As in Canada , Bhangra music has become popular among many in Britain [61] not only from the works of British South Asian musicians such as Panjabi MC , Swami and Rishi Rich but also incorporated into the works of a number of non-South Asian musicians not only British but including North American artists such as Canadian Shania Twain , who created a whole alternate version of her multi-platinum album Up!
Diamond, better known as DJ Swami has also collaborated with rapper Pras , of The Fugees , and his band Swami have become one of the most renowned acts in South Asian music history, having had songs in major Hollywood movies and best-selling video games. One of the first artists of South Asian Indian origin to achieve mainstream success was Apache Indian who infused reggae and hip hop with Indian popular music to create a sound that transcended genre and found a multicultural audience.
He is the only Indian artist to have achieved 7 top forty hits in the National UK charts. The influence of South Asian music has not only been from South Asians living in the UK, but also from some UK artists that were starting using South Asian instruments creating a new sound that was a mixture of sitars and tablas with more rock-based western instruments like drums and guitar. Although there are roughly double the number of South Asians in the UK today compared to people of African descent, South Asians are less represented in global and British media than any other major group; in the UK there is less than half the amount of South Asians represented in the media than those of African and Caribbean descent.
With the increasing number of high achievers and trail blazers within the Asian community across a variety of professions, the British Asian community has over the years setup a variety of high-profile Award ceremonies to recognise Asian achievements across the full spectrum of professions and industries.
These organisations and ceremonies include:. Born in Mumbai, Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early s when he moved to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Kapoor received the Turner Prize in Born in London and of Asian origin Shezad Dawood became known for this work in various media in the early s. Also born in London and of Pakistani origin, Haroon Mirza emerged as an artist in the late s. Best known for his sculptural installations that generate sound, Mirza was awarded the Silver Lion for the Most Promising Artist at the 54th Venice Biennale in Well-known South Asian writers include H.
There is a growing number of young British Asians who are making a mark in the charity and interfaith sectors. A recent example is Onkardeep Singh who became the youngest person of South Asian heritage in to be awarded an MBE for his interfaith and voluntary works. Jawaid Khaliq , the first world champion boxer of Pakistani origin, was born in Nottingham.
Amir Khan , the silver medallist at the Summer Olympics in Athens , has become a cultural icon in the UK with TV audiences of up to 8 million watching him fight. Khan represents Britain in boxing and is the former WBA world light welterweight champion. The boxer Haider Ali won the first ever gold medal for Pakistan in boxing at the commonwealth games in Manchester in in the featherweight division.
Nasser Hussain was the captain of the England cricket team. Michael Chopra played for the England national under football team and became the first footballer of Indian descent to play and score in the Premier League. In he scored one of the fastest goals in Premier League history, as Chopra had only been on the pitch for fifteen seconds after coming on as a substitute.
Currently in the Premier League, Hamza Choudhury , a British Footballer whose parents are of Bangladeshi descent, plays for Leicester City , making him the first player of Bangladeshi descent to play in the Premier League, and has also made appearances for the England Under Team. Since the s, South Asian performers and writers have achieved significant mainstream cultural success. In , Time Asia magazine voted him as one of the most influential South Asians in the past 60 years. In the s the South Asian artists who gained mainstream success included Apache Indian , whose single " Boom Shack-A-Lak " was used in many Hollywood movies, and Jas Mann , who headed Babylon Zoo and whose single " Spaceman " set a UK chart record when it sold , copies in its first week of release.
Hardeep Singh Kohli is a presenter, reporter and comedian on British television and radio. In , in the second season of reality television Britain's Got Talent , one of the country's most successful reality television shows, the South Asian dance duo Signature , consisting of Suleman Mirza a British Pakistani and Madhu Singh a British Indian performing a fusion of Michael Jackson and Bhangra music and dance styles, came second on the show.
Saya ", from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. A new generation of British Asian musicians have followed, such as Shizzio, 21 Perspective and Raxstar. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. British Asians in association football. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. November Learn how and when to remove this template message.
Ethnic group, local authorities in the United Kingdom". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 25 April Retrieved 18 March Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, Archived from the original on 27 April Retrieved 27 April Pakistani families in Britain Studies. Strangers, Aliens and Asians: Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields, — Cities, Migrations, and Identities.
British Asian - Wikipedia
Who are the Other Ethnic Groups. Retrieved 23 March The Urdu community in the UK is very much larger than the Hindi community. Most of those who identify themselves as Urdu speakers use a variety of Panjabi as the language of the home, and speak Urdu as a second language for religious and cultural reasons.
The overwhelming majority comes from the west Panjab and the Mirpur district of Azad Kashmir, but smaller groups of Gujarati Muslims from both India and East Africa also use Urdu for religious purposes. A Handbook for Health Professionals. Archived from the original PDF on Agency and Resilience of the Urban and Urbanesque habitat. Retrieved 7 July Ayatollah sentences author to death". A South Asian History of Britain: Fisher, Shompa Lahiri and Shnider Thandi. Archived from the original on Indian Traveller and Settler in Britain — The History of Muslims in Britain, to the Present.
Archived from the original on 2 August Retrieved 13 January Studies in Indian Labour History". Retrieved 5 July Coolies, Capital and Colonialism: Studies in Indian Labour History. Routledge Handbook of the South Asian Diaspora. The Story of Indians in Britain ". Multicultural Racism Since ". Goans of the North Atlantic: In Migration, technology and Transculturation: Edited by Myna German and Padmini Banerjee.
Another World but with Whom? The Problem With Immigrants. Retrieved 5 March Retrieved 22 October Britain places high value on the power of commerce. After all, its political and military dominance when Britannia ruled the waves was founded on its trading power. The Gujaratis know this better than many others, which explains their prosperity and success in the UK. The Times of India. Retrieved 4 February British Gujaratis were also more successful than other minority communities in Britain because they had already tasted success in Africa. The book also says that Gujarati Hindus have become notably successful public citizens of contemporary, capitalistic Britain; on the other hand, they maintain close family links with India.
Many younger Gujaratis took to professions rather than stay behind the counter of their parents' corner shops, or they entered public life, while those who went into business have not remained in some narrow commercial niche," says the book. They communicated that hunger to their children," says Raxa Mehta, director at Nomura, based in Tokyo and first generation child of Kenyan Indian parents. So it doesn't surprise the Gujaratis that they did well in Britain — it only surprises the Brits and Indians. The Gujaratis are a trader community. The blacksmith had not long begun his work however when the mare began to speak, evidently having worked out how to form human words with her equine lips.
The Devil raged but there was nothing he could do, and as a cock heralded the arrival of dawn, the spell was broken. The Devil vanished and the tavern-keeper returned to her human form. Repenting of her greedy ways, she had the two horse-shoes which the smith had already fashioned nailed up in the church as a warning to other cheats. In Armenian mythology , shapeshifters include the Nhang , a serpent-like river monster than can transform itself into a woman or seal, and will drown humans and then drink their blood; or the beneficial Shahapet , a guardian spirit that can appear either as a man or a snake.
Scriptures describe shapeshifting Rakshasa demons assuming animal forms to deceive humans. The Ramayana also includes the Vanara , a group of ape-like humanoids who possessed supernatural powers and could change their shapes.
Navigation menu
In the Indian fable The Dog Bride from Folklore of the Santal Parganas by Cecil Henry Bompas , a buffalo herder falls in love with a dog that has the power to turn into a woman when she bathes. Philippine mythology includes aswang , a vampire-like monster capable of transforming itself into either a large black dog or a black boar in order to stalk humans at night. The folklore also mentions other beings such as kapre , tikbalang , and engkanto , which change their appearances to woo beautiful maidens. Also, talismans called " anting-anting " or " birtud " in the local dialect , can give their owners the ability to shapeshift.
In one tale, Chonguita the Monkey Wife , [14] a woman is turned into a monkey, only becoming human again if she can marry a handsome man.
Tatar folklore includes Yuxa , a hundred-year-old snake that can transform itself into a beautiful young woman, and seeks to marry men in order to have children. Chinese mythology contains many tales of animal shapeshifters, capable of taking on human form. The most common such shapeshifter is the huli jing , a fox spirit which usually appears as a beautiful young woman; most are dangerous, but some feature as the heroines of love stories. Madame White Snake is one such legend; a snake falls in love with a man, and the story recounts the trials that she and her husband faced.
The fox, or kitsune is among the most commonly known, but other such creatures include the bakeneko , the mujina and the tanuki. Korean mythology also contains a fox with the ability to shapeshift. Unlike its Chinese and Japanese counterparts, the kumiho is always malevolent. Usually its form is of a beautiful young woman; one tale recounts a man, a would-be seducer, revealed as a kumiho.
In Somali mythology Qori ismaris "One who rubs himself with a stick" was a man who could transform himself into a " Hyena-man " by rubbing himself with a magic stick at nightfall and by repeating this process could return to his human state before dawn. The Ligahoo or loup-garou is the shapeshifter of Trinidad and Tobago's folklore. This unique ability is believed to be handed down in some old creole families, and is usually associated with witch-doctors and practitioners of African magic.
The name of the Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentina derives from the toponym of its major island in Mapudungun Mapuche language: There is, however, more to the word "Nahuel" - it can also signify "a man who by sorcery has been transformed into a puma" or jaguar. Shapeshifting may be used as a plot device , such as when Puss in Boots in the fairy tales tricks the ogre into becoming a mouse to be eaten. Shapeshifting may also include symbolic significance, like the Beast's transformation in Beauty and the Beast indicates Belle's ability to accept him despite his appearance.
When a form is taken on involuntarily, the thematic effect can be one of confinement and restraint; the person is bound to the new form. In extreme cases, such as petrifaction , the character is entirely disabled. On the other hand, voluntary shapeshifting can be a means of escape and liberation. Even when the form is not undertaken to resemble a literal escape, the abilities specific to the form allow the character to act in a manner that was previously impossible.
Examples of this are in fairy tales. A prince who is forced into a bear's shape as in East of the Sun and West of the Moon is a prisoner, but a princess who takes on a bear's shape voluntarily to flee a situation as in The She-Bear escapes with her new shape. Le Guin depicts an animal form as slowly transforming the wizard's mind, so that the dolphin, bear or other creature forgets it was human, making it impossible to change back. This makes an example for a voluntary shapeshifting becoming an imprisoning metamorphosis.
Some are rare, such as Italo Calvino 's " The Canary Prince " is a Rapunzel variant in which shapeshifting is used to gain access to the tower. In many cases, imposed forms are punitive in nature. This may be a just punishment, the nature of the transformation matching the crime for which it occurs; in other cases, the form is unjustly imposed by an angry and powerful person.
In fairy tales, such transformations are usually temporary, but they commonly appear as the resolution of myths as in many of the Metamorphoses or produce origin myths. In many fairy tales and ballads , as in Child Ballad 44, The Twa Magicians or Farmer Weathersky , a magical chase occurs where the pursued endlessly takes on forms in an effort to shake off the pursuer, and the pursuer answers with other shapeshifting, as, a dove is answered with a hawk, and a hare with a greyhound. The pursued may finally succeed in escape or the pursuer in capturing. The Grimm Brothers fairy tale Foundling-Bird contains this as the bulk of the plot.
The magic happens due to a potion given to her by an old witch. The girl, once gone, can regain her human aspect. In other variants, the pursued may transform various objects into obstacles, as in the fairy tale " The Master Maid ", where the Master Maid transforms a wooden comb into a forest, a lump of salt into a mountain, and a flask of water into a sea. In these tales, the pursued normally escapes after overcoming three obstacles. In a similar effect, a captive may shapeshift in order to break a hold on him.
Proteus and Nereus 's shapeshifting was to prevent heroes such as Menelaus and Heracles from forcing information from them. McKillip references it in her Riddle-Master trilogy: One motif is a shape change in order to obtain abilities in the new form. Berserkers were held to change into wolves and bears in order to fight more effectively.
In many cultures, evil magicians could transform into animal shapes and thus skulk about.
Meghan Markle, Prince Harry and the myth of royal purity
In many fairy tales, the hero's talking animal helper proves to be a shapeshifted human being, able to help him in its animal form. In one variation, featured in The Three Enchanted Princes and The Death of Koschei the Deathless , the hero's three sisters have been married to animals. These prove to be shapeshifted men, who aid their brother-in-law in a variant of tale types. In an early Mayan text, the Shapeshifter, or Mestaclocan, has the ability to change his appearance and to manipulate the minds of animals. In one tale, the Mestaclocan finds a dying eagle.
Changing into the form of an eagle, he convinces the dying bird that it is, in fact, not dying. As the story goes they both soar into the heavens, and lived together for eternity. Beauty and the Beast has been interpreted as a young woman's coming-of-age, in which she changes from being repulsed by sexual activity and regarding a husband therefore bestial, to a mature woman who can marry.
Some shapeshifters are able to change form only if they have some item, usually an article of clothing. In Bisclavret by Marie de France , a werewolf cannot regain human form without his clothing, but in wolf form does no harm to anyone. The most common use of this motif, however, is in tales where a man steals the article and forces the shapeshifter, trapped in human form, to become his bride.
This lasts until she discovers where he has hidden the article, and she can flee. Selkies feature in these tales. Others include swan maidens and the Japanese tennin. The power to externally transform can symbolize an internal savagery; a central theme in many strands of werewolf mythology, [32] and the inversion of the "liberation" theme , as in Dr Jekyll's transformation into Mr. Some transformations are performed to remove the victim from his place, so that the transformer can usurp it.
Bisclaveret 's wife steals his clothing and traps him in wolf form because she has a lover. A witch, in The Wonderful Birch , changed a mother into a sheep to take her place, and had the mother slaughtered; when her stepdaughter married the king, the witch transformed her into a reindeer so as to put her daughter in the queen's place.
In the Korean Transformation of the Kumiho , a kumiho , a fox with magical powers, transformed itself into an image of the bride, only being detected when her clothing is removed. In Brother and Sister , when two children flee their cruel stepmother, she enchants the streams along the way to transform them. While the brother refrains from the first two, which threaten to turn them into tigers and wolves, he is too thirsty at the third, which turns him into a deer. The Six Swans are transformed into swans by their stepmother , [33] as are the Children of Lir in Irish mythology.
Many fairy-tale characters have expressed ill-advised wishes to have any child at all, even one that has another form, and had such children born to them. Hans My Hedgehog was born when his father wished for a child, even a hedgehog. Even stranger forms are possible: Giambattista Basile included in his Pentamerone the tale of a girl born as a sprig of myrtle, and Italo Calvino , in his Italian Folktales , a girl born as an apple. Sometimes, the parent who wishes for a child is told how to gain one, but does not obey the directions perfectly, resulting in the transformed birth.
In Prince Lindworm , the woman eats two onions, but does not peel one, resulting in her first child being a lindworm. In Tatterhood , a woman magically produces two flowers, but disobeys the directions to eat only the beautiful one, resulting her having a beautiful and sweet daughter, but only after a disgusting and hideous one.
Less commonly, ill-advised wishes can transform a person after birth. The Seven Ravens are transformed when their father thinks his sons are playing instead of fetching water to christen their newborn and sickly sister, and curses them. Such wished-for children may become monstrous brides or bridegrooms.
Shapeshifting
These tales have often been interpreted as symbolically representing arranged marriages; the bride's revulsion to marrying a stranger being symbolized by his bestial form. The heroine must fall in love with the transformed groom. The hero or heroine must marry, as promised, and the monstrous form is removed by the wedding. Sir Gawain thus transformed the Loathly lady ; although he was told that this was half-way, she could at his choice be beautiful by day and hideous by night, or vice versa, he told her that he would choose what she preferred, which broke the spell entirely.
Puddocky is transformed when her prince, after she had helped him with two other tasks, tells him that his father has sent him for a bride. A similar effect is found in Child ballad 34, Kemp Owyne , where the hero can transform a dragon back into a maiden by kissing her three times. Sometimes the bridegroom removes his animal skin for the wedding night, whereupon it can be burned. At an extreme, in Prince Lindworm , the bride who avoids being eaten by the lindworm bridegroom arrives at her wedding wearing every gown she owns, and she tells the bridegroom she will remove one of hers if he removes one of his; only when her last gown comes off has he removed his last skin, and become a white shape that she can form into a man.
In some tales, the hero or heroine must obey a prohibition; the bride must spend a period of time not seeing the transformed groom in human shape as in East of the Sun and West of the Moon , or the bridegroom must not burn the animals' skins. In these tales, the prohibition is broken, invariably, resulting in a separation and a search by one spouse for the other. Ghosts sometimes appear in animal form. In The Famous Flower of Serving-Men , the heroine's murdered husband appears to the king as a white dove, lamenting her fate over his own grave.
There are African folk tales of murder victims avenging themselves in the form of crocodiles that can shapeshift into human form. In some fairy tales, the character can reveal himself in every new form, and so a usurper repeatedly kills the victim in every new form, as in Beauty and Pock Face , A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers , and The Boys with the Golden Stars. This eventually leads to a form in which the character or characters can reveal the truth to someone able to stop the villain.
Similarly, the transformation back may be acts that would be fatal. In The Wounded Lion , the prescription for turning the lion back into a prince was to kill him, chop him to pieces, burn the pieces, and throw the ash into water. Less drastic but no less apparently fatal, the fox in The Golden Bird , the foals in The Seven Foals , and the cats in Lord Peter and The White Cat tell the heroes of those stories to cut off their heads; this restores them to human shape.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the album, see Shapeshifting Young Galaxy album. For the Swiss company, see ShapeShift. For other uses, see Shapeshifter disambiguation. This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. July Learn how and when to remove this template message.
Dorson, "Foreword", p xxiv, Georgias A. The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland , p. Carol Poster and Richard Utz Evanston: Northwestern University Press, , pp.