How Bollywood influenced Björk’s experimental electronic music

Björk Guðmundsdóttir, who turned 59 this year on November 21, is best known for being one of the world’s first pioneers of this avant-garde style. Debut itself combined electronic music, house, jazz, and more, and would set a precedent for samples, cultures, and genres from all over the world that would find a place in her work over the years. Critics have struggled to define her sound, besides the oft-repeated words “electronic”, “unconventional” and “experimental”, but many still regard her as a raw force of emotion that binds all of these seemingly disparate elements together.

India and its culture were also weaved into Björk’s cornucopia of influences. We take a look.

Björk discovers the “chaos” of Bombay, Bollywood

A year before the iconic Bollywood film Judaai (1997) was released, the filming of some of the lead actress Sridevi’s takes was intently witnessed by none other than Björk. Luke Kenny, director of the now-lost documentary Björk Goes to Bollywood, remembers how back in the day, the Mumbai film studio that the “two giants” met in lacked central air-conditioning. In the sweltering heat, they exchanged “pleasantries in broken English, which was superbly cute to watch,” he told The Indian Express.

An actor, producer and director, Kenny was the first male VJ for Channel V, one of India’s most iconic music-centred channels in the ’90s. He also starred in the film ‘Rock on!!’. Björk Goes to Bollywood (1996) was a 30-minute documentary aired on Channel V’s ‘Music Video Request Show’ called ‘Mangta Hai’. The idea was to bring Björk on to see Bombay’s Filmistan and Mehboob Studios because she was a “big fan” of India’s films.

Kenny describes himself as being Björk’s “Raju guide” (referencing RK Narayan’s The Guide) back then. “There was limited time with her. But she was quiet, curious and amused at the chaos of the city,” he says. The documentary and most of the content from the show were “purged” during a digitisation process, while Channel V was shut down in 2021.

Sampling Satyajit Ray, collaborating with Tavlin Singh

While Björk’s fame would eventually shoot up as one of the world’s most famous alternative artists, earning her millions of plays and global accolades, she has often cited a love for the world of underground music clubs.

Back in 1993, when Björk was assembling a band for Debut, she met trained tabla player Tavlin Singh. He’d later be considered by some as the founder of the Asian Underground sub-genre of electronic music in the clubs of London. He had just finished touring with the rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees then, after rebelling against the Indian classical musicians who were “judgmental” about how he played the tabla, as told to The Guardian in 2018.

Raised by Sikh parents in eastern London, Singh was used to Indian classical music evenings and had travelled to India to specifically learn the tabla. He became the director and lead percussionist for Björk’s album, lending a subtle, heartbeat-like tabla sound on tracks like ‘Venus as a Boy’. Singh later co-founded Anokha, a club dedicated to electronic music that fuses South Asian instruments, and released an album of the same name featuring artists such as A R Rahman.

Notably, Bollywood singer Jolly Mukherjee also provided the string arrangements for Björk’s song ‘Verandi’ (2001). The same song sampled a short, blink-and-you-miss-it portion from the first 10 minutes of legendary Indian director Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977).