and friend Ben in between the difficult task of keeping his foster dog separate from his other one.
Tjinder was born in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. His dad, who was a headteacher in India, came to the UK seeking better opportunities with his mum joining later on. He studied at a polytechnic in Preston for a while before relocating to Leicester, where Cornershop was formed in 1991.
Much like their politically charged yet whimsical music, the band’s name is a nod to the stereotype of the Indian/Pakistani street-corner shop. Their debut album ‘Hold On It Hurts’ in 1994, impressed Talking Heads star, David Byrne who signed the band to his music label Luaka Bop. At that point, the band were touring with the likes of Beck and Oasis and they reached headier heights when they created their critically acclaimed album ‘When I was Born for the 7th Time’ in September 1997. It was that album that saw their collaboration with legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg on ‘When the Light Appears Boy’.
“It was rough at times and sometimes wonderful. But it was enforced every day that you were a second-class citizen and that you were different.”
Tjinder was born in the same year that Wolves MP at the time, Enoch Powell, delivered his vitriolic ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. “It was rough at times and sometimes wonderful. But it was enforced every day that you were a second-class citizen and that you were different,” Tjinder says about his childhood. He mentions he’s reading a 3-part book on the history of Wolverhampton which details the arrivals of the Danish in 910 and then chronicles the city’s changing demographic. “All this stuff about purity that Enoch Powell and other idiots bang on about - it’s idiocy. When you read about other people having done the same journey as my parents way back in time, and then history repeating itself every 30 years or so with other groups of people coming to the UK, well it’s enlightening because it renders all the people that think they are ‘pure’ as ridiculous.”
Cornershop’s music is hard to categorise in some respects. Its upbeat and bouncy melodies are spiked with sobering political references which sometimes means they channel post-punk rather than indie-pop. Their last album, ‘England Is a Garden’, is groovy and cheerful and stands in contrast to the dark undertones conveyed through feelings around events like Brexit. The joyful but perhaps controversially titled ‘Everywhere that W*g Army Roam’ from the album is their commentary on institutionalised racism. It’s not Cornershop’s first time using the word as in earlier songs like ‘W*gs Will Walk’ from ‘Handcream for a Generation’. When asked about using the word ‘w*g’, Tjinder said, “I personally identify with it, and there is a lot of significance behind those three letters. If you remove it, you remove all the history and what we can learn from that.” Despite its darker parts of history, it is clear that Cornershop are proud of their Midlands roots. The strutty, headbanger of a song ‘No Rock Save in Roll’ is a happy ode to the music of the West Midlands and on which Tjinder comments, “I like to link heavy metal to Birmingham rather than America!” Indeed, Birmingham is considered the birthplace of metal in the UK having given the world Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Napalm Death to name a few.
A commonly heard sentiment amongst our readers is the feeling of sticking out at gigs because there aren’t many people of colour, let alone South Asians. Tjinder tells me, “I got that feeling all the time of being the only Asians, the only Blacks in a gig. I grew up describing myself as black, and it was common back then for many of our generation to do that because we were all ‘The other’ together. In fact, recently, I went to a gig in London and I was shocked because everyone in the crowd was white but the security guard and ticket officer at the door were Black and Asian. Of course I still feel like I stick out.”
“For an Asian to be in a band, it was as rare as hen’s teeth. For an Asian to have a guitar, that was sacrilege.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the politics around South Asian people referring to themselves as ‘black’, then this might sound a little strange. But from the 70s to the early 90s, describing yourself as ‘black’ if you weren’t white was fairly common. Political blackness has become a contested topic now but the history of the term is complex. It was a way of uniting against institutionalised racism, especially at a time when Commonwealth citizens arriving in the UK were routinely denied adequate housing and employment and experienced racial segregation despite it being outlawed in 1965. In reaction, there were many protests and movements that followed in the years to come and one such movement was Rock Against Racism highlighted in the documentary White Riot.
Tjinder touches on something else too, “When I was growing up, you either liked alternative or pop music. Me and my brother liked alternative [music], so we were cut off from our own community. It was our own Asian community that ostracised us before anyone else. For an Asian to be in a band, it was as rare as hen’s teeth. For an Asian to have a guitar, that was sacrilege. So there was that and then all the other prejudice outside of that. There were a lot of battles to be won.”
The reality of living in an immigrant family is made more complex when ambition doesn’t necessarily align with family intentions, especially if that ambition involves gigging. “My father wasn’t enamoured with what we did as a group, even when there was success. My parents just couldn’t understand it. But I understand those reasons more now than I did back then.”
Cornershop are considered a trailblazing band – seeing South Asians in the music industry, let alone in an indie band in the 90s, were few and far between. On recalling the impact the band have had on people, Tjinder said, “We had people write in to us to say that through our music, they felt like they belonged a bit more.”
‘Brimful of Asha’ came into legendary status when it knocked Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ off the top spot in the charts. On recalling the moment it hit worldwide fame, Tjinder says “It was a matter of pride for us. But it wasn’t just about the music, it was about the industry – the artwork, the video, the interviews, the way we worked as a band.”
‘Brimful of Asha’ is one of those rare tracks that brilliantly fuses Indian music with the world of indie-pop. “We put everything in that track – all the stuff we loved from Trojan Records to Jacques Dutronc to Mohammed Rafi. The song was also political – we talked about the Narmada Dam before Arundhati Roy started talking about it,” Tjinder says in reference to the line in the song “we don’t care about no government warning/ About the promotion of the simple life/ And the dams they’re building.”
The song is hopeful much like its title reference to Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle but also a play on the meaning of ‘asha’ which means ‘hope’. “It’s saying you can have solace from whatever is going on, that music can be your diya, your light to whatever is happening in the world. That was what the song was about, how music can get you through from one day to the next.”
“People move through the industry fully formed and are now spat out a lot quicker. The industry seems to put their money where they can see quicker returns which is often bands that are white.”
When asked about whether the diversity of people in music has changed now compared to the 90s, Tjinder laughs, “The 90s was diverse in terms of the different people doing it and also the mixture of music that people were making. When you get to the 2000s, you go back to bands that are just four good-looking privileged white blokes. Music doesn’t seem to have the roots it used to have anymore; it was a lifestyle, an attitude and the way you dressed but it’s lost that edge now. People move through the industry fully formed and are now spat out a lot quicker. The industry seems to put their money where they can see quicker returns which is often bands that are white.” Indeed, the 90s were revolutionary times for the industry – from the explosion of hip hop to grunge, the decade also gave birth to many cultural movements, one of which was the Riot Grrrl movement. Despite being an all-male lineup, Cornershop’s debut album was punchy enough to make them honorary members of Riot Grrrl. “Music was political back then and one of my reasons for doing music in the first place is to try and change people’s thoughts. So we do try to do that but don’t tend to write dark and gloomy songs. We leave that for the other indie bands.”
Cornershop notoriously made a stand for what they believed in when they burned posters of Morrisey in September 1992, in reaction to his alleged racist rhetoric at the time. Sadly the same issue appears to have resurfaced a few years ago when Morrisey appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon wearing a far-right ‘For Britain’ badge.
Cornershop have never been one to shy away from who they are. Perhaps the decision to sing some of their songs in Punjabi showcases that fearlessness. Tracks like ‘Slingshot’ from ‘England Is a Garden’, and ‘Counteraction’ from ‘Hold On It Hurts’ are examples. More notably, Cornershop covered the famous Beatles song ‘Norwegian Wood’ in Punjabi after permission was given by Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney.
On the question of what advice Tjinder has for South Asians who are trying to get in or are in the industry, he says “an element of good luck is involved, but perseverance and hard work has a great deal to do with it. Young people need to do things differently to our generation.”
Listen to Puja’s interview with Tjinder Singh on our podcast We Are The Weirdos, Aunty-ji.