As much as I love Bollywood and the genre’s dance sequences, it is definitely important to recognize that Indian cinema encompasses more than just mainsteream Bollywood film. Not only is arthouse cinema on the up-and-up, but regional language film has always been a strong contributor to the entertaining of the masses. So, it is with great pleasure (thanks flats) that I present to you one of the coolest examples of a brownsploitation-film dance sequence EVER. It’s from a Tamil film entitled “Ellam Inba Mayam” (1981) and the song is Solla Solla Enna Perumai. Enjoy.
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Dolomite, eat your heart out. Can any of our Tamil speaking readers tell us what the song is about?
Shouldn’t that be Indian cinema of that perios in the 70s-80s..
This is a comment from IMDB on Disco Dancer 1983 http://imdb.com/title/tt0208903/usercomments
good god. if I had spanky gold boots like that, I’d dance like that too!
fierce link, Sajit!
DD: If you use Firefox, the Video Downloader extension will help. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/ But everything on Youtube is a flash file, so you need a player like VLC to open it.
And if you ever choreograph a ‘Homage to the 80s’ number, please do incorporate some Kamal moves. Please. 🙂
I remember this Malayalam movie ‘Udayannu Tharam’ that was a satire of South Indian movies. It has this song that was quite a hit, and makes fun of the song & dance routine by having an unconventional hero, check it out
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4ijPcqKD4Zo&search=mohanlal
lol…Kesh, only the mallus can do a true paraody
Also my Tamil Movie enthusiasts will remember this famous video, This guy can hold his own with ANY hip hop dancer!!!!! i’ll put my two paisa on this guy
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lvl8djv0MAI&search=prabhu%20
HaHA true that!!
Navratan Kurma / bytewords: I knew this was bound to come up.
Expected to have this discussion last week it self, but no one brought it up! I mentioned these two numbers on Amardeep’s post on Omkara’s music last week as my favorite peice of TFM trivia. I should have put it explicitly.
Ponniyin Selvan / Shiva: Right on the money! I can’t believe how many people get all derisive with the internalizing argument when they hear the Tamil original, in spite of the guitar riffs that bring up the song’s end.
Suresh: Dungan died sometime ago. He was the one who “introduced” MGR and also directed some of MS Subbalakshmi’s better known movies.
say it’s all and has always been one big hodgepodge without separate strands that would help you distinguish Satyajit Ray from Dil Chahta Ha
There always has been a big hodgepodge. Read some of the comments written by Shiva and Ponniyan here on this thread.
Even the Bollywood of 70-80s was making similar movies as other regional centers – all of them had disco or Shaft-like themes. It is not common the same film in India be made in different languages at the same time or later. An example is Sadma by Kamalhaasan and Sridevi. There are hazaar (thousand) more examples.
There are no separate strands in terms of talent pool used, there are separate strands for target audience.
While you are probably right about it being typical of Indian cinema during that time frame, I stand by my comment because more modern Tamil films still showcase the same type of imagery (outlandishly “Western” constumes, unusual choreography, etc.) I have some connections to the Tamil film industry, and I have been told that it is precisely that over-the-top quality that endears some of these movies to their audiences. I guess it’s all about playing to the right crowd. There are of course much more sophisticated Tamil filmmakers, my personal favorite is Mani Ratnam.
Anantha,
surprising coincidence.. Do you know of other pairs of songs??.. With internet/raaga I think it will be pretty easy to find out who “internalised” what…
Kesh: Btw, Prabhu Deva choreographed “Main Aisa Kyon Hoon” in Lakshya and won his second National Award for best choreography. He also choreographed the song, “Pyar Zindagi” from Pukar with Madhuri Dixit a few years ago.
Interestingly his first National Award was for Sapnay/Minsara Kanavu. This movie included this song that seems to have been partly “internalized” from this Gene Kelly – Leslie Caron number from An American in Paris (1951)! Some parts of the sets and the “steps” are erriely similar (starting at 3:01 onwards). Wish I could point out the similarities better, but the only “An American in Paris” video I can find at this point is what seems to be a tribute to Vincente Minnelli.
Wiki informs us that Gene Kelly won his only Oscar (honorary) that year “in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film”. So Prabhu Deva winning his award for an almost identical number is perhaps fitting 😉
Ponniyin Selvan: I am not sure if Raaga can be viewed as a “go to” resource to pinpoint “internalizing”. But I have to give a shout out to Karthik over at I2FS, who is doing an outstanding job of tracking down and analyzing all the musical inspirations.
In fact, the samples he provides to substantiate his claims are very helpful in actually figuring out the “listening interests” of the composers in question, right from Salil Chaudhry to Sanjeev Dharshan.
Anantha,
thanks for the link.. but it starts with
🙂
Kush, I think that will change soon (the talent pool), if it has not, already. The kind of assembly line movie we get to see in Bollywood these days (let’s leave the K Jo’s out of this!) are not typical of what you see down South.
Yes, the target audience is largely different now. But that was not the case earlier. The audiences were largely similar in tastes.
I might rot in hell for this statement, considering that I am a hardcore Rajinikanth fan. Here goes – A lot of Rajinikanth’s mega hits in Tamil were re-makes of Amitabh Bachchan starrers!
But the David Dhawans of the world minted a lot more. Almost every single David Dhawan movie has a Tamil or Telugu original that did equally good business!
Thank you, Sajit! Best post and discussion HEVVVER! I can’t stop clicking the links people are posting. Help… no work getting done! Didn’t know there was so much good stuff on youtube.
Am I the only one that feels very embarrassed when watching things like this? Many times my white friends talk to me about how cheesy these videos are, and I can’t help but agree with them many times. There are exceptions, but these incredibly cheesy rips are more embarrasing than anything else.
Welcome to the club!
dont make me angry….you WOUN’T LIKE ME WHEN IM ANGRY!
Getting embarassed for something in which you never played a role/part is a nice feeling to have.. It is as good as taking pride for something in which you never played a role/part.. Enjoy it while it lasts.. 🙂
I never liked collectivism…
Easiest solution: don’t let your white friends see these videos.
D-Tank,
Don’t be embarrassed by this video, D-Tank. This video is cheesy but harmless. If you want to be embarrassed about an Indian-made music video, here’s a good one… Warning: Has been known to scare little children and you may suffer from loss of sleep/weightloss after viewing. RaaRAa…
Rasudha,
What is to be embarrassed about here? I haven’t had the chance to watch Chandramukhi yet, but if it is indeed a remake of the excellent Malayalam movie Manichithrathazhu, then everything in the video makes perfect sense. Or are you pointing out Rajni’s antics? Or perhaps you are joking…
Enna intha pasanga ‘alien’ endru sollraanga? Avanga mozhi enakkum appdiye thonalaam. Ennamo! Free-ya viduvom…
Here is a 2.0 version of Tamil dancing. The dancing is amateurish at times. They actually start laughing in the middle, but itÂ’s cute. At least it is more authentic then Kamal HassanÂ’s dancing.
rasudha,
Your warning needs to be in bold type. It’s not just little children who would find it squeamish. (And in case Razib gets confused the song is Telugu. Not sure what it is doing in a Tamil movie.)
Yes. You are the only one WHO feels very embarrassed.
The story is about “Multiple Personality Disorder”..That character who is afflicted with MPD thinks of herself as a Telugu dancer wrongfully abducted by a King and separated from her lover..
It is funny, the movie is a super hit in all the four south indian languages.. Shobana won the best actoress award for her Malayalam movie in which she plays the “tamil dancer”.. These folks minted money with just one good story and the poor guy who wrote the original story got a pittance..
navratan kurma,
oh thank you thank you :).
since when did youtube become a repository for old cheesy tamil dance numbers
gautham,
yo bro, bollywood rox, madrawood sux!
Gautham, don’t want to muddy the seemingly clear water by dipping my arm in it, but this condescending view is nothing new. It seems to be so prevelant that one loses voice just by talkign about it.
And that’s why, even though it might seem tagential to the discussion here, one tries to highlight the positives that not a lot of people who comment here know – For e.g., Ilayaraja’s gems and A.R.Rahman’s Tamil numbers that many native Hindi speakers haven’t even heard about. Just doing my bit to bring enlightenment to the masses 😉
And ya, needless to say, we “intellectuals” from down south look down upon the others with scorn too. Once I start, I can’t stop ranting about Himesh Reshmaiyya or Kumar Sanu! Ah well, to each his own!
yeah, do quote as “intellectuals.” both bengali and brains start with the same letter!
I think the condescension branches further than cinema.
razib,
I don’t want to start a flame war either but your categorization of South Indians as “aliens with Indian accents” whose language is utterly incomprehensible sounds like major essentializing on your part.
I am not a linguist, but you being of Bengali origin should I think enable you to understand some “South Indian words”.
I am not sure if Bangaldeshi Bengali is significantly different than the Indian Bengali. Bengali seems to sounds the same to my non-Bengali ears whether it is spoken by Hindus or Muslims, unlike Hindi. And literary Bengali seems very sanskritized. (In fact I believe the post-independence, de-urdufication of Hindi and its subsequent sankritization has a lot to do with certain cultural nationalists emulating Bengali, rather than a return to some pre-Islamic Hindi.)
Anyway, if you are familiar with Bengali, and therefore by default are familiar with Sanskrit words you should be able to understand a lot more “south Indian” words than you claim. I am not sure about the amount of Sanskritization in other South Indian languages, but about 40% of the Telugu lexicon is of Sanskrit origin. I am not sure about the extent of the influence of Sanskrit on Kannada and Malayalam, but I believe both languages still retain some of the influence. Tamil I believe has undergone some recent de-sanskritization, but I am not sure if it was as dependent as the other South Indian languages on Sanskrit loan words in the first place.
To claim that the south Indian languages are “utterly incomprehensible” because of linguistic reasons, is utterly false. You may not be familiar with the syntax, but you should be able to understand a word or two. I suspect the failure stems from your lack of familiarity with Bengali, but it has nothing to do with linguistics reasons as you claim. Your use of the derogatory word “southie” in the past makes me wonder if you are actually listening to South Indians with open ears.
It seems like there is a slightly condescending view of Tamil cinema from the Bollywood fans in here.
Not at all, if you mute the streaming, I would not even know whether the movie is from Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood. There are hazaar Bollywood songs in Afro wigs too.
Kamalhaasan (the dancer in the video) acts in all: Bollywood, Tollywood, and Kollywood, and then some. His production company rakes about US $10 million a year in India.
Somebody said here on the thread that Mani Ratnam is their favorite Tamil director. He makes great Bollywood movies too – example Bombay, Dil Se and in Kannada, and Telugu too.
my tamizh bretheren,
Ignore Razib, for every bangaldeshi-pseudo-bengali (I think he deserves some abuse here), you have me to balance! My floor at the engineering college hostel (dorm to the ABCD’s) was packed with Tamil’s and Mallus, and this was during the glory days of the early ’90’s when Hindi-walla’s were just discovering the brilliance of Tamil movies. Man, I knew all the songs of Roja, Gentleman, “Thiruda, Thiruda” in Tamil before the hindi-valla’s even knew of these movies. I still have ” Veerapandi Kottaiyile” and “Koncham Nilavu” on all my favourites CD’s.
comeon relax guys, padam pakla ma? <\b>
Your use of the derogatory word “southie” in the past makes me wonder if you are actually listening to South Indians with open ears.
LOL. i don’t ever remember using the word “southie.” if i did, i was probably making fun of some prig who was making derogatory insinuations of south indians via parody.
take a chill pill.
pretty soon someone will tell me that making a joke is “essentializing.” people need to leave the verbo-theoretical artillery at the door sometimes.
Navratan Kurma,
Malayalam movie Manichithrathazhu is one of my favorites. Chandramukhi is a travesty of that movie. Shobana is a godess and Jyothika is a demon in comparison. I’m a tamil-telugu but have no pride in Tamil movie any longer. What they did to Fazil’s beautiful malyalam film must be very painful for him to watch. Of course, it was Vasu in the Kannada film Aapthmithra that started this.
In malayalam, the equivalent song Oru Murai Vanthu Paraiyo is in Tamil.
It’s all the vowels that make South Indian languages seem alien. No need to be mad. I like that we sound different.
Some more ilayaraja gems… http://www.musicindiaonline.com/l/26/s/movie_name.4934/ (listen to the second song)
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/l/26/s/year.30/ ( especially 4 and 5)
razib,
“verbo-theoretical artillery”
O the irony : )
Also this one(Listen to the mrigas…if you know what that means…If you notice the music between each stanza is different unlike hindi songs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd1-YNsUlck&search=nizhalgal
yes, bengali (and assamese and oriya) are very different from the western indo-aryan languages. still, i can recognize words like “meg” and “kala” and stuff usually.
yeah, my bangla sux. mebee that wuz it.
100
no, you failed a more fundamental test of “bengaliness”, the ability to appreciate another great culture.
btw, my Bengali ain’t to great either.
I think people are being “sensitive” here.. (nothing wrong though..)
But there is nothing wrong to sound “alien” to those who do not know the language.. Don’t you think it is mutual.??
Gautham: Since i used the term “intellectual” first, I should perhaps clarify that the usage was not to point fingers at anyone, but to laugh at those South Indian people that I that I have met personally and who speak condescendingly of anyone north of the Vindhyas. While for many North Indians, it is the “I can’t understand you and so you are stupid”, for many of us from down south, it is a case of “You cannot understand anything that comes out from my mouth and so you are stupid.” So it is all a case of communication gap.
As far as cinema is concerned, it is all about the way things are dealt with. I typically find Bollywood movies more escapist, while movies down south are generally more grounded in reality. Again this could be more related to the socio-economic climate prevailing in the area. Down south equality has been the catch phrase since the 60s. So Sanjay Rawat would jump out from a Sikorsky clad in black Versace and run to the puja room (hair flowing in the breeze and tun tun tun tun music playing the background) in his millionaire father Yashwardhan Rawat’s 25 room Victorian manor to fall at his mom’s feet.
But down south, Saravana Kumar might get down from Route 29C and walk to his own second floor, two bedroom apartment where his retired (with pension) father and housewife mother are waiting with the day’s news.
Again this is my perception of things.
yes, Gautham’s right– originally Mani Ratnam made it in Tamil. It did so well, he decided to remake it in Hindi. Solid movie, definitely one of the new classics.
no, you failed a more fundamental test of “bengaliness”, the ability to appreciate another great culture.
dude, i was making the alien comment in response to this video. LOL.
Bombay was a Tamil movie. I’m fairly sure of this, but not 100%. It was dubbed to Hindi.
Yes, I checked. Originally, Bombay was a Tamil movie and then dubbed in Hindi. One of my earlier comments, I talked about this too – often Indian movies are dubbed in multiple languages and some later remade with same or different stars like, Sadma. Sadma had same stars but a different director.
Amitabh Bachchan has signed couple Bhojpuri movies, so has Hema Malini. Katrina Kaif has couple of Telugu movies.
Have you noticed Mani Ratnam’s favorite actress is Manisha Koirala who happens to be Nepali?
kush,
please put together venn diagram which shows the intersection of actor/esses across regional and bollywood film industries. your argument would be persuasive if you can show widespread intersections across the subsets.