Pioneer designer Hardip Singh Dhanjal, who cemented the imagery surrounding bhangra’s emergence as a popular dance music for Asians in 1980s in the UK has passed away following a cardiac arrest. He was 60.
Born in Nairobi, he was the second of five children of Ram Singh Dhanjal, a carpenter, and his wife, Joginder. Hardip did his schooling at Featherstone high school, in Southall, then Hounslow College and Ealing College.
Dhanjal was famous for his innovative album sleeves for labels like Mighty M and MR Records, and bands such as DCS, as well as flyers for the daytime raves that flourished in Southall, west London, and Handsworth, Birmingham, his friend Hardial Singh Rai wrote in an obituary for Hardip in The Guardian.
In the late 1970s, Hardip Dhanjal joined the anti-racist Southall Youth Movement. In Hardip’s obituary, Rai shared the life history of Dhanjal. He talked about his monthly magazine ‘Apna Beat’ which Dhanjal started in 1992 to cover Asian youth subculture where he explored bhangra as a political identity for British South Asians.
“A poster by Hardip Singh Dhanjal for the One Nation comedy night at Watermans Art Centre, London,” Rai wrote.
Hardip had a master’s degree from Brunel University and his thesis was titled ‘In Bhangra We Trust’. “Hardip and I were working to stage a musical production of his thesis at the time of his death,” Rai wrote in The Guardian.
Hardip is survived by his wife Jessie (nee Virdee), whom he married in 1989, and two daughters, Isher and Bishan.
