JENNIFER MARSHALL, Jun 25, 2010

The Bay Area’s longest standing dub and reggae party, Dub Mission, welcomes back guest artists Mighty Dub Killaz (MDK) to perform at its weekly Sunday night party.  MDK, featuring Janaka Selekta on turntables and electronics, Papa Roads on vocals, and special guest Anthony Dellavalle on horns, will perform songs from their upcoming album, Real Talk, and promote Selekta’s new CD, Pushing Air, which will be released on July 6 by Chaiwalla Boombox Records.

Selekta has headlined festivals around the world and his now defunct collective, Dhamaal Sound System, hosted some of the largest South Asian Electronic Mashup events in the Bay Area. Selekta has remixed tracks for acclaimed artists Karsh Kale and Cheb I Sabbah of Six Degrees and the Asian Dub Foundation, and has produced music for the best-selling Xbox game, Project Gotham. 

Selekta was born in Sri Lanka and raised in the United Kindgom and Kuwait. His diverse background resonates in his music, its melodies and beats woven together with a multitude of threads, each colored by its own cultural influence.

The new CD Pushing Air is an eclectic mix of Indian classical folk music and reggae influences. Indian vocals soar above dub reggae beats and a smooth background of electronica in laid-back tracks. In other more lyrically inspired tracks, Selekta’s reggae lyrics communicate upbeat and positive messages. 

DJ Sep, founder and promoter of Dub Mission, has invited a number of performers from South Asian backgrounds to guest star at the Sunday night parties, an event that began 14 years ago as an alternative dance party to the typical reggae night. The event has become a popular weekly session and features artists from a variety of  backgrounds and mixing with a myriad of musical influences.

Special guests feature at the club almost every week and “very frequently, artists from a South Asian background play our event as a sound system. DJ Maneesh the Twister from Surya Dub is one of our resident DJs, so he spins here monthly,” she says. Resident DJ Maneesh the Twister recently contributed to Sony BMG India’s Shamur compilation and toured India and the U.K. in support of his CD release in India on HOM Records, playing to over 3,000 fans on Baga Beach in Goa.

DJ Sep, who is of Iranian descent, along with four other resident DJs, J Boogie, Vinnie Esparza, Maneesh the Twister and Ludichris, spins a variety of dub, dubstep, roots reggae, dancehall and electronica. She cites Indian music as just one of her many sources of musical inspiration