In Conversation: Raheel Khan

We have a chat with Manchester-based Artist and Musician, Raheel Khan off the back of his latest project, Mileage, it’s recent premiere on BBC Radio 6 and the impact Black and Brown keyworkers have had to communities all across the region.

Mileage is exclusively created by gathering field recordings from ‘Goodwins Olympics’, Raheel Khan threads together a fly-on-the-wall piece from the cars based at the local taxi firm in South Manchester — click here to listen to it’s premiere on BBC Radio 6.

Introduce yourself! Who are you? What do you do? How did you get into it?

My names Raheel. I’ve been making music since I was in school under various guises. Some of it was questionably bad, luckily I’ve spent some time removing snapshots of me trying to rap at 14 from any Youtube algorithmic trail you might find yourself on… I’ve been playing piano since a young age and it’s something I really enjoy. If I was good enough on keys, I’d sack everything off and focus on that full time, unfortunately things haven’t quite worked out that way — maybe I shouldn’t have dropped out of those piano lessons in school.

Moving to Manchester is what really poured fuel on to the fire. University was kinda quiet in the sense of exploration of arts and music. I studied Economics and was really shy in lectures and just introverted as a person in general. After graduating, I started to get involved in some local music stuff that revolved around organisations such as Reform Radio and club nights like Banana Hill, I remember being struck by what was happening in that moment. I was meeting more musicians, getting asked to DJ more frequently and was approached to release some music on a local label. Looking back it’s all super small, but at that moment it really felt like a period where I became comfortable in describing myself as someone who was pursuing a creative career — even though I wasn’t making much money off it.

Fast forward to today, my interests have expanded much more broadly into Sound as a medium of expression. Sound in a general sense acts like a glue, or the building blocks that accompany moving image, it triggers a different part of the brain to visuals so it can help to build moments of tension, sadness or even fear. In my work however, I’ve been trying to explore using Sound as the main protagonist, through synthetic sounds, piano compositions or by field recordings like in ‘Mileage’. 

Mileage has just had its premiere on BBC Radio 6. Tell us a little more about it! How has it been working on the project? 

It’s been an insightful journey — lots of ups and downs, pushbacks and moments of banging my head against a wall... But, we kept moving and made it happen. I’m happy to see how it’s all come together. 

The segment that premiered on BBC Radio 6 is a 15 minute audio narrative, all recorded inside the cars at the taxi firm Goodwins Olympic based in South Manchester. Every morning I would put a small microphone in a driver's car and collect later in the evening, ending up with stories that were shaped around collective exchanges, conversations and situations. 

Goodwins Olympics are based just down the road from where I live, I was initially nervous about approaching them but 5 minutes after walking in and talking to Yaqub and Akeel (the telephone operators) they made me feel like I was at home. We shared stories and had a lot of common ground when it came to the British Muslim experience. 

I learnt so much through the process, from research & planning down to the technical elements. I had some production support but overall the set up was pretty DIY, some duct tape and a few printed ‘recording in process’ signs and we were good to go.

What were your main inspirations behind the project? 

Looking back, the idea initially started forming back in uni days. Although it wasn’t really an idea back then, it was more of a general feeling of missing home. The feeling of being homesick often revolved around missing family, friends & home cooked food, one thing that surprised me was how much I missed my language. Taxi’s often became a space where I could slip back into my mother tongue, as well as listen to some Mohammad Rafi without any weird questions or judgement. In hindsight I never realised how important these sorts of spaces were for me.

When I tracked back through my own family story, I saw that it aligned with a lot of the British Muslim communities. Like so many people my age, our dads were taxi drivers when they first came into the country in the 70s. There’s a whole generation of us born from this profession — it was popular because it was cash in hand, offered flexible working hours and provided an opportunity to practice and get better at English. 

When I got older a lot of my white friends would come to me with stories of taxi drivers looking ‘just like’ my dad, or being from Pakistani Kashmir ‘just like’ me. I used to get frustrated, often thinking ‘we’re more than just taxi drivers you know’... It took me some time but I eventually realised it wasn’t something to get angry at - it was actually something to be proud of.

With everything that's happened around us, do you think non-white communities have been appreciated enough as keyworkers?

There definitely needs to be more recognition for Black and Brown key workers who have disproportionately been on the front line during the pandemic. Not only taxi drivers, bus drivers, transport workers but also all the Black and Brown NHS staff that have literally been the backbone of our society these past months and still, our communities face low-wages coupled with post-Brexit fueled bitterness. The inequalities are shocking and have only been made more apparent during this time. More recognition for non-white key-workers would be a start, but really we need to see structural change that values and protects those of us in roles which are deemed as ‘low skilled’. 

I wouldn’t want to speak for anyone but I think I can say that Yaqub and the guys at the rank don’t think of themselves as heroes, they want to provide for their families and that is a noble act in itself. Putting themselves and their families at risk throughout this pandemic has enabled people to get to doctor's appointments, and kids to get school — it shouldn’t go unrecognised. 

If the country were to acknowledge that the communities at the front line have been majority Black and Brown folk, it might be one way to reduce the discrimination faced, rather than that common phrase of ‘go back home’ so many of us are used to hearing, the rhetoric might change to ‘thank you for being here’. Wouldn’t that be something?

Hawwa Alam captured the South Manchester firm distinctively for Mileage, what was the creative thinking behind the piece?

I’ve been following Fuse for a while and always knew that if I had the capacity to offer anyone a creative opportunity I would use the directory to find someone. With Mileage, I had the perfect opportunity. Working with Hawwa was great because I didn’t have to explain all the little details to her — there weren’t any of those small nuances or microaggressions that you can sometimes get working with design agencies that can make a project so much more draining. She’s local, understanding of the context and just got it. That’s one of the real benefits of a site like Fuse that sometimes is hard to put into words.

Finally, what's next for you?

Just doing what I love really. I’m working on a really amazing project about herbal resistance with Hope Strickland and Jessica El Mal which will premier during PUSH festival at HOME in February. Music-wise I just collaborated with Amrit Randhawa on an Audio-Visual stream and I’ll be using the music I created for an upcoming tape release. There’s the occasional mix on Sable Radio who are based up Leeds — I always enjoy putting these together. So lots of exciting bits... and also lots of checking emails and boring stuff too haha. Some time to reflect would be good, after the year we’ve had I think it’s important that we all take some time for that. 

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Image credits: Raheel Khan

Published: 30.11.20