For years now, Bay Area hip hop artist Mandeep Sethi has been performing as SETI X, bringing his music to audiences from the Bay Area to Bombay. At the heart of Sethi’s work as an artist is a vision based on collaboration. “I try to build bridges musically with a lot of people,” Sethi explains in a phone interview earlier this year. That spirit of collaboration has influenced both his work as a musician and a youth worker, collaborating with artists and activists in India and the U.S. to develop workshops for youth interested in hip hop culture. Sethi took some time from his busy schedule to chat with SAADA about his life as a performing artist, his childhood influences, and the surprising way that Black Sabbath’s Paranoid changed his life.
MD: Could you tell us a little about how you got into music and hip hop?
MS: I got into music because I went to a Punjabi school where I grew up in L.A., and they used to teach us harmonium and tabla. When you go to the Gurdwara you always hear music being played. That was my introduction to music and musicality, playing a little bit of harmonium and tabla. When I went to middle school I played trumpet in jazz band, and did that for three or four years. Then I moved onto playing bass guitar in a punk band, and we used to mix it with hip hop.
All this time while I was playing in bands, I was writing poetry. I had an English teacher in high school who really pushed me to turn my poetry into music. Around that time, me and a friend created a group called the Blind Prophets. We started rapping, and recording ourselves, and performing. That was how I got into hip hop, being introduced through the Los Angeles hip hop scene. When I moved to San Francisco, I decided to pursue music fully as my main career. I pretty much immersed myself in the Bay Area hip hop culture, and that's where a lot of my style grew.
MD: Before doing this interview, I watched every video of yours I could on youtube, and in one you had a microphone and mentioned that Camp Lo had used that mic. I was wondering, what's the story behind that? Was that metaphorical?
MS: [Laughs] No, no, no, I worked with the producer Brooklyn Shanti, and Camp Lo, Afrika Bambaata, a lot of different people had used that same microphone to record vocals.
MD: I was impressed!
MS: Yeah, I'm also part of [Bambaataa's] Zulu Nation, so I've done work with a lot of different artists. I come from that culture -- I'm Punjabi, I'm Sikh, but I'm also pretty deeply entrenched in Hip Hop culture, and that's a culture I really represent.
MD: You mentioned how you crossed all kinds of genres. Were there musicians or albums that were inspiring you and pushed you in a particular direction?
MS: Definitely. I think Miles Davis was a huge inspiration because of the way he would improvise on the trumpet; his playing style had a huge effect on the way I rhyme right now and my style of rhyming. I kind of rhyme the way that a trumpet player plays. So, Miles Davis, and other musicians like John Coltrane. When I got into bass, Weather Report and Jaco Pastorius really influenced me.
I remember we were on this jazz tour, and we were playing some festival with the middle school band, because they were really good. We stopped at this record store, and I went in and I bought this CD randomly and it really changed my life. It was Black Sabbath's Paranoid. I was listening to that, and it was such a stark contrast to what we were playing in jazz band, but it hit me so hard. It has a really heavy hip hop element to it too, like a trip hop element almost. That album really changed my life.
A lot of the underground hip hop I was listening to changed my perspective on what hip hop could be. Hip hop is an encapsulation of all these different genres; it was a good way to express myself and the fact that I did like these different styles of music. With sampling and rhyming it allowed me talk about and sample anything, so I could incorporate a lot of these other influences.
MD: I had a question about that, specifically, and how your music incorporates other genres. In the past you’ve spoken about the kind of connection you felt between the art of kirtan and the art of hip hop. Could you elaborate more about that? Is that something you still feel?
MS: When I was a kid my mom used to tell me to turn my hip hop off and play kirtan, and I used to yell back, "This is my kirtan!" What I mean is that for me and for a lot of youth -- especially a lot of youth of color growing up in America -- hip hop was a meditative, saving grace music. I'm not comparing hip hop and kirtan in the sense of the divinity. On a religious level, I'm not trying to compare, because a lot of people will get upset and say that you cannot compare the two because of the way that they respect the religion or those texts, which I totally understand and respect.
Kirtan is what a lot of traditional Indian religions incorporated to express their connection to God. Sikh kirtan was done by Guru Nanak Devji, the founder of Sikhism, while he traveled with a Muslim and a Hindu. That’s a representation of a unity that I think is also So, I see hip hop as very similar to kirtan as meditative music. That is, if it wants to be used that way. Because hip hop is whatever you make it.represented in hip hop. In hip hop it doesn't matter where you come from or what your background is because it comes down to your skill level. At the same time your background and culture informs the ways you interact with hip hop and the hip hop community.
So, I see hip hop as very similar to kirtan as meditative music. That is, if it wants to be used that way. Because hip hop is whatever you make it. You can use it in a destructive way, and destroy hip hop culture, or you can use it in a positive manner and help build upon hip hop culture. I think that's really the key. It could be a pathway or avenue to connect with god, or the universe, or the divine spirit.
MD: I interviewed some other South Asian American artists this year who mentioned how it was their engagement with a Black cultural art form, or being inspired by a particular Black artist, that allowed them to articulate being a racialized minority, even while they were cognizant of the differences between their experiences. Is that something that resonates with you?
MS: I'd say that mine was a more diversified experience, because I grew up in Los Angeles and it was not just Africans Americans but Latinos and Asian Americans, specifically Korean Americans. And a lot of my early free styling and early rapping was not just with Black people and Black culture, but with Latinos and Koreans and Vietnamese and Filipinos. For me it might be that I'm part of another generation -- of course, we see the roots of Hip Hop in African American and Puerto Rican culture, but the way I grew up was definitely a bit more diversified and universal.
So I can't say it was engaging with Black culture than helped me identify as a racialized person in America because actually I felt racialized when I first went to Punjabi school as a little kid. I knew I was Punjabi and I'm from this community. When I went to school I knew I was the only one who wears a turban. I already felt racialized by society because, I was not only brown but I had a different outward appearance on top of my skin color. I knew I was different. But I also had context, knowing I did go to a Punjabi school and there were other kids like me.
MD: Was 9/11 a flash point where you felt that more, or became even more politicized?
MS: I think I felt that early on because the middle school I went to pushed us towards critical thinking. Even in middle school, I remember I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and that was the first book that flipped my whole thing. By the time 9/11 happened, I was already up on what was going on with the government.
Right after 9/11, I was profiled as “the enemy.” I knew what was going on, and who's really sponsoring what, and how Osama Bin Laden was a CIA agent and all this crazy shit. So me being profiled at the time was a little more dangerous than someone who wasn't thinking consciously.
In my mind, as a conscious person, I wasn't differentiating myself from a Muslim. For me, it was an even more of a complex issue because not only was I experiencing it from a perspective of being a Sikh in America, but I was also experiencing it from the perspective of a conscious person of color living in what was almost a police state, where enemies were being created for political purposes. I looked at it from several different angles and I saw a lot of disassociation with people around me, and kind of what their true feelings were towards Islam.
MD: I remember one place where this came up a lot was a year ago, at the Oak Creek massacre. First there was that commentary addressing the ignorance, differentiating Sikhs from Muslims. But then there was another voice that was saying, "Look, it doesn't really matter -- we're all being targeted." A track you just released, "We Must Continue," addresses that. You wrote under the title "Trayvon Martin = Oak Creek." Where did track come from and what inspired it?
MS: That track came from a lot of stress and heavy duty touring around the world, meeting different people and hearing about different struggles. It was really about figuring out, who I am and how I can contribute to a greater good and greater message while all this stress is influencing my life and all these things are happening in society. It's like, "We must continue on regardless of the struggle / Gotta keep the hustle steady til the dawn." Regardless, we understand what's going on, but we have to keep pushing forth as a people, as a community, regardless of the struggle that's happening.
MD: Could you say more about the work you were doing in India the past few years?
MS: I was always looking for South Asians within hip hop in America, and I found Chee Malabar and the other few we have here in North America who really represented on an authentic hip hop level. I met an artist named Nisha K. Sembi from Kalakari who also had this blog Bay2Bombay, that explored the connections between hip hop here and hip hop in India. I got really intrigued and started doing research to the point where I went to India and connected with a few different people in the hip hop community there. There were people who were traveling from different parts of the world, spreading the knowledge and young Indian kids who were getting hip hop from Youtube videos or from international artists who were touring through there.
I almost became a bridge between what was going on here and what was going on there, not just taking knowledge and information from here, but also learning what was going on India, and going back and forth. I almost became a bridge between what was going on here and what was going on there, not just taking knowledge and information from here, but also learning what was going on India, and going back and forth.I worked with the Tiny Drops hip hop organization to hold different workshops. We would get graffiti writers from the Bronx and Zulu Nation to Skype in and teach these kids over Skype, project it on a wall, hold a free session in the community center for the kids who really wanted to pursue this but didn’t have access. Then, working with different break dancers, we did the first hip hop show in Mehboob studios in Bombay, which was pretty legendary and brought together a bunch of different crews together from the city of Bombay in unison to represent together the culture of hip hop. For me, it's been the experience of learning about my own Indian culture through hip hop, and also sharing what I've learned from my hip hop community in America.
MD: What was the reception like in Bombay?
MS: It was great. Bombay has always been one of those cities that has been open to experimentation and being funky. And I think you can hear it in a lot of the 60s and 80s music that was being made out there by different music producers and soundtrack composers like RD Burman and Kalyanji Anandji, who were experimenting, who were taking a lot of influencing and even sampling from music in America. They were down with the funk, and making it funkier. For me, it was great to see that kind of spirit is still alive in Bombay and that people are still open to it.
MD: I've spent a little time in Bombay, and I was always interested to see if hip hop ever gained a following there. So hearing about your experiences has been really interesting, even surprising.
MS: Yeah, I mean, there's a need for youth all around the world to have safe spaces to be able to practice art, and practice art that gives back to their position in society.
MD: Would you recommend other artists in India you discovered?
Kru 172 from Chandigarh, Desi Beam, the One Commission, Reggae Rajahs is representing for Indian Reggae Sound Systems, BassFoundation is doing big things out there -- there are all kinds of artists holding it down in India. And there are artists in America too, but that's another thing.
I try to build bridges musically with a lot of people. There's a lot of hatred even in the Sikh Community and Muslim community towards each other. So, for me building with Sunny Ali and the Kid or the Kominas has been really enriching for my life, as musicians and representatives of our communities.
MD: You were on the Beats for Bangladesh record, which was put together as a benefit for the garment workers of Rana Plaza. How did you get involved with that?
MS: I got involved because the organizers of Beats for Bangladesh reached out to me, and they wanted me to narrate the lead track, about what exactly happened out there. One of the first things that made me a conscious, critical thinker as a young student was actually figuring out that Nikes were made in sweatshops in places like India, Bangladesh, and China. When the factory collapsed and the workers died, I felt that right in the gut. I think the project also shows solidarity between Sikhs and the Bangladeshi community, and you don't normally see that. I have a voice and a message, which is that people deserve Human Rights. Workers rights are one of the most basic human rights. It was a responsibility for me to speak up and narrate what was going down.
