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Amazing new discovery in the early house/ acid house music history

i posted this on tota but figured this should go in here as well:



this was shared with me by rulzz (mr. kaizen) from ta.
basically the story starts off with one guy accidentally buying a record by Charanjit Singh in a store and listening to it when he realized that it was acid house music but the record was actually from 1982 which was 5 years before when people thought the acid house music actually emerged:

it's proven in this documentary about acid house and TB 303 doc from 2005 (if you'd like to watch)



here's a part of the story:



http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/201...ingh-acid-house

Charanjit Singh doubtless stood out as unusual in the Hindi film industry of the 1960s and 70s. Veteran of countless Bollywood soundtrack orchestras, Singh was the sort to turn up at session with the latest new synthesiser, acquired at great expense from London or Singapore. He was not, however, widely regarded among his country folk as someone "pushing things forward". His band, the Charanjit Singh Orchestra, made their rupees touring weddings, performing the hits of the day, and while he played on many popular Bollywood recordings, Charanjit Singh was never a household name.

In 1982, though, Singh did something unusual. Inspired by the sound of disco imports from the west making waves among Bombay's hipster cognoscenti, he went into the studio with some new kit � a Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard, a Roland TR-808 drum machine and a Roland TB-303 � and decided to make a record that combined western dance music with the droning ragas of Indian classical music. Recorded in two days, Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat garnered some interest, excerpts finding their way on to national radio, but it was a commercial flop and was soon forgotten.

"In 2002, record collector Edo Bouman came across Ten Ragas in a a shop in Delhi. "Back at my hotel I played it on my portable player, and I was blown away. It sounded like acid house, or like an ultra-minimal Kraftwerk." But it was the date on the record that shocked Bouman. Released 1982, it predated the first acid house record � often regarded as Phuture's Acid Trax � by five years. Bouman tracked down Singh to Mumbai. "He was most friendly and surprised I knew the album. I remember asking him how he got to this acid-like sound, but he didn't quite get my point. He didn't realise how stunningly modern it was."

Eight years later, Bouman is reissuing the record on his label, Bombay Connection. Even today, it sounds like some strange kink in the dance music continuum, but Bouman is amused at speculation Ten Ragas is a hoax, cooked up by some Aphex Twin-style techno joker (the label has released Singh's conventional soundtrack work before, and besides, one can't imagine a respectable Bollywood reissue label pulling such a prank).

Now in his 70s, Singh is, as Bouman puts it, "more a musician than a talker," but he understands Ten Ragas might have been something accidentally, unusually prescient. "He made close to 10 albums, but they all were cover albums," says Bouman. "He told me, 'Frankly, this was the best thing I did. Other albums are all film songs I just played. But this was my own composition. Do something all of your own, and you can make something truly different.'"

here's the track from 1982:



if you are familiar with older productions you can clearly hear that he using TB 303 (acid baseline) TR 808 drums and Jupiter 8 synthesizer.

here's an actual interview with the guy after he was located:




this is such an incredible story to me, the early house/acid house whole history is pretty much changed now after this discovery, the fact that acid music was first invented in a way in india and not in the states like it was thought of before. You can actually now buy a repress of this very rare record now, i actually think of getting it

and another recent article in the guardian if you'd like to read more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/201...house-ten-ragas


totally amazing!

Nice post, good read, cheers

I like how the interviewer is frustrated trying to show him the relevance of his song, because it seems the interviewee here is totally oblivious, or doesn't understand the smell of his own awesome.

Very interesting read, the 303 is such a flexible sound and stands the test of time. VSTs or whatever just don't cut it. Decent record but Chicago Acid and Jack have more substance. Really does change the historic roots. India now home to Goa and Acid.

quote:

Originally posted by -FSP- I like how the interviewer is frustrated trying to show him the relevance of his song, because it seems the interviewee here is totally oblivious, or doesn't understand the smell of his own awesome.

Yeah I noticed that too. He's spazzing out that the guy is totally chill about it. You wonder if it was just a experimental track he really didn't consider his finest work.

Next stop: Shlomi Aber going Indian.

Come on guys. I knew as soon as I saw the title that this would be that Ten Ragas track.

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That article pissed me off. As SYSTEM-J said, this was news a long time ago; I already knew the story. I feel like the writer did a really bad job conveying the fact that everyone considered Acid Trax the first ever song to employ the 303 in this way, and the huge shock everyone got when the 10 Ragas release was re-discovered.

I've seen some dickheads charting this album in their monthly lists, too. I found that funny in a facepalm kind of way.

Acid Trax wasn't even the first Chicago house record to use a TB-303. Then there's crazy shit like this:

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Acid Trax wasn't even the first Chicago house record to use a TB-303. Then there's crazy shit like this:

I know, and I never said it was. I said "in that way"; i.e. producing anything similar to the now stereotypical gurgling acid noise.

That track you posted is interesting. However, what made Acid Trax special was its purposeful, recognisable use of the 303 for something other than the basslines it was intended to create. The same can't be said of the track you posted.

It's quite hilarious how crap Phuture are, too. Acid Trax is actually a pretty poor piece of work apart from that one sound, and they have released almost nothing interesting or notable since. One hit wonders, that's for sure. Still, I wouldn't mind Acid Trax being the one hit to my name.

I wasn't disagreeing with you. I was pouring water further water on the notion that this track "changes acid house history".

EDIT: And of course Phuture were crap. That's the whole reason their story is more memorable, because they're a classic example of something being discovered by absolute incompetent luck.

sleazy d - i've lost control is another chicago record using the tb303 predating acid trax. however, i don't agree with phuture being crap. 'spank spank', 'your only friend' and 'rise from your grave' were nice as well. i love 'acid trax' but nowadays 'your only friend' is more interesting.

about the ten ragas thing well, ye, this 'news' sent shockwaves through out techno elitists and whatnot back when it was brought back to life. there was alot of people thinking it was an elaborate richard d. james prank. most of these people were aware that the silverbox was used before 'acid trax', it's just, it's not uncommon for rdj to pull something something like this)

how many times are we going to have to hear about this?


and acid house was a club movement before it was a genre. and it certainly wasn't a movement in bollywood. acid house wasn't one record, it was a constellation of records and sounds that developed in a local scene and eventually people [cough, the british] were like hey there's something going on here.

From a musical perspective, singh's music has very little to do with acid house as much as it it followed post disco. The people making acid house in chicago were getting their tracks played in sets full of post disco and proto house, etc.


I'm not saying the 10 ragas record isn't unique, it is, but it's not 'acid house'. It's "10 ragas to a 4/4 beat". it ain't any kind of house. it's got more in common with switched on bach.


also, just for some more context, as system-j pointed out, people were using the 303 long before phuture to much better effect. here's an italian classic from 1983 that WAS played at clubs like the music box, where acid house originated. and again, in italy, there was a documented disco connection. but i'd love to hear some indo-disco if it exists.

That song isn't Acid House. You and the guy who sent you that are morons who probably have never heard a proper Acid House track in your lives. Be un-amazed.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec how many times are we going to have to hear about this? and acid house was a club movement before it was a genre. and it certainly wasn't a movement in bollywood. acid house wasn't one record, it was a constellation of records and sounds that developed in a local scene and eventually people [cough, the british] were like hey there's something going on here. From a musical perspective, singh's music has very little to do with acid house as much as it it followed post disco. The people making acid house in chicago were getting their tracks played in sets full of post disco and proto house, etc. I'm not saying the 10 ragas record isn't unique, it is, but it's not 'acid house'. It's "10 ragas to a 4/4 beat". it ain't any kind of house. it's got more in common with switched on bach. also, just for some more context, as system-j pointed out, people were using the 303 long before phuture to much better effect. here's an italian classic from 1983 that WAS played at clubs like the music box, where acid house originated. and again, in italy, there was a documented disco connection. but i'd love to hear some indo-disco if it exists.

So what you're saying is that music isn't classified by how it actually sounds, but by which clubs it's played in and which records surround it? Come off it.

Again, make the crucial distinction between "using a 303" and "using a 303 to make acid-like sounds". The former was done by hundreds prior to '87, the latter, probably not at all.

No one is claiming Ten Ragas is the birth of acid house, at any rate. All that Singh is (rightfully) being credited with is being the first guy to "discover" the squelchy sound the 303 is capable of. Until someone else makes a claim, that is. Again, there were records before his that approached that acid sound, but none that used it so blatantly, for something other than a bassline.

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated So what you're saying is that music isn't classified by how it actually sounds, but by which clubs it's played in and which records surround it? Come off it.

no i'm saying the origins of musical genres are as such. then they become codified. so if we're talking about 'the first acid house' it totally depends on if it was part of the movement which created the sound that was eventually codified and dispersed.

are you an ember's breaks fan by chance?

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated No one is claiming Ten Ragas is the birth of acid house, at any rate.

i guess you didn't read the OP

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec no i'm saying the origins of musical genres are as such. then they become codified. so if we're talking about 'the first acid house' it totally depends on if it was part of the movement which created the sound that was eventually codified and dispersed. are you an ember's breaks fan by chance?

Okay, fair enough.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec i guess you didn't read the OP

I took it none of us were paying attention given that he only just heard about this. The article itself is sly - it never actually credits Singh's material explicitly as "the first acid house", but it implies it left, right and centre.

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated I took it none of us were paying attention given that he only just heard about this. The article itself is sly - it never actually credits Singh's material explicitly as "the first acid house", but it implies it left, right and centre.

yeah, but the dude in the video is downright trying to claim 'acid house' for india

my own definition of one of the first house tracks.


and here another random cool track (from later though but its cool):

also, it's called acid house because the music used to make people run up walls like they were on acid. actually, there are different etymologies, but in no case does acid refer specifically to the 'squelch sound'. ie 'acid house' is not called such because there is a specific 'acid instrument'.

here are some acid tracks with no 303





(of course the original has the 303 squelch)

So what are the defining characteristics of the genre, if not the 303?

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec yeah, but the dude in the video is downright trying to claim 'acid house' for india

Yeah, well we can both agree that's bullshit. Making acid-like sounds doesn't make something suddenly acid house.

While I can understand your previously expressed dislike for the record because of its simplicity in copying ragas note for note, I still think it was a cool mistake/discovery.

I think this is one of the best articles I've read on the origins of house music. In general tim lawrence is awesome.

http://djhistory.com/features/acid-can-you-jack

proto house tracks like this were the origin. basically just people stripping down disco and giving it a harder driving edge with machines, just as people were doing in boogiefunk with funk.

here's 1979 proto house


1981


and a bit later

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated So what are the defining characteristics of the genre, if not the 303

it's a huge part of it, but it's also the 808 and he rhythm of course, the minimalism, the militant cadence, the use of vocals, the alien sense of authority, the subjugation to the rhythm and the sound. i was just trying to make a point that the presence of 303 squelch in another track doesn't automatically make it acid house or acid anything.

if acid house is like an alien invasion, the squelch is like the voice of the leader, the mind control aspect. but the 808 is there to keep you in line and stuff your body parts into little metal cages.


(sorry if parts of this are gibberish, its scanned from kodwo eshun's book 'more brilliant than the sun')

quote:

Phuture's enthralling Your Only Friend is Acid's sequel to james Brown's '72 King HerOin, the electronic update of Roland Kirk's '69 Volunteer Slavery. After the pusher sells you to the Drug, the Drug sets you to work as a mule, sends you out into the world programmed like a medium at a seance. The drug becomes the clock which keeps time in its universe of unending servitude. In a Voice pitched down into the Vaderized groan of a Designated Despot: 'This is Cocaine speaking, I can make you do anything for me.' Acid's 303 delivers you up to the Kingdom of Cockayne, accelerated into a powder paradise of endless cocaine. To dance is to be drawn helplessly into what the track warns against. Acid's sternest injunctions - 'You have been warned, I'll take your life' - incites more dancing, not as release but as voluntary slavery, dancing your way into a new constriction. You're willingly abducted by Acid into the Despotic regime that never sounded so good before. Enthralled by frequencies, you're modulated by sensations of aggressive evasiveness and attacking elusiveness. You shed your life as easily as a snake shucks its skin. Slip from the morals inculcated into your muscles. The Voice of Doom decrees its death command: 'Take a shot from mell'lI make you fly/Take too much from mell'lI make you die.' Instead of emulating rock's bass, forever stratified at the low end, Acid exaggerates the Roland T303'S dry slipperiness, its glissements, by transforming the sound of the note, the colour of its tone as it plays. Filtering bends < >selects < >suppresses timbres, producing the aural equivalent of a tracer effect, a wavering sense of panic as the ear fails to resolve this slippage of overtones. Acid is an accident in which the TB303 bass synthesizer uses Phuture to reproduce itself, to mUltiply the dimensions of electronic sound, to open up a nomadology of texturhythms, rhythmelodies. Phuture, Bam Bam et allove this synthetic, unnatural noise. Acid trax amplifies this sense of terrifying newness. Nothing you know about the history of music is any help whatsoever. What is this noise and where's it coming from? Who are these people and why are they smiling at me? Brutally inexpressive woodblocks hammer out an inhuman irregularity, relieved by the stabs of bassic synth. The heart's beat is captured and cloned by the time synthesized into impacts. You become an extension of the machine which generates time. Slip through the spaces between the sequences. No government can scare you into stopping because E, trips, hydroponically grown skunk, all these have already scared you more than they ever could. This sense of being snatched by drugs, of being kidnapped into your head, of drawing out the madness already in you: this is what the Darkside is. Everything the media warns you against has already been made into tracks that drive the dancefloor. All black electronic musics have their Darkside, and Acid 's begins with Bam Bam's '88 Where 's Your Child, the Acid track as audio abduction, the sound that snatches you from school, self and society, that kidnaps your mind and never gives it back. Like 4 Hero's Mr Kirk 's Nightmare, it amplifies parent's drug-panic into a hilariously horrifying feedforward loop: 'Parents, Don't let your kids out at night/Don't you know they don't know wrong from right?' Acid here is a psychotic sampladelia of whining motorcars, of vicious glass smash played as a 3-note refrain, of cars slowed down into decaying gong and intermittent baby screams. Bam Bam pitchshifts his voice until it slurs down into a sinister gloat punctuated by vampiric laughs. It's the sound of seduction every parent dreads: 'Where's your child?/Do you know?/Look aroundlNowhere to be found.' Acid is repetitive attack patterns that perpetually climb, build and fall, restlessly lurching from panic inducing trebles to queasy lows. And even worse - even more satisfying - are the voluptuous groans and sated sighs emitted by the voice as if it's stroking itself while recalling intense gratification: 'Nobody likes to be left alone/especially when they don't know right from wrong.' Where's Your Child hits a peak of sweet unease when Bam Bam murmurs 'Curfew Curfew' like an incitement to unnamed perversions, the enticing threshold into its ahuman world: 'You're all my children now.' If Rock's archetypal demand is for satisfaction, tthen the RhythrTlachine's is for feeling. Fingers Inc - synthesist-producer tarry Heard and vocalist Robert Owens - ask the question for the 20th C djancefloor: Can You Feel It. 'It' here is emotion without an object, pOintle\s, careless, directionless feeling for its own sake. Fingers Inc demand thatt you feel feeling. Can You Feel It is a synthetic sanctuary whose edgele~ss tones insulate and enwomb. Its syntharmonic horizon reaches inSid�e you, wrapping itself around your skin, confusing the borders between, tissue and touch, igniting sensations of unspecified expectation, i"nminent immanence. Heard induces a sense of sanctuary, rapt ton\es cradling yoU in warm bass, hovering at the edge of the horizon. Can You Feel It is the empathogen in a state of unconditional elation, lips pursed, eyes flickering at the speed of the sun. When you're entactogenic, the skin gets tactile hallucinations, hears things, transmitting and receiving sensation-concepts. Eallows you to anticipate the beat, to slip inside the machine mnemonic. The skin is the borderguard of yourself. As an empathogen, E affects the physical interface of perception. Pat Cadigan clicks the cursor on zoom: 'The way to change people's ideas about reality is to change the way they feel reality - literally.' The skin seizes control of all the sensory channels, triggering memory skin, skin telepathy, finger-recognition, shiversighs, rapt gasps. The skin becomes an aerial receiving and transmitting everything. Feeling it is the sensation of amplification, of all channels open, supercharged. Your body seethes; a planet of wetware as you dive, dive into the seadepths of your blood. Feeling is the result of all the senses converging at once. The Rhythmachine values these peaks above all else. These nonverbal Nirvanas of total tactile telepathy are what A Guy Called Gerald terms 'emotions electric', the moments when each dancer in the crowd becomes a medium transmitting sensory current.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec I think this is one of the best articles I've read on the origins of house music. In general tim lawrence is awesome. http://djhistory.com/features/acid-can-you-jack

Nice article, though it only added minor details to stuff I've already read.

It (and you) didn't answer my question. If you call something acid house and it doesn't have a 303 squelching sound in it, which other characteristics make it acid house then? The article was only really about straight house except for the couple of paragraphs towards the very end.

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