By many accounts one of the smartest comedy acts to have emerged in Chicago in recent years comes from a man who first came to prominence by calling out then-candidate Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry—at a Trump rally. That Arish Singh turned out to have not only correctly identified a key aspect of the presidential agenda early on, but to have maintained a sense of humor despite it, is rare. On Monday, March 4, he welcomes musician and videographer Basim Usmani to his variety show, Monkey Wrench, at the Hideout. Usmani’s new project, an Urdu- and Punjabi-language goth band called Bubble Ghum, will play, and the two performers will debut a new collaborative project. The Reader got in touch before the show to get the scoop.
The sketches we’ll be doing draw from conversations we’ve had over the past year about politics, comedy, and issues of South Asian identity. Some of it’s just absurd, dark comedy we find funny, but some of it digs deeper into South Asian identity than you might typically see in comedy. There is commentary on U.S. militarism in South Asia, India’s Hindu nationalism-a strain of political extremism in India that’s subjected India’s minorities to ostracism and a lot of violence-and the frustrations of being a South Asian-American with radical politics in this climate where you’re stuck between the fearmongering of the right and the timidness of the white liberal establishment.
BU: If punk needs to go, sexual assault and enabling harassment are valid reasons. There were good reasons to cancel it in the 80s. I like to think punk is applied to [Usmani’s other band,] The Kominas as something we brought back in a new form. Bubble Ghum is undead (undead, undead) Postpunk, however.
AS: This particular Monkey Wrench with Bubble Ghum does feature mostly performers of color, but that’s not a focus of each and every show. We want each show to be diverse and to highlight women, PoC, and queer performers, but what I’d say sets Monkey Wrench apart is that it’s a live comedy show with not just diverse lineups, but that it’s a show explicitly geared to the progressive and radical left. This goes for the comedy featured on the show (we do have individual stand-ups doing their own thing, but we balance it against explicitly political comedy created by myself and other comedians that we regularly feature), the activists and journalists we do live interviews with, and the causes we give our proceeds to.
AEM: Arish, you were kicked out of a Trump rally in Iowa a few years back, and became quite vocal about the then-candidate’s rising anti-Muslim bigotry. How has your critique evolved since then?
BU: I’ve been releasing music since 2007, and many of my best-known songs are in Urdu and Punjabi. I sing in whatever language is natural to me, and hope it slaps, because I’ve been doing this for years. I know where my music plays, and I’m done making appeals to people who will write it off. I’m kind of hedging my bets that the brown kids who were into the punk will also be maladjusted enough to dig and buy my drum-machine music.
