Quick Picks: Portland’s Dance Missionary & DJ Anjali

This week we feature the current favorites and obsessions of DJ Anjali. With a name like Gitanjali (song offering) you’d think she was born to play records. Made in India and born in Oregon, Anjali was raised by Marathi banjaras and Cascadian loggers. She started DJing after watching too many boys run the soundtrack at house parties. After studying Kathak and Bharata Natyam for many years, Anjali hung up her ghungroo and became a proselytizer of Panjabi folk forms bhangra and giddha. Since her Portland debut in 2000, DJ Anjali has existed as the city’s primary advocate and dance missionary for the many varied electronic sounds of the South Asian/desi diaspora. Well-known as dance floor instigators, she and her partner, The Incredible Kid, hold down several Portland parties as well as the Anjali and The Kid weekly radio show on KBOO 90.7FM and Chor Bazaar on XRAY.fm.

1. Aljawal, Débruit & Alsarah

This album is absolutely gorgeous. I can’t even pick just one single song, you need to listen to the entire album, on repeat. I was lucky enough to see them perform live this summer at Beloved Festival. They were flown out to play in the middle of an Oregon forest. How perfect is that?

2. Rocking with a Sikh documentary

I first saw a pic of Peter Singh, Sikh Elvis impersonator from Swansea, around 2000 in the the book (un)Fashion. I was working at Powell’s when it came out. Of course I had no idea who he was but his image always stuck with me. Recently I was chatting with a friend who told me about the this doc made in 1986 about him, Rocking with a Sikh. To all the immigrant Mums/Dads, Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles that came before us. He’s got original desi diaspora swag!

3. Sassy Maharashtrian dance form Lavani

I’m kind of obsessed with Lavani, the sassy Maharashtrian dance form. I’d love to see the film Fire Of Lavani and have my Ai read me the Marathi book Sangeet Bari by Bhushan Korgaonkar who describes the dance as “a rather neglected and stigmatised art form of Maharashtra” and wrote of the dancers “their lives are full of beauty, glamour, money as well as pain, dejection and loneliness.”

4. “Ki Faida” by Tigerstyle featuring Raj Brar (Delhi 2 Dublin remix) from Kawan II remix EP

I’ve always got a desi R&B kinda track that I’m obsessing over. This is the latest, and I’m proud to say I hosted the Portland debut of both Tigerstyle and Delhi 2 Dublin. So happy they’re working together.