Big Break as Promoter May Await, but So Does School
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 1, 2006
Raakin Iqbal walked into his Woodbridge office and flipped on six lights, each darkened to a specific calibration to create what he calls his "European cafe theme." Surrounded by how-to-get-rich books and a black leather couch, Iqbal swiveled from his desk to his glass-and-marble coffee table and began working the cellphone.
"Hi, is this Chai Desai? This is Raakin from Huqa Entertainment," he said, speaking to a concert organizer out West. "Were you able to receive my e-mail about the Bombay Rockers? I can lower the price down from $10,000 to $8,000 if you book them."
Raakin Iqbal is 17, a clothing store employee, high school newspaper editor and up-and-coming mogul. His office is his bedroom in his parents' Prince William County home, and next to the entrepreneurial accouterments are a few youth basketball league trophies.
Iqbal is getting in on the ground floor of the nation's South Asian entertainment scene as it matures with a booming immigrant audience. Half Pakistani, half Indian and born in the United States, Iqbal is trying to position himself in the industry as a promoter -- an indispensable middleman who connects overseas music groups with concert organizers in this country and abroad. A rising senior at Woodbridge Senior High School, Iqbal finds himself at that precise moment when the South Asian music business is big enough nationwide to make money but also small enough that a high school student can elbow his way in and become a mini-player.
Without enough Pakistani and Indian bands to pack stadiums or widespread coverage on local cable television or radio, the South Asian music industry in the United States is still fragmented and grass-roots enough that entrepreneurs of all ages have emerged in immigrant-dominated areas. In Prince William, for instance, where Iqbal's parents moved in the 1990s -- his dad is a software designer, his mom is a bank loan officer -- Urdu is second only to Spanish as the school system's most-spoken foreign language.
Indians, meanwhile, have become the largest Asian ethnic group in the Washington area, surpassing Chinese, Koreans and other Asian groups that haven't been growing nearly as fast.
So at the moment, Iqbal's company, consisting only of Iqbal, is trying to land its first major deal: a contract with Bombay Rockers, a Danish rhythm-and-blues male duo who sing in English, Hindi and Punjabi. He hopes to become one of the band's handful of promoters when it tours the United States in November.
"Because the scene is developing and it's in its infancy, there's every opportunity to get in now. And maybe five years later, Raakin will become quite a big player," said Steve Hogan, the Bombay Rockers' live music agent, who said he will decide about giving Iqbal the business in another few weeks. "So far, he's definitely full of confidence, and if he talks the right talk and if everything checks out right, there's a good chance we'll do a show with him."
In the Washington area, the South Asian music scene is largely concentrated in Northern Virginia, with top Bollywood acts performing about five times a year at venues including the Patriot Center at George Mason University. Those attract between 5,000 and 10,000 people -- mostly Indians and Pakistanis. Smaller acts tour about twice a month at local high schools and community college campuses and lure about 1,500 people, according to concert organizers.
Nationwide, such metropolitan areas as Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Atlanta have more concerts featuring Indian or Pakistani acts than Washington.
Despite his age, Iqbal is not just a wannabe with lofty talk. He's a precocious upstart who, in the past year or so, has been steadily building his company and working for local promoters to learn the business. He already has a pending contract to set up the Web site for a local television production company co-owned by Sarah Hasan, a freelance correspondent for Bridges TV, a lifestyle network for American Muslims. Iqbal met Hasan while she was covering a South Asian concert this spring.
Huqa Entertainment, though, hasn't yet made money. But it has given him contacts. Iqbal has designed the Web site for a new Pakistan-based band, Gammak, and helped the organizer of a concert at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium sell tickets at malls for a show featuring Strings, a popular Pakistani rock group.
"I'll be very supportive of him. We had a wonderful time working together," said Muhammad Mohsen Bashir, who organized a small concert, featuring the group Legacy, at a Springfield restaurant on New Year's Eve last year. "He made phone calls for us, did online marketing, sent out fliers. He learned a lot from us and got exposure to the way we do business."
At school, Iqbal is just as fervent, sometimes without being practical.
"He's off the charts compared to the normal teenager. His mind is whirring with ideas. If I come in the cafeteria and just stroll around and talk to students, he'll come and talk to me about his latest plan," Woodbridge Principal Alan C. Ross said.
Iqbal, who said he gets a mix of A's, B's and C's, knows he lacks experience but wants to be respected. Whatever his business ultimately becomes, he hopes to be a central point in a large community of artists and media types -- a job that gives him entree into the private circles of celebrities and a platform to forge connections with like-minded people.
"I'm taking a first step. Every little maneuver I do, I'm getting closer to the jackpot, as in being a next Bill Gates or the Google boys. They're my idols," he said. "Sometimes, I feel people may view me wrongly. I take this seriously. I want to be more of a role model, and I want to encourage young people like myself."
Now, he hopes, he's on the verge of finally operating in the black. He's been spending his summer in his Woodbridge bedroom/office, calling concert organizers in Atlanta, Berkeley, Calif., Chicago, Houston and Miami, all while relaying possible gig sites to the London agent of the Bombay Rockers, who, of course, are based in Copenhagen.
Iqbal is hoping that the Bombay Rockers agree to make him their promoter for one or more cities when they hit smaller venues in the United States. The group regularly fills 50,000-seat venues in Pakistan and India.
Iqbal easily can reveal his youth when dealing with the professionals. One day recently, Chai Desai, himself only 19, told him that he was hesitant to book the Bombay Rockers for a gig in San Jose, because the date was a week before the band was to play in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Desai wants to maintain good relations with promoters in those cities, so he doesn't want to steal from an already small pool of potential audience members. He asked Iqbal whether the Bombay Rockers could judge an a cappella contest involving South Asian university groups and perhaps perform a song or two afterward.
Iqbal was game. He hung up and swiveled around to his laptop and e-mailed Hogan, the band's agent, amid the shouts of his sister calling his name from downstairs. "Hello Steve, Well I got Good news and some bits of bad news," he began. "Good news is that San Jose wants Bombay Rockers for the 12th, but not for a concert, but for a Archipelago competition."
Swivel chairs and all, Iqbal is just a teenager who spent the past few months holed up in a summer school algebra II class and working at the teen-trendy Hollister Co. clothing store at Potomac Mills.
There, as pop songs play on the digital jukebox, he enters an entirely different universe, chatting with people his own age, folding marked-down jeans and earnestly pointing teenage girls to the "Bettys" side of the store and the guys to the "Dudes" side of the store.
At Woodbridge High, he is known by the nickname Ricochet because of the way he darts from idea to idea. Two years ago, he started a Muslim student association at the school. Last year, he worked for months building a mock-up of a student magazine, which he is still lobbying to get approved.
Iqbal feels most comfortable when he's networking for Huqa Entertainment. One night recently, at the Pakistan Day Festival at George Mason, he passed the time walking aimlessly through the halls with friends but then cut out frequently to pass out business cards to anyone with a booth -- the imported-rice distributor, the local clothing salesman, or the professional sound and lighting guys.
At one point, he found Brijinder "B.J." Singh, managing partner for a company called eventEQ, which was operating the lights and the sound. While the music thumped in the darkened arena, he peppered Singh with questions about how he does business. As he was finishing, Iqbal couldn't help but ask one more.
"Do you take summer interns?"
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