Deeyah - The real price of fame.

Deeyah Interview - Price of Fame The three burly, heavyweight men that flank the soul sensation Deeyah wouldn’t look out of place playing entourage to the likes of Jennifer Lopez or Beyonce. But they’re not there because their star might be subjected to an overeager fan dying for his picture to be taken with her, maybe talk to his friend on the phone, sign an autograph even. They are by her side to save her from people spitting on her, calling her a whore, blinding her with pepper spray, describing in lurid detail exactly how they’re going to cut her up bit by bit and leave her bleeding to death like the dirty, filthy pig they say she is. If this sounds highly melodramatic or at the very least, a tad paranoid, the fact is this is exactly what’s been happening to Deeyah. Every day. For the past ten years. And it looks like it’s about to get worse… ‘I really thought coming to this country, so famous for its multi-cultural community and liberal, tolerant attitudes, would pave the way for me to start a new life,’ she sighs. ‘I was wrong’. To get the full picture of Deeyah’s troubled life, we need to go way back in time. If you thought Deeyah was simply this year’s wide-eyed new star with dreams of hitting the big time, a second in her company is all it’ll take to make you realise you’re in the presence of someone who’s been there, done that and done her best to ditch the t-shirt. In her native country of Norway, she’d been a star since the age of 7 - a regular fixture on television performing in countless talent shows - and by the time she reached her peak as a 17-year-old with two critically acclaimed, bestselling albums under her belt, she was receiving more press coverage than any other Norwegian artist, including its biggest export, A-ha. ‘Ask anyone in Norway about Deeyah, and they’ll tell you’ she shrugs, her voice tinged with sadness rather than the pride this sentence should inspire: ‘I was a superstar’. She had it all. Fame, fortune, the support of friends and family, and a future secured as the biggest Asian female talent to come out of Europe… ever. But these were exactly the things that led to her downfall. Norway, unsurprisingly enough, isn’t very big on Asians. A small community, of which Deeyah’s grandfather was among the very first settlers from the subcontinent, has been steadily getting bigger. As with every minority group establishing itself in a new land, both natives and migrants have been finding it hard to come to terms with. Not that the child star Deeyah knew any better: ‘I never received any abuse as a kid. I had friends who liked me for who I was; fans that admired me for what I had to offer.’ In fact, Deeyah was perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between old and new. As she puts it: ‘I was the only positive, inoffensive, nice little mascot the liberal-minded could uphold as a symbol of unity.’ Young, beautiful, talented Asian girl wins over Norwegian hearts and minds. Surely she should have got an award for that? No. The fascist far right who hated the influx of darkies in their neck of the woods were furious, but they weren’t the ones giving Deeyah hell. It was her own kind that became hell-bent on ruining her. ‘At first it was just mutterings. People would come up to my father and point out that singing and dancing for a living wasn’t the proper thing for an Asian girl to do, but my father would always tell them the same thing: she’s my daughter, she can do as she likes, I’m proud of her. Piss off and mind your own business.’ It all blew up with the release of her second album when the press interest in her sexy new image meant she was, literally, overexposed. ‘As far as I was concerned, I was dressing like any girl my age. Sure I showed a bit of midriff, but even the most respectable Asian woman reveals her midriff in a sari, doesn’t she? It’s not like I ever had my boobs falling out or anything. I wasn’t out to shock. I wanted to be hip, I wanted to be funky, I was like: I’m 17 now, I’m not letting my mum dress me anymore!’ But it was the video for her second single from the album that had everyone up in arms. An award-winning short film that gathered together outcasts from all sections of the community - fat, ugly, poor, old, black, disabled, racist - and cleverly mutated them into one another to show anyone can change. And there was Deeyah, shot in black and white, floating past them in all her ethereal glory, with a dress that revealed, horror of horrors, a bare back. Those who didn’t make a habit of looking beyond what the naked eye saw, immediately deduced she was in the buff. In front of all these freaks, laid bare for the whole world to see. The shame! The tongue wagging grumbles in the community instantly turned into full-scale cries of revulsion and disgust. ‘My grandfather, a highly respected figure in the community, had people banging on his door with warnings that he should control me; get me to calm down or else. My mother had to overhear people in the streets talking about what a slut her daughter was, my brother was being attacked, all because I’d brought such great shame upon the community.’ Deeyah didn’t get it. This was a time when Asians were being totally ignored by the mainstream, and what little they got was always negative press: ‘The only stories you’d ever read in the press were negative ones about Pakistani gang rapes and Muslim muggers being on the rise, yet here I was, on the cover of every magazine, the front page of every newspaper, on television every day, doing all I could to show Asians in a positive light.’ Sadly, that’s not how the Asians read it. There were threats. Her parents had to keep changing phone numbers. Abuse was hurled at her in the streets on a regular basis. Criticisms at every stop she made. But the enormity of just how revved up some people had become over her escalating popularity only dawned on her during a promotional appearance for a clothing range in a shopping mall in Oslo. Now that all these people knew where she was, they all lined up to give her a piece of their mind and a spit in her eye. It got really ugly when a group of Asian men, both young and old, turned up to give her a lecture on how a Muslim girl should carry herself in public. It began: do you realise you are a prostitute? And ended: when you leave this building we will beat you to within an inch of your life. ‘I’ve never been so terrified in my life,’ she shudders just thinking about it, ‘the mall was empty, the people with me had done a runner, even the security guards walked away. I just sat cowering, thinking: this is it. I’m dead.’ Luckily, some local army lads who were fans of Deeyah saw what was going on and squared up to the perpetrators, saving her from the hiding of her lifetime: ‘The important thing was these guys who saved me were Muslims – Turkish, Moroccan, Arabic – and that made me realise there and then that not all Muslims wanted me dead. ‘The most heartening thing that’s ever happened to me was when I got stopped by a woman in a hijab and I braced myself for the usual outpour of venom. Instead she squeezed my hand and said thank you. That I was taking the heat for girls like her by being the first to stick my neck out on the line and that she believed my struggle would help them stand up for themselves in the future. I cried so hard when I heard that. It reminded me that I wasn’t doing anything evil, that I wasn’t a monster.’ Few people agreed. Groups of angry men would hound her, most notably when they smashed down the doors of her school and dragged her out with threats of avenging her in the name of the Almighty. Again, it was a group of lads who came to her aid – one of the plusses of her raunchy image no doubt – but she was left aghast at the realisation that she was at their mercy and helpless. The teachers walked away from the situation, the record label didn’t want any part of it, the police turned a blind eye – no one, it seemed, wanted to know: ‘As far as they were concerned, this is an Asian problem. We don’t understand it. It’s obviously a cultural issue that we don’t want to get involved in. You deal with it.It’s probably all talk anyway.’ It wasn’t all talk. A close friend of hers, from a Pakistani background, was a fledgling model when she got a break on a television commercial clad in a bathrobe. One day as she walked home, she felt a tap on her shoulder and a man beat her to a pulp and cut her face, screaming: let me see you model now, you whore. Tell your bitch friend she’s next… Deeyah looks crestfallen at the memory: ‘She was a beautiful girl. She cut all her hair off and to this day she stays at home, disfigured and scared to face the world.’ The appalling thing, Deeyah reflects, was that all this played right into the hands of the fascists who wanted rid of the growing immigrant population. ‘Look, they’d say. See how these people treat their own kind? They’re barbarians. It gave Asians, especially Muslims, such a bad name.’ Not that this meant the racists were about to jump in and defend Deeyah. It was around this time, at an anti-violence concert no less, that she had her arm grabbed by a fascist screaming ‘black bitch’, blinding her with pepper gas. ‘I sang the rest of the song unable to open my eyes, tears rolling down my face – some people must have thought I was so overcome by emotion! But when I did look out I saw a huge fight had broken out between racists and fans, with Asians who hated me sticking the boot in and I couldn’t tell anymore if I was crying because of the spray or because of the fact that I was at the centre of all this hatred and violence…’ She could no longer turn a blind eye to the obvious. Staying in Norway was unsafe for her, it was endangering her family and it clearly wasn’t doing the Asians there trying to lead a peaceful life any favours. England, a country where British Asian women pride themselves and are respected for making a stand, seemed the natural choice. She bought a one-way ticket, ready to make a fresh new start.Deeyah’s story should end here. Happily. But there was to be no light at the end of the tunnel. For a couple of years, she lay low. Hoping the furore over her would die down. Slowly, she began to reshape her career, the opportunity to start anew filling her with a fresh excitement; the best, she was sure, was about to come. And after a few false starts, which saw a multi-million pound contract with Warner Music crumble, her much-loved manager losing the battle with cancer, and her brother falling ill just as she got her get-up-and-go back again, she was finally ready to take on Great Britain. This is where you come in. It was around a year ago that most of us heard of Deeyah, the 26-year-old soul sensation who was about to take us by storm. The media loved her looks and outspoken nature, the radio stations went mad for her sound and the video channels lapped up her moves. Deeyah was about to land and conquer. The promotions for her debut single began, the touring started in full force, everyone wanted a piece of the girl the mainstream press had dubbed ‘the Asian Jennifer Lopez’. Unfortunately, the mainstream press had also branded her with the unfortunate moniker ‘the Muslim Madonna’ and the Asian press ran with it.Even without knowing her turbulent past with the upholders of the Muslim way of life, this was the worst thing that could have happened to her just then. ‘The part about Madonna was amazing. To be mentioned in the same breath as her…’ she shakes her head with no small amount of irony, ‘but the whole Muslim thing was just asking for it.’And the hardcore Muslims certainly replied. Her raunchy videos and photo spreads fell under fresh scrutiny and all those dead and buried stories from Norway slowly but surely began to rear their ugly heads. ‘The first time a group of guys came up to me in Bradford I was flattered that I was finally getting recognised in Britain. They were pleasant enough… until the lecture started. My heart sank. I’d heard it all before. Here we go again.’ She wasn’t wrong. The subsequent abuse she received everywhere from Birmingham to London left her reeling. Not just because history was repeating itself, but because she wasn’t being spat at and called a whore by bearded men from the first generation – but by young guys, women, even children. What had she done to deserve this? Her lyrics are far from inflammatory, her musical style hardly rebellious and her dress sense no different from any trendy girl you and I know. ‘The thing is I’ve never put myself forward as Muslim. Religion is something I don’t advertise. I’ve never said a single bad word about the religion or even that I am flying the flag for Muslim women. The crazy thing is I get accused of being a fake Muslim because my real name is Deepika…’ For the record, her mother named her Deepika because the lady who had stood beside her during her pregnancy had suggested that name and, because she passed away before Deeyah was born, her mother decided to honour her wish. But it boggles the mind why anyone who has been so hard done-by at the hands of certain Muslims should want to pretend to be one if she wasn’t… Nonetheless, the harsh reality is that just as her career is taking off again, the past has come back to bite her twice as hard. Spitting, being called a whore, threats of rape, torture and murder… here was the exact same pattern that plagued her before. Under the advice of the police, Deeyah has now gone into hiding. Her releases have been pushed back. The option to relocate to the United States has been suggested more than once. But her spirit still holds. ‘I don’t know what it is about me that makes people take such great pleasure in telling me how they’ll rape me, cut me, kill me. All I’ve ever wanted to do is sing from the heart and hopefully, touch a few hearts. And regardless of everything that’s happened and is happening, I’m still going to do what I do. I’m not running away anymore.’ Anyone chasing Deeyah, kindly take note. You won’t see her taking her tour to Asian gigs because the police have deemed it too unsafe, but you will hear many songs from her album A Plan of My Own, her labour of love and, no doubt, intense frustration. You’ll see her videos, photos and interviews in both mainstream and Asian publications and hopefully, you’ll take her for who she is. A singer. You’ll either join thousands in hailing her music as the best thing the scene has ever produced or you’ll pass it over. Just try not to see her as the harbinger of evil, hell-bent on bringing forth the corruption and demise of the very soul of our Asian way of life, eh? ‘It makes me sad because after ten years, nothing has changed,’ she sighs, managing a thin smile, ‘because people in our community are still intolerant, unable to accept a woman speaking her mind, being strong and independent in her own right. And you know what? I don’t think that attitude is going to change in a hurry…’ For all our sakes, let’s hope Deeyah is wrong.