Tunak Tunak Takes Over

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I found another viral video to add to the list of wackiness (Avon Lady, Little Superstar, Nike) we’ve been broadcasting from here at the bunker (thanks sleepy!). Let me present to you Tunak Tunak Jesus Jesus.

I don’t understand one word of the song, but I’m pretty sure that the the subtitles are not telling me what the song is saying.

Manish did a previous post with other earlier video remakes of the song. It has since caught like wildfire. We have of course the original version by Daler Mehndi, A Japanese game show version StarCraft Tunak Tunak, and even for Razib, a Tunak Tunak Brown. There’s even a Tunak Trailer. In fact, a search of Tunak on YouTube shows 321 videos. What is it about this song that can create this viral epidemic?

I think that it’s time for the Tunak Tunak Sepia Mutiny version to be created. I’ll get the monkeys in the bunker working right on it…

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About Taz

Taz is an activist, organizer and writer based in California. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), curates MutinousMindState.tumblr.com and blogs at TazzyStar.blogspot.com. Follow her at twitter.com/tazzystar

55 thoughts on “Tunak Tunak Takes Over”

  1. Oh, I have to say the the soon to be completed Tunak Tunak Brown is almost as good as this absurdly wonderful piece of film!

    Maybe it’s just something about the song…I don’t know Punjabi so have so idea what he’s actually singing about but maybe it’s just a universal song. Like the Macarena, but BETTER 😉

  2. Well, as Taz suggested, the translation is slightly off. He only mentions Jesus twice during the song :p. I’m sure others will chime in with specifics/corrections:

    He’s singing to his love, asking to hear his call and love him.

    Says that the world and friends/lovers come in all colors, it’s not good or bad, listen to Mehdi

    He asks his love to laugh with him, tell him the things in her heart or they’re through.

    I missed a few words in the next verse..so my translation’s probably off, but something about him being round and her being (I guess the opposite of that) and of course how Jesus will guide us :p, and then I don’t know all the words in that bit.

    Hahaha..and then something about doing the robot at the end…

  5. Quizman!!!

    That video was Fing (wait it’s ramadan) hilarious! I was laughing so hard. I’m screening it at my iftar party this week.

  7. madguru’s right… !!! he really is.

    from the snippets i can make out… and there’s a little bit of imagination needed to fill in… but it is just as simple.

    the first time i heard it i thought this was a pakistani singer, after the mould of nfak – but it’s a kick ass tune… and gets everyone to do the shoulder-shrug.

    tunak tunak

  8. Whats with the popularity of this Tunak Tunak video? Bad music, worse graphics and terrible dance (and dancer). As you can see most of the tags in YouTube say comedy. So I’m assuming that this has more to do with laughing AT this awesomely bad music video.

  12. “What is it about this song that can create this viral epidemic?”

    I think it’s because you can’t get the tunak tunak bit out of your head for a very long time, or maybe that’s just me 🙂 And Daler Mehndi is everywhere, the first time I heard him was when my debate teacher in ninth grade played Tunak Tunak. She had his poster and his cd’s, everything.

  15. I was gonna sign off, but I have to relay this story on just how infectious this song is.

    During the halcyon dotcom days, I worked for a company in DC called MicroStrategy, which would take the entire company on a cruise around the Carribean for 7 days in January. It was pretty amazing, and there are a great many “cruise stories.”

    On the last/biggest/bestest cruise, in 2000 (“C2K”), we had a talent show. The grand finale was a bhangra choreographed by my friends Sonia and Alka. We’d practiced for almost three months for this thing, so we all kind of took it seriously. The last night of the cruise was the talent show night, and of course, we wind up in the middle of a HUGE storm. You know it’s bad when it tosses a cruise ship around like a toy. When we go on stage, it’s beyond ridiculous. We were trying to keep our footing more than stay in sync. My friend Manu was so seasick we was literally puking 45 seconds before we went onstage.

    But this song…well. We did three songs, and Tunak Tunak was the last one. And when it got going, people actually got up and started dancing in the aisles. Imagine 2000 people getting up and dancing to this song in a theater on a cruise ship in the middle of a proto-hurricane, everyone getting tossed around, it was madness. The CEO came on stage and danced around for a bit, and then the whole darn crowd came up, too.

    At the end of it all, we had a post-party in the cruise ship’s club. Various random non-browns were like, “what was that song? What was it?” And so we played it again on the dance floor in the club. People really got a kick out of it. I kind of thought it was a flash in the pan, until…

    A few months after the dotcom bust, when various friends were out of work, a non-brown girl I was seeing who was still at the company made me a CD. And the last track? You guessed it. She was super-duper proud that she’d found the song by listening to the music from the videotape of the cruise, typing in her own interpretations of what she thought Daler Mehndi was saying into Google, and coming up with “Tunak Tunak” all on her own.

    I was like, “Damn. That good, huh?”

  18. Thank you for that, I had a good laugh. I kept thinking about how much fun those kids were having! Of course, I have no idea what they are singing about, I must be missing something there…..

  20. What is so annoying about all these videos are, they are all from the 80s/90s. Its like the whole web is catching up with Indian movie like 10 years late. A 80s video of madonna would look as ridiculous as the lil superstar now.

  21. The song has nothing to do with Jesus…it is a punjabi song about a punjabi and his raunchy yearning for his punjabi dudette.

    I must admit I found this song marginally less annoying than Daler Mehendi’s “Tutak Tutak Tootian” which drove me crazy in the 90s…everyone of my relatives played “tutak tutak” (multiple times) at every party, wedding, and occasion in India and danced wildly to it.

    sp

  23. Sonya,

    Tutak, Tutak was not by Daler Mehdi. It was by Malkit Singh, who has had fabulous remixes done by Bally Sagoo. Daler Mehdi became famous through “Haye Rabba (bolo ta ra ra ra” in the mid 1990s. Daler was born in a singing (sikh) family in Bihar, India. Daler started off as a cab driver in Berkeley, CA. He stated in an interview that he was so depressed here that he planned to commit suicide. As luck would have it, someone heard him sing, recommended that he move back to India to start a singing career and the rest as they say, is history. Other songs; ho jayegi balle balle. But nothing is as viral as Tunak Tunak. What else would make sensible adults (one would think) do these: See this, this this , this and tons of others…:-)

  24. I meant “Tootak tootak” by Malkit Singh…

    Just writing the words down fried my brain…

    And, yes, the one-hit wonder….daler mehndi…bolo ta ra ra…another song that makes me want to upchuck.

    You have to see Sardar Mehndiji on the Punjabi channel in India belting this out each New Year with hatti katti (well fed) sardarnis in microscopic shorts gyrating in the background…it is pretty funny the first time around.

    sp

  25. Tootak Tootak Tootian by Golden Star Malkit Singh when remixed by Bally Sahoo in “Wham Bam” changed everything in bhangra. respec!

  26. I can’t believe no one’s mentioned the fact that I am totally outing myself as an avid player of World of Warcraft (‘WoW’ for the uninitiated), but I went totally nuts when I found out that the male members of the new elfin race offered (Draenei) in the Burning Crusade expansion do the Tunak Tunak dance. Here’s the Draenei version of Daler Mehndi’s vid. (Just to explain, every race/sex has its own dance: undead males headbang, human females do the Macarena. I literally shrieked when the Draenei dance was revealed, as I’ve been following Tunak Tunak in its many forms over the months/years.)

  27. Quizman

    I checked out the links you provided. They are hysterical…the first one with the white dude in the maroon shirt wins since he was clearly AND correctly singing along!!!!

    Obviously, there is some weird phenomenon going on. It totally baffles me…what is the charm of tunak, tunak? Also, how are all the non-desis getting hold of the song and why this one and not another?

    sp

  28. Also, how are all the non-desis getting hold of the song and why this one and not another?

    These Japanese girls do a good job of dancing to this tamil song.

  29. Sonya,

    I’m trying to figure that one myself. It is mentioned as a internet phenomenon in Wikipedia. I saw Youtube & google videos of tunak tunak from Rumania, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, German, Korea, China? and the US of course. Here are a bunch of schoolgirls from Korea, a bunch of dorm girls & a wedding in the US. This will be a classic. Brazil seems to throw up the biggest hits for this song.

    What the heck is going on? Is there some marvellous towel/blanket salesman across the world who has made a killing with this market opportunity?

  34. These Japanese girls do a good job of dancing to this tamil song.

    Wow .. they were amazing. I loved the little kid in the orange with the afro hair.

  38. um. amitabh. yes. appreciate the gesture but the song you linked is even more dense than T2. care to provide a quick translation. thank you.

  42. What’s also cool (apart from the beauty of the song) is that you have the India-raised Gurdas Maan, the UK-raised Sukshinder Shinda, and the Pakistan-raised Abrar Ul-Haq, and there are definite differences in accent in all three, especially Abrar.

  43. What’s also cool (apart from the beauty of the song) is that you have the India-raised Gurdas Maan, the UK-raised Sukshinder Shinda, and the Pakistan-raised Abrar Ul-Haq, and there are definite differences in accent in all three, especially Abrar.

    Definitely .. it’s so unique to see a collaboration like this and I’m so glad they did it. I’ve listened to the song hundreds of times and I’m still in love with every little “chiku chiku” and “matak matak”. It’s great to hear their unique singing styles blend into one beautiful song.

  44. Great song, but why the f is there milk being poured on the girl? ??????? ?????

    Great song though. Makes me wonder what things were like pre 1947 in the five-spot (punj = 5)

  45. Sahej – you’ve never heard of babies being bathed in milk? I think it’s strange but I know my mother in law does it sometimes with the grandkids. Supposed to make their skin smoother and softer.

  46. I think it’s strange but I know my mother in law does it sometimes with the grandkids.

    Congrats! This is how rumors get started 😉

  48. I’ve vaguly heard the milk thing, but this girl was in a cup of milk or something. Anyway

  50. Also Sahej, to hear a beautiful Pakistani singer from days gone by (Alam Lohar) go to the following link. I highly recommend songs #6 and #20 on the list (audio files). When you listen to this guy, Abrar Ul-Haq’s accent makes more sense…it seems to be common in Pakistan.

    http://www.apnaorg.com/music/alam/index-1.php3