San Francisco’s Club Six isn’t the first place you would expect to find Dhamaal, one of America’s most vibrant and thriving South Asian club nights. Located near the intersection of Sixth and Market, the club’s neighborhood represents the gritty, dark underbelly of the city—that is, except for the third Saturday of every month.

The first thing you notice when you walk into the venue on one of those evenings are the trippy projections full of morphing psychedelia combined with a wide variety of South Asian music and film clips. The warm and welcoming vibe is further enhanced by flowing Indian tapestries and wall hangings full of colorful, intricate designs.

At the front of the club’s first floor tonight are Sukhawat Ali Khan and Party, a Pakistani Qawwali group performing an upbeat, inspirational set. There’s a couple hundred people gathered around the musicians dancing, lounging and imbibing. Downstairs, another four hundred are going mad for the Dhamaal Soundsystem, featuring  DJ, producer and co-founder Janaka Selekta spinning the latest in cutting edge electronica layered with live percussion and scratch DJ sounds from fellow crew members, including Ferhan Qureshi on tabla, Dhruva Ganesan on dumbek and DJ Zeph on turntables. All the while, multimedia maestro Skip Intro is infusing the stage with wild video projections that match the music’s energy and tempo.

To say Dhamaal is a scene is an understatement. It’s an incredibly diverse musical and social phenomenon that brings together people from every age, ethnicity and demographic imaginable. The same goes for Dhamaal’s 17-person crew of DJs, musicians, producers, vocalists and multimedia artists which represents a variety of South Asian flavors, including Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan, as well as folks of Costa Rican, Irish, Korean and Taiwanese descent.

So, given the myriad stimuli one can experience at these events, what exactly is Dhamaal?  “All is Dhamaal,” explains Nayomi Munaweera, the crew’s canvas and fine art designer, and Janaka’s wife. “Everything you see and hear at the club is part of the same experience.”

As for the meaning of the word itself, there are two complementary definitions in the South Asian world. “In Sufi culture, dhamaal refers to a state of elation you get in response to music,”  says Dhruva. “And in South India, dhamaal is an exclamatory term like ‘bang!’ or ‘boom!’ or ‘pow!’ in the comic book sense. It just worked. It fit what we’re doing perfectly.”

First established in 1999, Dhamaal has cemented its reputation as the South Asian club event of choice for the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond with 500-700 attendees a night. It also attracts the hottest names in guest DJs and musicians, including Badmarsh, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, Karsh Kale, Navdeep and Visionary Underground. But you don’t have to be in San Francisco to catch the Dhamaal vibe.

The Dhamaal Soundsystem has just released its self-titled debut CD—one of the most engaging Asian electronica discs to emerge in years. It’s a seamless and innovative blend of electronics, breakbeats, South Asian percussion, turntablism, dub influences and trippy atmospheres that stands up to repeat listening. The meticulously crafted effort towers above the flood of mediocre Asian club discs currently cramming record store shelves.

Janaka and Dhruva took an evening off from their relentless schedule to discuss Dhamaal’s history, plans and the new CD with Innerviews.

Tell me how the Dhamaal journey began.

Janaka: Maneesh the Twister and I co-founded it five years ago. It began as a house party at my place. We were heavily influenced by the Asian-infused electronic music that was about back then. Shabi Farooq, an incredible tabla player and a student of Zakir Hussain, came over and I didn’t know him at the time. He ended up playing live tabla miced over a DJ mix that Maneesh, myself and Rhino FX were playing. It was crazy. Everybody loved it. I ended up standing outside asking people if they’d like to see this at a club and everyone was ecstatic. After that, Maneesh was doing a weekly at 111 Minna in San Francisco on Fridays. He managed to get us a Saturday night slot and we started playing there regularly. It was a mixture of electronic music and live percussion and it evolved from there. We added people as time went on. Initially it was called Azaad, which means freedom, but as we developed a more focused vision, we decided to change the name to Dhamaal.

So, Dhamaal was more of an organic social phenomenon initially.

Janaka: Yeah, it was incredibly organic and is still like that. There were people in the group who would bring fruit and flowers to the club and that’s pretty much all they did, but they were still part of the crew. Everyone was part of dot-com land and we were all making a lot of money. Obviously, that’s changed now, but the events we did in the beginning were entirely for charity. We sent $5,000 to an organization that gets teachers for children of sex workers in Calcutta. We also gave money to an AIDS in Africa charity and KPFA Radio.

Dhamaal focuses on South Asian culture, but also embraces people from many other ethnic backgrounds. Tell me about the statement you’re making.

Dhruva: Implicitly, it represents all of these ethnically diverse elements, but it really was an organic evolution that came together naturally out of fraternal elements and a shared musical connection. I think one of the main tenets of Dhamaal is that there is no denomination. Religion is no part of what we do. The focus is on presenting the art and it’s almost incidental that we’re from these places. We’re tied together by coming from these experiential and musical backgrounds, but it’s far and away the aesthetic that binds us, as opposed to any geopolitical or ideologically-based connection. That said, Dhamaal isn’t such an amorphous thing. We’re channeling something very particular in terms of what we like musically and visually. It’s never a question of a bunch of disparate elements playing on top of each other. In some ways, it’s one sound and composition that’s being presented.

Is Dhamaal a 17-person democracy?

Dhruva: We have a decentralized creative input model and a very focused business and marketing side. There are organizational leaders, but everyone has a very strong and equally valued role in the group. There are certain things people can do by virtue of their innate talents that other people cannot. Janaka and Maneesh founded Dhamaal, so there are implicit leaders in terms of bringing all the elements together and leading the push on a business level. With the album, Janaka, myself and Maneesh are propelling that. It’s hard to have 17 people doing that.

Janaka: We’ve built this thing without egos. There’s a sense of everyone having real input, not bogus input like what happens in corporate America’s flat management structures. Everyone has a solid say here. We’ll sit here in my apartment and shout at each other about things, but nobody ever says “Fuck you! This is the way it’s going to be.”

You both made the risky move of giving up your corporate day jobs to focus on Dhamaal full-time.

Janaka: I decided I didn’t want to go and work in corporate fucking America, doing something I don’t believe in. I can’t stand the idea of doing something for no other reason than someone handing me a paycheck. There’s no joy in that. Dhamaal is an embodiment of something creative. When I’m 50, I don’t want to look back at my life as this thing where I worked in business software, implementing systems all over the world, living in hotel rooms, having achieved nothing more than making myself rich. This is why I pursue this. This is an incredible group of people that’s growing and it gives me a sense of having some real value. I’m being influenced by these amazing people doing incredible things. When the time comes, I’ll jump back in the corporate world if I have to in order to make some more money. Then I’ll quit six months later to keep pushing this thing forward. [laughs]

Dhruva: I’ve been a musician since I was 12 and it’s something I’ve always been passionate about. When I went to school, I majored in economics and minored in music. My parents encouraged me on the musical front, but there’s an implicit caveat that states you shouldn’t do this as your main thing because it might not be the path to success. I’m grateful that I met Janaka and became part of this group. It made me embrace music in a significant way after a time of latency. It made me realize how important it is to my life. I was going to go to Columbia last year to do a Master’s degree, but I put it off because I have to see what I can do with this. I also left the corporate world and am now doing some freelance stuff so I can afford more time for Dhamaal. I want to embrace what is most important to me, which is music and art. Being able to do so is a blessing for me.

Tell me about your backgrounds.

Janaka: I just turned 32 and I was brought up all over the place. I was born in Sri Lanka, lived for 14 years in the U.K. and four years in Kuwait. I was in Kuwait for the Gulf War. We were there because my father is a diplomat for Sri Lanka and was stationed there. I also lived in Singapore and Bangladesh for awhile. I’ve been in San Francisco seven years, but I think living in all those places influences the music. Growing up in Kuwait sucked. I was there between 14 and 18. There weren't any girls, drinks or clubs around, so maybe I’m living my adolescence right now. [laughs] Arabic music and Islam were part and parcel of growing up. You’d hear the prayers four times a day, starting at four o’clock in the morning. The prayers are sonically beautiful, even though I only have a cursory understanding of them. Overall, I’d say living there was good for my general outlook.

Next, I went to the London School of Economics and got a Master’s degree. I was totally indoctrinated into being a hard core capitalist. Then I went to Sri Lanka and found out it was a load of shit. You see the poverty there and even if you know a lot of shit, you’re still not making money. People in power have been born into it. There’s no meritocracy in the world. My beliefs got flipped around and I decided I want my life to focus on creative stuff.

In terms of my musical background, I’ve been DJ-ing for about six years. My knowledge of music stems from listening. I’ve never had any formal background whatsoever. This is stuff I’ve picked up as I’ve been going along. I think it’s natural for DJs to make the transition to production, because you listen to so much music and gain an understanding of how to fit frequencies and sounds together. That’s where the composition side comes in. Now, I’m learning the fundamentals of music theory to support it.

Dhruva: I’m 25 and was born in India. I moved to the U.S. when I was four. I had a Midwestern upbringing in Cleveland, but during that I made frequent trips back to India. I went to the University of Michigan to do an Economics degree and then lived in Boston for a year before moving to San Francisco in 2000. I took piano lessons when I was very young but that stopped after a couple of years. I still had a love for music. I’d tape up buckets and play them and that led to me playing drums when I was 12. I still consider drums my main instrument. Over the years in school, I picked up dumbek and then started messing around with the tabla. I studied mridhangam a little one summer when I was in India. When I got to San Francisco, I started taking tabla lessons at the Ali Akbar College. I still play percussion with Dhamaal, but I’ve really got into production during the last two years and am consumed by it.

Each Dhamaal night showcases live Indian classical musicians and cutting edge Asian electronica DJs. Describe the relationship between the two.

Janaka: All of these things are musically connected. I don’t necessarily believe in a philosophical extension that says electronic music is an extension of Indian classical music. It’s more a case of listening to something and thinking “Damn! That would sound really good on top of this fat bassline!” So, on the top floor of Club Six, we have unadulterated classical music, but when you go downstairs, you get this low ceiling, jungle-ist environment with 300-400 people dancing to really thick beats with classical elements like Qawwali vocals, tabla and dholek performed live on top.

Tell me about some of your key musical influences.

Janaka: Prodigy is a major influence—especially their first two albums. I grew up in England during that time. I was there between 1990 and 1997. We’d be doing all kinds of drugs and going to raves and Prodigy’s music was a major thing then. Drum and bass, and ecstasy were very influential. I was immersed in rave culture. It wasn’t just music, it was the way you lived. It wasn’t like the candystriper shit you have in America. It was much more interesting. It wasn’t all loved up because it was heavily on the side of speed. Another influential thing was when I was in Bangladesh with my parents and my mom dragged me to see Zakir Hussain and Alla Rakah. We had front row seats and it fucking blew my mind. I couldn’t believe it.

Dhruva: My teen years were in the grunge period, so I love Jane’s Addiction, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Ministry. Another thing that did a lot for me is the first Shakti album. That was a life-changing experience. I also like to listen to things that are different from what I’m involved in to keep my mind fresh. Lately, I’ve been listening to some classical stuff like Chopin’s “Nocturnes” and Mahler’s “Fifth Symphony.”

What did you set out to achieve with the new album?

Dhruva: The album is designed to represent the evolution of what Dhamaal is, including the event, the performances and the musicians. It’s the channeling of the Dhamaal experience. It represents the rawness of the live sets translated into a recording. Every track is written by a different person and features different players from the Dhamaal Soundsystem.

Janaka: It’s the culmination of five years of having all of these people interacting with each other at different levels. It’s really a live Dhamaal event transformed into pieces that people can listen and relate to. It features a whole gamut of what you’d hear at a Dhamaal event including some downtempo Qawwali stuff all the way through some hugely hard drum and bass and breakbeat things. There are some real dubby things and some beautifully atmospheric stuff too. Each track has a personality based on the people that contributed, but it all works together very cohesively. We see it as music that’s at the forefront of a second wave of dance-based South Asian-influenced electronic music. I should mention that the album has also been hugely influenced by DJ FeelFree from the Visionary Underground. They’re a U.K. crew that has Dr. Das from the Asian Dub Foundation on bass. We’re really into their vibe.

Dhruva: In the end we’re looking to blow up a dancefloor with this record because that’s what we love to do. [laughs]

Dhamaal events take place every month at Club Six, located in one of San Francisco’s seedier neighborhoods. Why did you choose the venue?

Janaka: We specifically chose Club Six because it has the right vibe. It has the dirt, the urban feel and the crack addicts outside. [laughs] It’s gritty, just like the music. We used to hold Dhamaal nights at Rasselas, a jazz club on Fillmore and Geary, but it got to the point where I was sick to my stomach. The place would be filled with South Asians in expensive clothes drinking $10 martinis who were hitting on each other. All of this was happening while we had this hard drum and bass shit with crazy drumming all over it in the next room. I got really angry. We didn’t want that to be the central fucking theme of the night. It was so wrong.

So, Maneesh and I came across Club Six and started working with Angel Cruz, the owner of the club. He’s brilliant and has helped us out a lot. He’s a good friend too, which is something you never really say about club owners. [laughs] We went into the club, saw the low ceilings and the soundsystem with speakers dotted all along the corridors and knew it would work.

We try to make the venue as comfortable as possible. The bouncers are practically on the street watching out for people. So, there’s a sense of comfort and safety at the event. There are lots of beautiful decorations designed by my wife Nayomi that takes the edge off too. Members of the Dhamaal crew, led by Skip Intro, our visuals guy, get to Club Six 10 hours before the night begins and work continuously to transform the look and feel of the place. They do a fantastic job.

Dhruva: We’ve received amazing feedback about it and its success is represented in the demographics. We get people from across the board, in terms of ages and ethnicities. We even have mothers and daughters showing up. The mother gets into the Pakistani folk music on the first floor and the daughters are into the electronic stuff. There aren’t many places where you have that sort of diversity.

What’s next for Dhamaal after the album release?

Janaka: We’re planning a tour of India for later in the year. In fact, Maneesh has been in India representing Dhamaal all over the place for many months now. The other thing we want to do is create an outdoor festival attended by several thousand people. We’d like to have a massive stage and have other acts like the Asian Dub Foundation and Visionary Underground perform. That’s where we’re headed.