Bobby Friction is renowned for his specialist knowledge of British Asian Music & South Asian music worldwide and currently hosts a show dedicated to just that – the week nightly ‘Friction’ show on the Asian Network from 10pm.
Bobby joined BBC Radio 1 in 2002 co-hosting the Sony Gold award winning show, ‘Bobby Friction & Nihal’, and in 2005 joined the BBC Asian Network presenting the station’s Saturday afternoon ‘Album Chart Show’, before moving to ‘The Mix’, on Sunday afternoons. Bobby also won his second Gold Sony award in 2005 for his BBC documentary ‘Vote Friction’, and then in 2006 he started his week nightly ‘Friction’ show on the Asian Network. The show, seen by many worldwide as ‘the definitive’ Asian music show won Bobby his third Sony Gold in 2007.
Bobby has also made numerous documentaries for Radio 1, Radio 4 & the Asian Network over the years covering topics such as the Arabic Walt Disney, Amir Khan the Boxer, Rock music in India & British Asian’s in Prison. He has also done lots of TV work which included being the main focus for the BBC 1 documentary ‘This England’, fronting the Channel 4 TV show ‘Bollywood Star’, & Co-Hosting the BBC 1 Music Challenge programme ‘Clash’ as well as presenting documentaries like ‘The Countryside Sucks’ & ‘Generation 7/7’ for Channel 4.
Bobby has also written for many publications in the UK on British Asian culture & music and currently has a monthly column in Rolling Stone Magazine, India.
Over the years Bobby has represented the British Asian sound as a DJ all over the world and has built an international reputation as a genre mixing turntabilist from Asia to the US, and from the Middle East to the whole of Europe. His gigs have included headlining his own outdoor New Years Eve gig in Bangalore to ten thousand people, playing for Womad in the UK & Singapore, The World Music Festival in Chicago, The Burningman Festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada as well as regular gigs in San Francisco & L.A. He is also a regular on the European Festival circuit including playing eight different Glastonbury festivals and every Bestival to date. He was one of the founder members of the band Ecostani and still works alongside The Infinite Scale, his production partner. They been recording their own original material for the last nine years and they’ve worked on numerous remixes: from Electronica to Bhangra, House to Hip-Hop, through Bollywood and back again. Bobby has also recorded tracks with the Mercury Music Award nominated Black Star Liner; His British Asian Urban compilation ‘Friction’ sold a quarter of a million copies in the sub-continent and stayed at number 1 in the charts for 14 weeks. Friction 2 has been released and Bobby recently signed a three album deal with Sony BMG India.
A Unique music professional that has a legendary status within Desi music, Bobby is a world renowned specialist in British Asian music and Desi Beats worldwide – but is first and foremost, and will always be, a massive fan of music!
