Journalist and writer Poorna Shetty has been hired by the magazine Grazia ahead of its launch in India in March.

Her title is deputy editor / features editor and she will contribute to the first few issues, based from Mumbai.

27 year old Poorna is taking a break from her commissioning editor position at thelondonpaper.

Prior to that she was editor of Asiana magazine.

National digital radio station BBC Asian Network launches its biggest marketing campaign to date from next week across television, radio and online. Dubbed: The New Sound of Asian Britain, it launches on Monday 4th February and profiles the Network’s passion for the best in Asian music and culture.

The TV trail, to be shown on BBC TV, creates a new musical soundtrack from many shorter musical scenes layered and looped together. It mixes modern influences like drummers and DJs with more traditional Asian sounds and instruments including Bollywood singing.

The campaign consists of: 1 x 30sec TV brand trail; 2 x 10 second TV appointment to listen trails; online game where you can ‘Mix your own desi track’; onliner banner campaign; and radio trails. It will feature award winning Bobby Friction, Hip Hop turntablist, DJ Kayper, rapper Mumzy and Bhangra singer H Dhami.

Virtuoso table player Kuljit Bhamra has been appointed the artistic director at spnm – a membership organisation founded in 1943 to promote and launch new music. In particular it aims to find the best of the next generation of composers and has launched the careers of many of the UK’s leading composers.

Bhamra, who has recorded over two thousand songs to date, is a self-taught composer, producer and tabla player. He worked on the film scores of
Bhaji on the Beach, Bend it like Beckham, Alexander the Great, The Guru, A Little Princess, Wings of a Dove, The Four Feathers, Brick Lane and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In 2002, he joined forces with Andrew Lloyd Webber for the West End musical Bombay Dreams and he spent the next two years appearing as an on-stage percussionist.

He also acted as Indian Music Consultant and wrote music for the musical adaptation of The Far Pavilions, and in 2005 re-worked the Bee Gee’s popular seventies hit Staying Alive, which became the first instrumental to top the Sunrise Radio people’s chart. spnm will celebrate the announcement with a party and live performance by Kuljit Bhamra on Thursday February 21st from 6pm at the trendy lounge bar Piya Piya, London.
[Media contact: Mary Rahman for after-party.]
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Shot in Bombay, an “often surreal” documentary exploring the thin lines that separate crime from punishment and fiction from reality in and around the Bombay film industry – began its theatrical run at London’s ICA on Friday, 18 Jan.

According to a review in Timeout Magazine:

The ironies are ripe indeed, but director Mermin doesn’t spend too much time elbowing us in the ribs, instead offering wry observation of the Bollywood movie factory at work, and fanning out to assess the local public’s evident support for shoot-to-kill law enforcement, the very different levels of justice available to rich and poor, and the long shadow cast by fugitive crimelord Dawood Ibrahim, an apparent linking factor between the bombings, police corruption and Bollywood finances.

Though lacking genuine investigative heft and with obviously limited access to Dutt himself, the result is an absolutely fascinating survey, nimbly skipping from the bubble-headed asides of ‘Shootout’s irrepressibly crass filmmaker to assess more serious human rights issues without feeling too superficial or indeed overly snooty about the infectious can-do spirit of the seasoned crew trying to create Bruckheimer spectacle on a rupee budget.

The film is being screened at the ICA in London through to 10 February.
(A Little Bird Production / Producer: Nahrein Mirza; Director: Liz Mermin)

Among a slew of new signings dubbed: In New DJs We Trust, BBC Radio 1 has given a slot to DJs Nerm and D-Code to present a new Drum n Bass music show. They will be last in a run of four back-to-back shows broadcasting Thursday nights/Friday mornings from 2am to 4am. The next re-shuffle of the slots will be in July 2008.

Nerm & D-Code said “Being signed to In New DJs We Trust feels like we’ve lost our virginity all over again (and no, not with each other) – just a massive mix of emotions, ecstatically happy but a little nervous, relieved but still excited, and just generally looking forward to what lies ahead! Being on Radio 1 alongside the best DJs in the world is an honour. We’ve got loads of ideas of how we want to shape the show, but if you asked us to sum it up in a few words ‘Glitter-Stepping, Punk-Stepping, Mashup Drum & Bass and Exclusive Dubplates’ spring to mind!”

Both are usually part of the Shiva Sound System collective.

BBC Asian Network has signed new presenting talents: Kan-D-Man and DJ Limelight to their weekly Saturday night music show ‘Mic Check’. The new show, which started on Saturday 19th January from 10pm – Midnight, is dedicated to providing a platform for the best in new Asian street music – from Hip-Hop to R’n'B, Grime to Dubstep.

Both emerged from the East London-based Asian Hip-Hop collective ‘Chronicle Entertainment’. The duo first caught the attention of Asian Network in 2006 with the lyrical dexterity displayed on ‘Raw Jaw’ – a weekly MC-clash on ‘Friction’, presented by Bobby Friction.

The BBC’s flagship Asian arts and entertainment series Desi DNA is back, having started last week. It will broadcast every Wednesday at 11.20pm on BBC2.

The series has broken away from its traditional three-presenters format and introducing a whole host of old and new names, including: Adil Ray, Samanthi, Parv Bancil, Nikki Bedi, Bobby Friction, Anita Rani, Tommy Sandhu, Bidisha, Gurmej Pawar, Atta Yaqub and others.

In addition will be two documentary spin offs Desi DNA : The Great British Curry Trail, presented by newcomer and self confessed “food pervert” Ravinder Bhogal following her on a journey through Britain’s curry hotspots to hear the real life stories of the people who brought curry to Britain.

Prominent British Asian personalities, historians, playwrights, authors and musicians including Sarfraz Manzoor, Nitin Sawnhey, Pooja Shah, Apache Indian, Aki Nawaz, Samira Ahmed and Ameet Chana will give us their take on an a host of subjects ranging from the Southall Riots of 1979 and Salman Rushdie controversy of the late 1980′s, through to the birth of so called “Asian Kool” in the 1990′s.