What is genre? Is it just a collection of musical parameters? When Charanjit Singh’s 1982 cult classic Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat was first reissued in 2010, most critics seemed to think so: Singh was hailed as a »pioneer of acid house.« But what had his music to do with what Chicago trio Phuture would cook up in their home studio with the mangled sounds of a Roland TB-303 two years later? Indeed, framing Singh’s work as related to acid house in any way is at best narrow-minded or exoticist, and at worst disrespectful to both Phuture and Singh’s respective legacies.
Singh spells it out that disco was one of his influences and also used a TR-808 drum machine and the TB-303 bass synthesizer, the latter of which gave acid house its squelchy signature sound. However, the prolific Bollywood songwriter also adapted classical Indian ragas for this release, trying to—it’s right there in the title!—synthesize different traditions to find something new and unique, something entirely his own. He didn’t so much pave the way for someone else but is instead finding his own, kick by kick and one psychedelic bass note at a time.
Singh’s delicate balancing act between tradition and modernity, old forms and new technology results in an album that offers both innovation and fun—something that almost half a century later feels not at all generic, even though (or even precisely because) it draws on and shares some similarities with certain musical genres.
