1. A community of persons with artistic or literary tastes who adopt manners and mores conspicuously different from those expected or approved of by the majority of society.

2. The district in which bohemians live

A historical region and former kingdom of present-day western Czech Republic. The Czechs, a Slavic people, settled in the area between the 1st and 5th centuries A.D. A later principality was independent until the 15th century, when it passed to Hungary and then to the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria. Bohemia became the core of the newly formed state of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

BIOGRAPHY


Bohemian: A person who does not follow conventional standards of behaviour, expressing themselves in an artistic or literary way.

Desi. A descendant of Southern Asia, primarily India/Pakistan.

Bohemia The Punjabi Rapper

In his early teens, Ra (short for Raja) arrived with his family in America, settling in San Francisco’s Mission District. Within their first month on the block, Ra witnessed a young man get murdered over five dollars. The killer was the man’s brother in law. This would be Ra’s first lesson on trusting others in the streets of Pardes (the foreign land). Although he had strong knowledge and passion for writing music, he made it a second priority, and began hanging on the street corners to run drugs for local hustlers.

The streets became a priority to Ra, but he would occasionally play keyboards at local Desi events. Through this platform, he gained recognition in the Desi music community. But what struck people most was his ability to write songs or poetry, mostly in Urdu and Punjabi.

He was offered a lucrative job at a Sacramento based recording studio and he decided to follow his passion. Ra packed his bags and left his family behind to become a full time musician.

Along with a crew of other musicians, Ra was now spending his days on the road, playing gigs throughout the US and Canada, sleeping in cars and on recording studio floors. It would be through this experience that Ra would learn about stage presence.
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The term bohemian was first used in the nineteenth century to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities. Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti establishment political or social viewpoints, which were expressed through extramarital and probably as well marital sexual relations and frugality and/or 'voluntary poverty'.

The term emerged in France in the 1800s when artists and creators began to concentrate in the lower-rent, lower class gypsy neighbourhoods. The term "Bohemian" reflects a belief, widely held in France at the time, that the Gypsies had come from Bohemia.