- Gabriele Filippi
- Jan 2021
- 3 min
- 900 views
The latest work from the conceptual creator is a combination of images and lyrics that showcase a stylized narrative to address and reflect upon the struggles of the South-Asian experience affected by generalization and racism within a western construct.
ORIENTALISM AS A THEORETICAL IDEA REPRESENTED BOTH IN MUSIC AND IN THE MEDIA – This is the vulnus around which Rohan Saini has developed his personal investigation, on how the sounds of South Asian culture and tradition can be used in synthesis with western hip-hop. The deal? As ROHΔN explains: “To effectively juxtapose the colonialist imagination.”
So, Rohan conducted a real personal research, exploring the colonial impact on that identities, cultural and artistic, developing his own music and visualization.
The goal that the artist explains he has set for himself is to redefine and (re)authenticate Indian Music in synthesis with contemporary frameworks, through personal and artistic cultural identities.
Following this statement, the Sydney-based hip-hop artist, director, producer, cinematographer, and photographer recently launched “Babbar Sher,” a music video installation that addresses the social issues centrally focused on his project.
The song, whose title can be translated from Punjabi into English as “Lion,” “follows the concept of being “poached” by colonialist and negative attitudes toward South-Asian identity, which derives from personal experiences with racism and generalization of culture.”
So ROHΔN introduces us to the merits of his multi-point investigation, then rendered in that narratively stylized juxtaposition introduced above.
This result is the fruit of how Saini dedicated himself to cultivating his artistic practice, to draw upon his musical background, probing across different genres, from hip-hop and rap to R&B, and through his own South-Asian cultural style.
As these passions lead him to further develop his skillset into
the audiovisual field, he now points to combines his musical foundation with visualization to realize his artistic identity in ways that are addicted to his own feelings and cultural upbringing.
For the making of his grand plan, ROHΔN used Graeme
Sullivan’s Practice-Led Research methodologies, thus giving verbosity to the project, and baking his own recipe.
The vision is personal, also based on the artist’s experience. So the goal brings an essential aim of (re) definition of the canons., And all this obviously becomes connotative in such a thoughtful project.
Hence, the dynamics are purely centered in a perspective of “pulling out” and “redefining the canons,” with musical deconstruction, dissonances that come and go, ethereal spatiality, and elongated reverberations.
Similarly, lyrics like “And nah I ain’t no Ali Baba” or “I ain’t no other, I am Mowgli” underline the superstructure of the reconceptualization aimed at detaching from clichés: I am what I am not; not another comic, not one of Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves, not another character – a talking animal archetyped as a human – from The Jungle Book.
Under the auspices of musical experimentation, ROHΔN has synthesized an anti-stereotype pill, with a good acidity dose. Lapalissian, to note how precisely that note of acidity is a result reflected by that poisoned process of “civilization” once imposed by colonialism on the lands to the east, today a snake that still crawls in our society. 
Listen now to "Babbar Sher," the latest by ROHΔN, available in streaming on all major digital platforms, and find out more about ROHΔN and his music, by follow him all over the web:
<\span>- .: Nova MUSIC blog // January 2021