Director to Screen, Discuss Brown Like Dat

Stereotypes of South Asians in the United States rarely include rappers, MCs, beatboxers or other hip-hop artists, but hip-hop music has an enormous following in second-generation South Asian communities. The short documentary film Brown Like Dat: South Asians and Hip-Hop, to be screened at Bryn Mawr on Wednesday, April 19, explores ways in which several American artists of South Asian origin are creating a distinctive hip-hop culture.

Raeshem Nijhon

The Department of Anthropology and South Asian Women will host the screening of Brown Like Dat, followed by a panel discussion featuring director Raeshem Nijhon. The event begins at 6 p.m. in Room G of Taylor Hall and is free and open to the public; a reception with foods of South Asia will follow. For more information, contact Assistant Professor of Anthropology Amanda Weidman.

The documentary, shot in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, features artists Abstract Vision Humanity, Himalayan Project's Chee Malabar, D'Lo Jugular, Karmacy and MC Kabir. "Through their music and their lives, these artists speak on everything from racial profiling post 9/11 to identity in second-generation immigrant communities, forcing us to question 'traditional' South Asian existence in America in fresh new ways," Nijhon has said.

Nijhon was born in Detroit to a family of film directors, actors and writers from Bombay. She was trained in Indian classical dance, but hip-hop dance forms also fascinated her, and she has developed a style that merges hip-hop and traditional Indian art forms. She majored in film at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and successfully turned her lens on the cultural phenomenon her own dance work represents. Brown Like Dat has won a number of awards, including Best Music Film at the Protbello Film Festival, Best Foreign Documentary at the NYC Film Festival, Special Jury Prize at the Bogotá International Film Festival and Honorable Mention at the Oakland Film Festival.

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