Gursharan 'Boy' Chana has had a lifelong passion for Bhangra
music. Growing up in Handsworth in the early 70s he saw the
development of the genre from traditional punjabi folk music, to
the bands that developed out of the wedding circuit to the 80s
daytime scene that really put Bhangra on the map as a genre of UK
music in its own right.
Along the way he's always been there as a photographer,
journalist and DJ. Boy Chana is known to pretty much everyone on
the Birmingham music scene, sometimes for his journalism (he has
written for a range of publications including Multi Mag, Meri Boli
and Eastern Eye), his DJing (Gusharan is one of the UK's foremost
Bhangra DJs), or sometimes as a photographer. He has recently come
to prominence for the latter with Soho Road to the Punjab - Punch's
exhibition on the history of Birmingham Bhangra - which centres
around his archive of images.