ਅਪਾਚੇ ਇੰਡੀਅਨਅਪਾਚੇ ਇੰਡੀਅਨ

Apache Indian, born Steven Kapur on 11 May 1967 in Handsworth, Birmingham, is the British Punjabi singer who fused bhangra with raggamuffin reggae to create bhangramuffin. His 1993 hit Boom Shack-A-Lak reached number five in the UK and carried a Handsworth sound system style into the global mainstream.

Early life in Handsworth

Steven Kapur was born on 11 May 1967 in Handsworth, Birmingham, to Punjabi Hindu migrant parents. Handsworth was a racially mixed inner-city neighbourhood with large Black and Asian communities, and it had serious musical pedigree: the reggae bands Steel Pulse and UB40 both came out of the same Birmingham streets.

At home he heard the Hindi film music his parents played; outside it he absorbed Bob Marley, Burning Spear and the Jamaican sound system culture that filled local halls and blues parties. By the early 1980s the teenager was working with local sound systems and had grown dreadlocks, learning to chat, or MC, over reggae rhythms. He took half of his stage name from Super Cat, the Jamaican deejay of Indian descent billed as the Wild Apache, an early idol.

Movie Over India and the Island Records deal

Kapur's first record was a self-financed experiment. In December 1989, by his own account for Eastern Eye, he had 500 vinyl copies of Movie Over India pressed at a plant in Leicester, a track that mixed ragga chatting with bhangra. It topped local Birmingham reggae charts and Asian bhangra charts at the same time, a crossover nobody around him had managed before.

The London reggae label and distributor Jet Star picked the single up in 1990, and two follow-ups, Chok There and Don Raja, repeated the trick on the national reggae and Asian charts. Major labels came calling, and in 1992 he signed a worldwide deal with Island Records, the label Bob Marley had made famous.

His debut album No Reservations, made with his cousins Simon and Diamond and recorded partly in Jamaica with producers including Sly Dunbar, Bobby Digital and Robert Livingston, arrived in 1993. Its single Arranged Marriage, a wry song about a young man resisting a match made by his family, reached number 16 in the UK and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary song. The album itself was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize.

Boom Shack-A-Lak and the mainstream years

Before his second album, Island released the four-track Nuff Vibes EP, which carried Boom Shack-A-Lak. The song climbed to number five in the UK in 1993, earned him another Top of the Pops appearance, and then travelled the world after it was used in the Hollywood comedy Dumb and Dumber. By Kapur's count it has since appeared in more than 200 television commercials and eight Hollywood films.

The follow-up album Make Way for the Indian (1995), produced with Sly and Robbie among others, added two more UK chart singles: the title track with American rapper Tim Dog, and Raggamuffin Girl with Jamaican singer Frankie Paul. At the 1994 Brit Awards he received four nominations, and he remains the only Asian artist to have placed seven singles in the UK Top 40. In India, where his records were major hits, he performed to crowds reported at more than 40,000 and found that Asian rap had arrived in the market largely through his songs.

Television and radio opened up alongside the charts. He presented his own show on BBC Radio 1, the first Asian DJ on national radio in Britain, using the slot to promote bhangra and reggae, fronted MTV's Reggae Sound System from Jamaica, and later presented the Channel 4 series Apache Goes Indian from Mumbai, an experience he credits with drawing him into charity work in India.

What is bhangramuffin?

Bhangramuffin is the hybrid sound Apache Indian pioneered: Punjabi bhangra instrumentation and melodies, built on the dhol and tumbi, fused with Jamaican raggamuffin, the digital dancehall style in which a deejay chats in patois over electronic rhythms. Kapur sang and chatted in Jamaican patois rather than Punjabi, but the beats, the instrumentation and the subjects, from arranged marriage to alcohol abuse and AIDS, came straight out of British Punjabi life. The mixture let one record sit at the top of both the reggae and the bhangra charts, and it opened the UK mainstream to the generation of British Asian artists who followed, among them ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਐਮਸੀ and ਬਾਲੀ ਸਾਗੂ.

Later albums and collaborations

Kapur left Island in 1997. Real People, released by Warner Bros. Sweden, was his most experimental record and leaned further into Indian sounds. Karma (2000) featured reggae singer Luciano and Boy George, and later albums included Time for Change (2005) and Sadhu: The Movement (2007). His single Om Namaha Shivaya was included on Putumayo's World Reggae compilation in 2004.

His collaborations map his two musical homelands. In India he recorded Yeh Ladka with Asha Bhosle for her album Rahul and I, made in memory of R. D. Burman, and No Problem with A. R. Rahman for the Tamil film Love Birds, in which he also appeared on screen dancing alongside Prabhu Deva. With bhangra singer ਜੈਜ਼ੀ ਬੀ he recorded Dil Luteya, produced by Sukshinder Shinda, a school friend from Birmingham. His guest list over the years has also included ਮਲਕੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ, Desmond Dekker, Raghav and Yo Yo Honey Singh. In 2013 he released the album It Is What It Is through Universal Music India, led by the single Celebrate with Raghav and producer Jim Beanz, and further albums followed, including In Ja (2017) and On the Weekend (2018). His recordings are reported to have sold more than 11 million albums worldwide.

The Apache Indian Music Academy

In November 2013 Kapur opened the Apache Indian Music Academy at South and City College in Handsworth, the neighbourhood he started in. The academy offers young people free weekly sessions in music and life skills, and it has run for more than a decade in close partnership with the local community. It was featured on the BBC's The One Show after lockdown.

Honours and legacy

The honours accumulated steadily: lifetime achievement awards from the UK Asian Music Awards in 2011 and the Brit Asia TV Music Awards in 2014, and an Asian Media Awards lifetime honour the same year. In the 2021 New Year Honours he was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to music and young people.

In August 2022 he performed at the closing ceremony of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games at the Alexander Stadium, singing Boom Shack-A-Lak as part of a celebration of the city's sound system culture, in a segment that also featured Panjabi MC. A world tour marking thirty years in music began in 2023 and took him across the UK, India, Europe, Dubai and New York.

For second-generation British Asians, Apache Indian was proof that their own streets, languages and family arguments could fill the national charts. A Punjabi kid from Handsworth chanting in patois over a dhol beat reached the Mercury Prize shortlist and the Brit Awards at a time when no Asian artist had done either, and the door he pushed open has stayed open since.