Casey Acierno

merica expects its rappers to be black and its rock stars to be white. Popular imagination links artistic genres to race, and there is hardly any place for artists who defy these expectations. Often, they are accused of cashing in on novelty value at best, or cynically expropriating other cultures at worst. But some of them are also making accomplished, relevant art.

BennyBwoy is a Hasidic dancehall artist from Crown Heights. Like the popular Hasidic rapper Matisyahu, BennyBwoy's Hasidic culture plays a central role in his identity, and at the same time, he adopts musical structures associated with black culture. Unlike Matisyahu, he consciously strives to unite the two. After the Crown Heights race riots, he played an active role in a group called Musical Alliance for Racial and Cultural Harmony, which tried to bring the Jewish and black communities together through music. The group didn't last, but its goals still inform BennyBwoy's work.

“I'm trying to tear down the walls between different communities and build up the bridges between them,” he said. He's performed both in his native Crown Heights and in Israel, for crowds that vary in age and ethnic makeup. He acknowledges his unique position in two different communities—a musician working in a decidedly secular genre, and an observant Jew who had to reschedule his interview for Sukkot.

Not everyone shares BennyBwoy's easy faith that music can transcend the politics of race, class, and nationality. He once introduced himself to a Jamaican girl as a reggae artist. “She started laughing. I was like, did I say something funny? I'm not a comedian.”

CHRISTOPHER SHAY

New York's DJ Rekha occupies a similar position. For nearly 10 years, her Basement Bhangra nights at S.O.B.'s have been combining American and Caribbean hip-hop with traditional Indian bhangra music. Uptown college students mingle with 30-something Sikhs in turbans and sports jerseys, while the projections on the walls display jerky remixes of traditional Indian dancing. DJ Rekha delights in the eclectic mix: like BennyBwoy, she believes that music goes beyond its social context.

“I hate being called a bhangra DJ or an Indian DJ,” she said. “I'm a DJ that happens to be Indian, or a DJ that happens to play bhangra.” Rekha's interest in combining bhangra with hip-hop comes from a “synergy” she sees uniting the two kinds of music: when she plays her sets, the fast-paced bhangra rhythms sound like they were made to layer over bass-heavy hip-hop beats.

Rekha has met the occasional person who is uncomfortable with what she does, but said that most Indian people she's spoken to are “very happy and proud of the night.” Rekha said, however, that Basement Bhangra has received virtually no notice from the hip-hop community—ironic, since South Asian immigrant and hip-hop cultures increasingly influence one another.

Ajay Nair, Associate Dean at Columbia's Office of Multicultural Affairs, sees this cultural exchange in a positive light. “Though we couldn't ever claim ownership of hip-hop culture, it made us feel like we belonged and helped us identify across socioeconomic and cultural lines,” he said.

This kind of cross-cultural influence has implications that touch on issues deeper than just solidarity. “Asian involvement in hip-hop is challenging the artificial boundaries of race,” Nair said. Especially in America, there is no such thing as “pure” black or white music. The last century has seen the genesis of dozens of entirely new genres, each itself drawing on disparate cultural influences. The rise of South Asian hip-hop blurs those categories even further.

In Rekha's opinion, though, race has nothing to do with quality. “I get a lot of music from a lot of South Asian kids—rappers, kids that want to be R&B singers—and I really commend them for trying to do what they're doing,” she said. “But sadly, they can't hold a candle outside of that narrow tradition.” Everyone, she argued, must be judged on a fair playing field, not handicapped positively or negatively for their race.

None of this is to say that the cultural politics surrounding music aren't important. There is a long history of white musicians adopting the innovations of black musicians without giving due credit or respect. And Nair points out that hip-hop, which itself began as a marginal genre, has been guilty of racism: consider Ice Cube's “Black Korea,” memorable for phrases like “little chop suey ass.”

But after spending a little time at a Basement Bhangra party, one sees a more optimistic picture. When white kids, who probably thought bhangra was a kind of food, learn to dance from Indians who grew up on dance competitions, their fun is infectious. There's something to be said for art that just makes people happy.