Negotiating the Third Space: British Asian Independent Record Labels and the Cultural Politics of Difference

Within postcolonial discourse the emergence of British (South) Asian electronic dance music, with its conscious fusion of Eastern and Western influences, was seen as an important cultural-political moment, challenging essentialist perceptions of South Asian identity. Yet the danger is that such a perspective overstates the transgressive potential of Asian dance music. Based on in-depth interviews with managers of three independent record labels involved in the scene, this article demonstrates how standardized marketing processes transform the potentially disruptive hybridity of British Asian dance music into a source of fetishization, reinforcing the marginalization of Asian dance labels and South Asian expressive cultures in the West as a whole.