Shane Solanki is a UK artist with Indian heritage.
He has worked with director Peter Cattaneo, cultural maverick Don Letts, cult record label Ninja Tune and Mercury Prize winner Talvin Singh. He's supported artists like Kate Tempest, Ursula Rucker, Billy Bragg and Shazia Mirza. His recent music, released under the pseudonym of Last Mango In Paris, was championed on Jarvis Cocker’s radio show on BBC Radio 6. His work, often comic and political, has been commissioned by Apples and Snakes, South Bank Centre, Tate Modern and others. In 2013 he was Rich Mix’s inaugural artist in residence, and poet in residence at spoken word event Tongue Fu. His first full length show Broken English, featuring his band Last Mango in Paris, toured New York, Nairobi and India among other international venues.
Family Background
Shane Solanki’s parents met when they were racing drivers in Kenya. “Mum was the first Asian woman to participate in the infamous East African Rally. They were born in Nairobi to parents who sailed from Gujrat to Kenya on dhows,” said Shane.
Early memories and challenges
Solanki was born in Dollis Hill, North West London. He recalls, “My earliest memories are of eating mangos, hence my band name, Last Mango In Paris. Like many Asians born in the 70s, one of the biggest challenges was fitting in, working out where I belonged; and what I belonged to. Nation, religion, colour, caste; none of these were easily negotiated for those born in the UK back then. I went to a fee paying school from the age of 7 - 18 called Haberdashers’ Aske’s. My school experience was defined by my experience of trying to fit in. I was a troubled child!
How did the poetry, music and performance start?
“I found the world of art at the age of 18. I have always enjoyed exploring the imagination. I am a born storyteller, and use music, words and performance to tell my stories. I’m just lucky, and dogged, enough to have made a career pursuing doing so.”
Shane says that money is not too important to him.
“If I had kids, I’d probably have to change the way I work so as to support them; but I don’t, so I don’t need to earn much - the most important thing to me is that I keep working, keep getting better at what I do.”
Solanki’s current show is about hijras. He counters, “The show isn’t just about hijra - it’s got a character who happens to be hijra. I look forward to the day when movies with black people, or women, or trans people, don’t have to centre around the fact that these people are black, or trans, or women. I’m fascinated by identity. Ever since my upper lip started sprouting hairs, I have been witness to a whole bunch of women living in my head. These days I just let them hang out. I've come to realise that you are but a chrysalis, all your deeds are seeds which will unearth new worlds. And yet, when I’ve met hijra, they see me as one of them. So that’s why I’m exploring the topic; it’s a personal enquiry made public.
Both hijra (in India) and trans people here in the West often experience a lot of prejudice, as does any community which is different (take, for example, how Asians were seen in the 70s and 80s. There was prejudice because people living here were afraid of them; people are always afraid of that which they don’t know.) My work is about giving voice to the disenfranchised and under-represented.”
Has Solanki any worries about telling this story?
“I’m not afraid of telling this story, I’ve been trying to tell it all of my life. It’s going to be interesting watching it unfold over the next couple of years. I want to get it made into a film - a full blown musical, like an immigrant Sound Of Music. It’s a fairy tale; a story about a young Muslim girl who experiences mental health difficulties because of the relationship with her parents, so she leaves home and gets lost in a forest; she meets a hijra who takes her under her wing, sailing her to an island, where she experiences all manner of things which most Asians don’t ever get the chance to; there, she meets a boy and falls in love, but tragedy strikes when her dad dies, and she has to return to London. She brings the boy with her, but things go awry between them - she discovers that the boy was once actually a girl. I haven’t figured out the ending yet, but what I REALLY want is for there to be a massive battle where all the straight white men are slain and the UK is run by women and immigrants. I’m not quite sure how to make that happen but that’s what I want. Both in the story and in real life.”
Shane Solanki appears at Asia House May 6th 2016.
