Oriental Star Agencies was a British record label, that was based in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. [1] Some of the artists introduced by the label include Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Malkit Singh, Alam Lohar, Amjad Sabri, and Bally Sagoo. [2]
In 1969, Muhammad Ayub was approached by members of two local bhangra bands – Bhujhangy Group and Anari Sangeet Party – to record their performances, and the success of the following recordings led him to establish the label. [3]
The label was founded in 1970 by Muhammad Ayub, Abdul Ghani and his son Dr Abdul Mohsin Mian. [4] Muhammad Ayub had previously owned a record store with Abdul Ghani importing Indian and Pakistani music into the United Kingdom. The label was founded in 1970 by Muhammad in Balsall Heath. OSA went onto become a leading influence on the Desi music scene, importing, promoting and producing music from the Indian subcontinent as well as nurturing talent among the young Desi diaspora. It remained at its Balsall Heath site until 2017 [5]
Bhangra is a type of non-traditional music of Punjab originating from the Punjab region.
Balsall Heath is an inner-city area of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It has a diverse cultural mix of people and is the location of the Balti Triangle.
Mohammad Ayub Khan was a Pakistani army officer who was the 2nd president of Pakistan from 27 October 1958 to 25 March 1969. He was the first native commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army being appointed in 17 January 1951. He rose to prominence after his 1958 Pakistani coup d'état which ousted President Iskandar Ali Mirza. Khan's presidency ended in 1969 when he resigned amid the 1968–69 Pakistan revolution.
Desi also Deshi, is a loose term used to describe the peoples, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent and their diaspora, derived from Sanskrit देश, meaning 'land' or 'country'. Desi traces its origin to the people from the South Asian republics of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, and may also sometimes include people from Afghanistan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
UB40 are an English reggae and pop band, formed in December 1978 in Birmingham, England. The band has had more than 50 singles in the UK Singles Chart, and has also achieved considerable international success. They have been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album four times, and in 1984 were nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Group. UB40 have sold more than 70 million records worldwide. The ethnic make-up of the band's original line-up was diverse, with musicians of English, Welsh, Irish, Jamaican, Scottish, and Yemeni parentage.
The Sabri Brothers were a musical band from Pakistan who were performers of Sufi qawwali music and were closely connected to the Chishti Order. They are considered one of the greatest Sufi qawwali singers of all times. The Sabri Brothers were led by Ghulam Farid Sabri and his brother Maqbool Ahmed Sabri. They are often referred to as Shahenshah-e-Qawwali and are also known as the roving ambassadors of Pakistan. The band was initially founded by Maqbool Ahmed Sabri at the age of 11 years and was known as the Bacha Qawwal Party. His elder brother Ghulam Farid Sabri joined after insistence from their father. He became the leader of the group, and the band soon became known as the Sabri Brothers. They were the first-ever Qawwali artists to perform qawwali in the United States and other Western countries; they were also the first-ever Asian artists to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1975.
Baljit Singh "Bally" Sagoo is a British-Indian record producer and DJ. Born in Delhi, India, Sagoo was raised in Birmingham, England. He entered the recording and entertainment industries in 1989. He is the figurehead of the UK/Belgium-based entertainment company, Fresh Dope Industries.
The 2005 Birmingham tornado was the costliest and one of the strongest tornadoes recorded in Great Britain in nearly 30 years, occurring on 28 July 2005 in the suburbs of Birmingham. It formed on a day when thunderstorms were expected to develop across the Midlands and eastern England. The tornado struck at approximately 14:37 BST in the Sparkbrook area and also affected King's Heath, Moseley and Balsall Heath as it carved a 7 mi (11 km) long path through the city.
Khan Abdul Ghani Khan was a Pashtun Pashto language philosopher, poet, artist, writer and politician. He was a son of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a prominent British Raj-era independence activist. Throughout his life as a poet in both British India and Pakistan, Khan was known by the titles Lewanay Pālsapay and Da īlam Samander.
Swami is a British Indian electronic music/ bhangra/ world music act from Birmingham, England. "Swami" is also the pseudonym of the DJ producer Diamond Duggal. Swami currently performs as a hybrid electronic DJ act with special world music guests and collaborations including Deep Forest and PunjabTronix.
Rashīd Aḥmad ibn Hidāyat Aḥmad Ayyūbī Anṣārī Gangohī was an Indian Deobandi Islamic scholar, a leading figure of the Deobandi jurist and scholar of hadith, author of Fatawa-e-Rashidiya. His lineage reaches back to Abu Ayyub al-Ansari.
The Church of St Agatha is a parish church in the Church of England in Sparkbrook in Birmingham, England.
The Public Library and Baths on Moseley Road, Balsall Heath, form one of many pairings of baths and libraries in Birmingham, England.
The Most Esteemed Order of Loyalty to the Crown of Malaysia is a Malaysian federal award presented for meritorious service to the country and awarded by the sovereign.
Arshad is an Arabic male given name and a surname. It means "the right path".
The Bhujhangy Group was founded in Smethwick, near Birmingham, England, in 1967 by Balbir Singh Khanpur & brother Dalbir Singh Khanpur whose parents had come to the United Kingdom in the mid 1950s then joined their families in 1964, initially working as labourers in the West Midlands' factories. They were named Bhujhangy – meaning "kids" – as they were still teenagers, and their first recording was "Teri Chithi Noon Parthan", a 7" EP recorded in 1967 and distributed manually in pub juke boxes before being officially recorded and distributed in late 1969-70.
Bordesley Hall was an 18th-century manor house near Bordesley, Birmingham, which stood in a 15 hectare park south of the Coventry Road in an area between what is now Small Heath and Sparkbrook. The Georgian house was the successor to an earlier medieval moated manor.
Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s the city's music scene had emerged as one of the largest and most vibrant in the country; a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with over 500 bands constantly exchanging members and performing regularly across a well-developed network of venues and promoters. By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century, and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era, to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene, to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century.
Brighton Road railway station is a former railway station in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. It was originally opened in 1875 before being closed to passengers in 1941.