As The Dhol Foundation prepare to bring their weapons of mass percussion to Womad in Abu Dhabi next weekend, the sensational drumming collective’s frontman Johnny Kalsi talks to Stephen Dalton about their 20-year journey from one-man band to world music maestros. From The National:
Johnny Kalsi
The hybrid sound of The Dhol Foundation also reflects Kalsi’s own scrambled roots as a musical citizen of the world. Although he grew up in London listening to the same British rock and pop as his peers, his family history also includes Indian and African influences. Which helps explain the multicultural ethos behind his band’s music.
“Because I play with so many different bands, and I’ve worked with so many artists all over the world, if I like a flavour I just basically ask that artist to guest on my album,” he explains. “My albums don’t really have a genre because the flavour is from everywhere. I like Arabic music, African and Indian music -- both Bollywood and bhangra. I like the whole lot.”
Kalsi was born in Leeds, in northern England, but his family relocated to the western suburbs of London when he was still a baby. “I’m a Hounslow boy, same as Phil Collins,” he laughs. One of just five Asians in his school, and only two who wore turbans, he was singled out for racist abuse by some of his classmates. But this only drew him closer to his Sikh faith, he says, which is inextricably linked with music and Dhol drumming.
Kalsi’s father was a post office manager, while his late mother worked in a biscuit factory. Both were born in the Indian half of the Punjab, close to the Pakistani border, the cradle of bhangra music. More:
Visit: Womad Abu Dhabi and The Dhol Foundation
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