Introducing Balraj
Balraj Singh Samrai, aka Samrai, is a DJ, music producer and educator who has been based
in Manchester for eighteen years. In his work within the music industry, Balraj was one of
the founding members of the Manchester-based collective, production team and record
label Swing Ting, and has collaborated with a diverse range of musical artists to produce
multimedia works concerned with many justice-oriented issues. Much of his work is
concerned with music education, and focuses on community access to music through
facilitation and teaching.

Balraj was raised in Northampton, and moved to Manchester for university, which was
where his involvement in Manchester’s electronic music scene began:

“[I] started out actually playing instruments when I was younger, being in some bands and
kind of working on music tech sort of solo, through to kind of taking a bit of a break from
writing music. And then when I got to University of Manchester, I worked a lot more on, I
guess like electronic music really- like DJing, music production, running events, and then
that turned into playing other people's events, like performing at events... It's the longest
I've lived anywhere... That's like my argument for getting adopted Mancunian status
[laughs]!”

Balraj comes from a Sikh Punjabi background, and has found that as his own musical
influence and practice reaches across genres and cultures, the audiences for his music has
often been diverse:

“I think for many years I’ve worked in kind of areas of, I guess it’s like largely music of
black origin, really; Pan-African music, or Sound System music from the Afro-Caribbean
diaspora. Things like working, like Dancehall reggae, garage, hip hop, UK Funky, grime,
jungle, soul, so I’ve kind of got quite a good knowledge of these areas and have
performed in a lot of locations and venues and worked with a lot of artists as well as
travelled a lot to perform and have connected and recorded a lot of music with people - I
have a good collection of kind of music in this area too... I guess it's interesting because
the music projects have done, even in the events we were doing, thinking about
audiences, thinking about kind of who's coming to events, and them being like, sort of a
mixed crowd. And there being a mix of like, ethnicities and backgrounds and stuff was
always actually quite important.”

Although Balraj’s own background has not necessarily been at the forefront of his
music-making, more recently he has engaged with musical work that explores the
treatment of South Asian and other global majority communities, both within Manchester
and beyond:

“I never sort of tried to hide my own sort of identity, I guess, really. So I was always quite
kind of proud still, but my own interest in a lot of the work I was doing wasn't necessarily like, overtly linked to my background, but I kind of never hid that. I think it was, in recent years, we're doing more work that I guess, where the actual subject matter looks a lot more at that, and maybe the intersections between black and brown identities, or black indigenous global majority South Asian communities altogether, which I think is what has been my experience, a little bit of being in the music industry really - it’s been like in an area where I felt quite sort of accepted and safe.”

Balraj has found that although the music scenes he has worked in for the last eighteen years has often been popular among the Sikh Punjabi community, his more recent collaborative work with cultural and justice-orientated organisations has allowed him to gain more connections to this in Manchester:

“I feel like there's always been this thing where the South Asian community or the Punjabi community have always like, loved a lot of the club music and electronic music and that music I guess that’s come out of the UK too. So there's always been quite a strong connection, I think particularly with garage in Manchester, I think there’s quite a strong history of like, sort of there being like a Punjabi garage, kind of scene... I've come across people from the community, kind of maybe a little bit more through the South Asia gallery [at Manchester Museum]... The South Asia Gallery project I’ve done in the last kind of three to four years, we've been working on the curation, and that was quite nice to meet a lot of other people from the community... I would say that it’s probably an area still to explore further and I'd like to make more connections... But I feel I feel like I'm on the on the route to that, in a way.”

Music and justice in Balraj’s current work
In recent years, Balraj has engaged in musical and artistic work across the North of England that is concerned with a variety of social and justice-concerned issues such as racial injustice and climate change. This includes work within an Opera North residence called Resonance, where Balraj explored the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of colour within a multimedia track:

“I applied to do this project where I wanted to say look at, rather than doing some fun party club music and stuff [laughs] which I really love and obviously enjoy doing, but this is kind of looking at something a bit different that involves some South Asian instrumentation, maybe some poetry, spoken word... [the track] got a lot of support, which I think gave me confidence- got quite a lot of radio support from Mary Ann Hobbs on 6 Music [who] played this track, and it got like a lot of good feedback and press support from some of the similar places who would have support the music before.”

Currently, much of Balraj’s work happens in community settings, and incorporates the
voices of a diverse range of people over particular social issues into an electronic sound
setting:

“By [the time of the Opera North resonance project] I was quite experienced at bringing together artists and arranging lots of different voices altogether. So I'd say that a lot of my musical ability maybe is kind of more collaborative, and it's like kind of, getting something, a tangible thing, out of lots of different, a myriad of different musicians and voices and vocalists, and kind of finishing it as well.”

Another of Balraj’s recent projects is his work with Manchester International Festival in November 2021 on the subject of loss named Someone Died Today: the music in this piece involved excerpts of interviews Balraj conducted with his mum and grandma, alongside acoustic instruments such as violins and tabla and accompanied by visual artwork. Since working on these projects, Balraj has found that these collaborative multimedia projects have aided in diversifying his own approach to creating music and art beyond the electronic music scene:

“I found like with these works, especially with that one about loss... The people who seem to have checked it, it's a lot of migrant communities you know, who really, they kind of got what it was about. And it was kind of different, I do feel like maybe the audience for the work I did previously was quite, it could be a bit insular sometimes. Lots of people listening to it, it was like this underground music world, I think it saw itself as being quite cool [laughs]. It ends up being a bit of an echo chamber sometimes as well, and it kind of really taught me I think that there's like other places and other ways to release
music, and release art into the world.”

Balraj has also begun collaborating with Pakistani-British artist Farah Ahmad Khan, recently undertaking a project named Planet, People, Power with Manchester Museum and Season for Change, a climate campaigning organisation. The project incorporates the literal voices of climate activists and Manchester-based cultural workers, such as Manchester Museum’s indigenous culture curator Alexandra P. Alberda into an electronic track - this was another ambitious but successful project that received radio airtime. 

“What was cool was... I was asking people for their thoughts on these issues sometimes. So it wasn't just like, “oh, could you just sing here?” Sometimes it was, because it was like, “could you sing here, or a little bit here”, but sometimes it was like, “what are your thoughts on this too?” Because it's like, [climate change] is definitely affecting all areas of like, the Global South, or like, kind of anywhere that was like a previously a colony has kind of had some, usually some kind of climate impacts.”

Balraj’s Time in Manchester
Having lived in Manchester since he was nineteen, Balraj has found that musical opportunities often present themselves within the city’s music network - this is something he has experienced even in his first few years of living and working in Manchester, when he worked at the record shop Fat City Records on Oldham Street:

“I remember speaking to someone from the shop, this guy called Woody, Christian Wood... [who now runs] Red Laser Disco. I was like, “oh, yeah, I was kind of lucky with [gaining the connections from the record shop], but he was like, “Were you? You’re here, aren’t you?” And then he kind of taught me around like, that whole sort of ‘Right place, right time’ thing’s, maybe a bit of a myth. And it's all like, be in the place, and put yourself in the place, and then then you might get a bit lucky, I guess perhaps, but if you're not actually there and spaces [it’s not going to happen]. So I think I just used to go out to a lot of events, like, check a lot of things, almost like doing research before I started running events. And then through that I met a lot of people, and then you kind of create a bit of a network. So I never really went out to network, but... I ended up with quite a big network afterwards, kind of thing.”

Balraj has found the musical community of Manchester to be both extensive and adept at producing music, although he feels that on a national level there could be more focus on Manchester’s music scene in terms of labels and press: 

“I think [Manchester is] very, very musical - people just seem so like, native with a lot of music software I find as well... Like almost everyone's just like, “yeah, you know, I just started producing when we were twelve”, and they found a way like, even though there's just a laptop or whatever... I love that. I think also with that caveat that it would be good to have more infrastructure around [music production and education in Manchester], though; I’m quite passionate about that as well. Yeah, whether it's agents and labels, promoters, kind of publishers, all that sort of stuff that goes around - those artists’ press as well- like trying to have more stuff based here, because I think it can end up being very London-centric, I find that especially with some of the press side of things as well. It almost takes getting big in London... Or elsewhere to then get recognized here sometimes.”

Remembering Swing Ting
One of Balraj’s most well-known outfits in Manchester is Swing Ting, a production team and later record label that began as a club party in 2008 to national acclaim. Swing Ting operated from a studio in Ancoats, and had many musicians from Manchester and beyond pass through its doors until they wound down Swing Ting production earlier in 2022. 

“We made music with loads of people in there, but also people use it as a community thing - I'd open it up for people who needed the space at times, or wanted to record something, a vocal or mix or something like that... In terms of making music, there was actually a physical space we had, and we're quite keen for that not to be forgotten about... I guess like the kind of perplexing thing in some ways is that like some of the artists who passed through are now like, huge - some of them are like BAFTA, Brit Award winners and stuff. They might have worked with other people sometimes, [but] it's just
quite interesting that they stepped foot in there. And that's quite cool.”

Currently, Balraj is exploring ways to best archive work that Swing Ting achieved during its fourteen year run.
 

Music Facilitation and Community Work
More recently, Balraj has taken his musical work further into the community in the form of music education and facilitation sessions. Having been instilled in both music production, performance and in teaching music business modules at BIMM (British and Irish Modern Music) Institute, Balraj has found that moving his education practices closer into the community has helped him develop new approaches to the work he is doing:

“I think I needed that shift [towards facilitation work], because I felt like I was sort of going through the motion a bit with BIMM - year on year it was very similar in a way actually - so it was quite nice almost to get like, my hands a bit dirty in a way [laughs], out in the community a bit more maybe.”

Currently, Balraj is conducting music sessions in a primary school and a North Manchester youth centre as part of a COVID-19 recovery fund that aims to increase young people’s wellbeing through creativity. Here, the emphasis of the sessions are on the positive effects of music rather than the musical output of the classes: 

“The outputs of the sessions are actually just about like, enjoyment and working together... Rather than being like, “okay, we need to teach this and get this person like, to this grade on the piano”, or whatever it might be. I love it, actually, because it's been quite different.”

Another of Balraj’s facilitation projects that he is co-directing is the Manchester Experimental Orchestra, running music facilitation workshops with 12-18 year olds who play a wide range of music. He hopes that this is project that can help improve access to orchestral ensembles for young people who may not normally engage with orchestral music:

“I mean, for example, there's like a tabla player in this collective, and there's also... A Ukrainian refugee, who’s like living with a member of staff. They play this instrument called the Bandura, I've never sort of seen that [before], and there's an Iranian player in there - you know, just lots of different people. But then there's just other people in there who were just like, you know, just play the guitar, or bass or whatever, but they wouldn’t feel like they could be in an orchestra, do you know what I mean? So it's kind of like almost a place for like, migrants and those people that are missed by the system because
of their backgrounds. I kind of feel like, there's something that draws everyone together, and we did feel that in the room, but it wasn't, it's quite hard to know what it was- I think it was probably just that sense of feeling like you don't fit usually. But here you can be like, who you want to be, sort of express how you want to... It's meant to be just about almost a collective of people who maybe... Wouldn't normally engage with the usual music on offer.”

Balraj’s Future Projects
Balraj has many more projects on the horizon, including an Arts Council funded music magazine that aims to share stories of different musical practices and amplify lesser heard musical artists. The project is rooted in Manchester, but connects music-making happening in other parts of the UK and more globally:

“The idea is this music magazine is just to try and tell like, I guess like tell untold stories, and kind of conversations, and cover scenes, like music scenes that aren't always like, sort of... Yeah, like in the mainstream media... I think there's a lot of people that make music in Manchester, all the time, and lots get it done. Sadly I think a lot of it doesn't always necessarily get out as much as it maybe could, or it doesn't get heard enough. So I think that was another reason maybe behind the magazine a little bit actually, was to try and sort of get things to new eyes and ears, really, that maybe it gets a bit overlooked and isn't always seen.”

Balraj hopes to apply the knowledge and experience he has gained from his community facing projects to much more of his upcoming work:

“I think the next project I'm wanting to do is to try and to kind of use the learning from the sort of these more serious [social issue-orientated] releases I guess, but then also apply that, to that I can kind of maybe get those tracks, into clubs, into radio and DJs’ hands, but with a bit of maybe a bit of a message, not overtly, but just being quite intentional about the concepts and things... It's been quite an interesting journey really, on that kind of path.”

‘I Should Have Hugged You Tighter When We Last Met’ (See video, beginning 6:35)
This is a work Balraj produced with Farah Ahmad Khan as part of the Opera North Resonance Residency and performed at Manchester Museum. The track is produced by Balraj, and features spoken word, sung vocals and tabla.