The first time I met Cheryl Chadha she threw wine all over me. In fact she threw wine over everyone on the dance floor. It was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever witnessed. No DJ has ever inspired me as much as she did that night at The Arches.

‘I’m interested in how I interact with the audience. I want to be touched by the audience and I want the audience to touch me. It’s a sensual experience.

’ Cheryl is the creator of b.ding, a night that is as hard to define as Cheryl’s role within it. ‘It’s my responsibility to ensure that the best quality music is played and that people get a snog at the end of the night’. b.ding started in August 2000 at the Mclellan Galleries with resident’s Tigerstyle, who are just beginning to get the attention they deserve from major labels with high profile remix work rumoured to be heading their way very shortly. ‘I was putting on these Bhangra nights and I was getting 400 people and they were getting off on it. It’s the form of Bhangra music, the sentiment that’s carried in the music, the energy. I think the fact that PMC charts and Tigerstyle are going to follow suit is good at lots of different levels. It’s good for mainstream music, and without wanting to sound wanky I think it’s good for race relations. It’s good that Asian culture is becoming more integrated with mainstream culture.

However, most of Cheryls set is hardly what you’d call Bhangra, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. b.ding is far more Optimo gone disco than what’s politely called ‘world music’

.‘I started buying records when I was 8 years old, I used to save up my money and buy a single in Woolworths every week. It was unusual for a girl to be into music.‘But now everyone consumes music. I think it’s great, absolutely fantastic. In our dull, sometimes dark, laborious lives - if people listen to music - whether its opera or whatever, and they get turned on by it, that’s great. ‘People feel they have a claim to music. I’m so hungry for it all. Something will turn me on that will be quite punk-rock but then opera still turns me on. I’m interested in classical, I’m interested in the whole gamut of it and I think that’s what in essence b.ding is about. Not just about Indian music or one form of music, it’s about anything that sounds good and turns you on.’

Indeed one of her most inspirational clubbing experiences was seeing David Mancuso at the CCA last year.‘The guy inspired me. Subtle, sexy, beautiful music…It isn’t about the perfection, the sound precision and the technicality of it. It’s about the emotionality of it. I have on occasion had hang-ups that I’m not like the rest of the boys who all do the beat mixing thing but my music doesn’t require that. It’s about the emotional, it’s about the sensual and it’s about the cerebral… I admire dj’s who do seamless mixing but beat mixing just isn’t my thing. I’ve got such a low attention span that I’ve never got my head around it. I get bored within a second. I’m good at the rose petals and the incense.’

Indeed, sex and music are Cheryl’s favourite subjects. But everything, (sex and music especially) everything, as Skin once said, is (fucking) political. ‘I’m still as angry as I was when I was 13 years old. Angry but I think I’m channelling it. I still think the world isn’t a great place, I want [through b.ding] to make it better and in a small little way I hope I’m doing that, I hope I’m challenging people. My head’s in the politics, the sociological aspect of it. But that’s my thing, I’m not about indoctrinating people. At the end of the day it’s meant to be a tribal, sensual, euphoric experience and that’s what I want people to take from it.’

‘I’ve been acutely aware of cultural identity and race issues since I was a child. I was a brown child growing up in a white world. When I was a kid you never saw a black person on an advert, the visibility and representation of women and black people was parochial and insular. The world has changed but I don’t think it has changed enough and I often wonder whether it’s changed in the right way. ’

‘On one level you’re getting the Bhangra thing in the mainstream culture which is wonderful but at the same time Muslims are being attacked up and down the length and breadth of Britain. There are so many contradictions and layers. There is no one race that is a pure race but there’s this xenophobic sense of fear that people have. I find it very interesting.’ One of the striking things about Cheryl is that she finds things ‘interesting’. She’s constantly challenging things, challenging liberal cliches and dogma as much as racists and bigots. ‘In western culture everyone’s in such a hurry to compartmentalise and define and narrow things down to its absolute basic root. I think that’s important to a degree but in the modern world a lot of people are interested in crossing over different mediums. To me everything is art: art is life, art is death, it’s a way of trying to make sense of this crazy world we live in. I’m interested in exploring the connections in a clubbing framework.‘It’s very self indulgent. I’m exploring my culture, my relationship with music, with art, the things that turn me on. I am the muse for it. It’s the most amazing thing to produce something where you’re also exploring yourself and the world around you and doing it with lots of other wonderful people.’

Cheryl’s Choice
* Sonny Rollins - Alfie
* Jimi Hendrix - Foxy Lady
* Michael Jackson - Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough
* Sueno Latino - Sueno Latino
* Siouxse and The Banshees - Spellbound