You know what the world needs more of? It needs more desi boy bands.
We have plenty of desi doctors, lawyers, engineers, I-bankers, actors, astronauts and rappers, but there’s a real deficit in the boy band category. This is why I love the idea of the Montreal based boy band JoSH (that’s a long O, like Joe, not like Joshua). [The band’s slick webpage; their myspace page]
The group is actually only the duo of Q (Qurram Hussain) and Rup (Rupinder Magon) – Q is the one who looks like Lenny Kravitz, and Rup is well, the one in the turban.
This raises an important question – can you have a boy band with less than four members? Don’t you need the cute one, the sensitive one, the goofy one, and the quiet one? I don’t really know how the band is marketed – do they double up attributes? Can one of them be cute and sensitive and the other one be goofy and quiet? I was never a teenage girl, so I don’t know how to answer such esoteric questions.
Musically, they’re also a bit different from a traditional boy band – they’re more of a desi/hip-hop fusion band that a traditional pop-ballad heavy quartet. This makes sense since their fan base is largely in the subcontinent:
While largely unknown in their home country of Canada, JoSH is extremely popular in South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan. Their sophomore album, Kabhi, as well as its title track, remained in both Indian and MTV World Top 20 lists for 26 weeks from October 2004 to January 2005. Additionally, JoSH was awarded MTV India’s 2004 “Immie” award for Best New Non-Film Artist. [Link]
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p>They may be getting their biggest break ever when they open for Nelly Furtado in Bombay New Years Eve as part of a 5 city tour. This is probably an outgrowth of their remix of Furtado’s Powerless that seems to have boosted their profile:
They come from Canada and their bhangra mix of Nelly Furtado’s “Powerless” has made them powerful. Soon after radio’s all over the planet started flooding the airwaves with Josh’s version of “Powerless,” the duo from Montreal started receiving offers from various artistes and labels. [Link]
I’m not crazy about most of their music – I like the idea of an Indo-Pakistani-Canadian boyband more than I like their execution. I like Mahi Ve, a song from their new album, better than some of their other material:
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p>This more traditional boy-band type video for Meri Jaan doesn’t move me though:
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You might also want to check out the videos for Baan Far Kay, Kabhi, or Nelly Furtado – Powerless – Josh Desi Mix and make up your own mind about the music. According to the Professor, they have “great stage presence.”
Like I said, I’m not really a fan of most boy bands, so I’m hardly target audience. On the other hand, if I ever form one of my own, you all will be the first to know 
The world does not need more boy bands, desi or otherwise 🙂 Wait, we’re talking about N’Sync-type boy bands, right?
Okay, I get that they are not a traditional ‘boy band’, but I just have such an aversion to that term…..
MD – help me about concerning the attribute question – is it allowed for one of them to be cute and goofy and another to be both sensitive and quiet? Or is that too much for one person to bear?
isn’t the ‘boy band moment’ over? or are you a specialist in this area ennis?
Quite the opposite – I had no idea it was over until now. I like the idea of pop stars with turbans and beards is all @:-{D#
Ennis: I loved Duran Duran as a teen. What? I’m a gen x’er! Let’s see, there was sandy-haired sailor Simon LeBon, some guy named Nick who wore a lot of makeup, a cute drummer, and a cute bassist (I use drummer and bassist very loosely) and this one other guy. Dunno.
the gay one, ala Lance Bass who came out recently
is one of my fav tracks
I think they are from Monteal or Vancouver. West coast desis are gangtas and drug dealers, not boy-band material. And Q has a very Montreal look.
Ikram – correction made, thanks!
I was listening to an interview with Nelly Furtado on the BBC Asian Network and she ended it by saying ‘Sat-Sri-Akal’. How cool is that?
This Josh band are a little too easy listening for me. They need to get grittier and dirty. Although the guy called Q is tweaking my gaydar, which has been active like crazy since Sin started writing for you, and which I believe is influencing me via gay radiation rays channeled through Sepia Mutiny pages.
I was listening to an interview with Nelly Furtado on the BBC Asian Network and she ended it by saying ‘Sat-Sri-Akal’.
her daughter is also 1/4 brown (1/4 filipino).
AWWWW. they are cute! And they’re music on myspace is hot. I have a new desi boy band crush, thanks Ennis! Can we get some promo tickets to the Bombay new years show show? seriously…!
a for effort@josh.
but the real reason i write:
and
when this ephemeral boy-band-of-bloggers hits the stage, which one of the prototypes would you be ennis?
i think sajit would be the quiet one, so that’s taken. i’m voting abhi for the goofy one, but in an adorable-goofy-sciencegeek-astronaut sort of way, but vinod could also pull this off with his too-fly libertarians-or-bust bit. siddharta has clearly taken over the sensitive market. sigh!!! and you ennis? where do you fit in on the boy-band scale?
new kids on the blog! nkob i love ya!
I love it – which boy band archetypes are we, dear Mutineers?
whatevz: Hilarious! Please, photoshop experts, we need some kind of pictorial to go with New Kids on the Blog….
I think this is a potential way to overcome fears of recent stereotyping issues (see below)
Which do you prefer to be seen as,this or this?
This guy or this guy?
West coast desis reprezent! We need some more of this gangsta Scarface shit! If you want respect, you have to take respect, screw the model minority. Remember, the World Is Yours. Keep it real.
red snapper i think i read somewhere that she grew up with canadian punjabi kids and they (and their music) had an influence on her.
also, i think she’s worked with other canadian south asian artists before too. if i remember right, The Tabla Guy, comes to mind.
I like them! Their songs “Baan Far Kay” and the “Powerless” music was fun to dance to. Its not groundbreaking for sure, but fun to groove to!
Ok ok, I admit it, I am an undercover boy band lover!
I liked some songs by *NSync and Backstreet Boys. Does that make me a bad person? Combined with my affinity toward hair bands in the early ’90’s, I would say I am a little disturbed by my musical (dis)tastes.
Now now, Ennis. I think we all know you’ve always been a teenage girl at heart.
Flamin’, I tell ya. Practically pyrotechnic.
😉
I was listening to an interview with Nelly Furtado on the BBC Asian Network and she ended it by saying ‘Sat-Sri-Akal’. How cool is that?
Nelly is a great looking woman.
Did you mean she’s 1/4 brown and 1/4 filipino? Aren’t filipinos brown too? Cuz her daughter is 1/4 filipino and 1/4 east indian.
lots of people want to be on that promiscuous girl’s team 🙂
Did you mean she’s 1/4 brown and 1/4 filipino? Aren’t filipinos brown too?
heh, i got this question from a workmate recently. even though filipinos are brown-skinned i don’t label them as brown, cuz i don’t think their brown skin defines them. they have ‘asian’ features quite often. but itz a subjective thing. no need to get into the ‘brown wars’ again, itz been done on this blog. just search for ‘brownz.’
Funny – when I wrote the post on Deep Purple, I expected nobody to respond, and we got hundreds of comments. I’m wondering if most of our readers are purely listeners of “classic rock”
Regarding who we are, re: mutineers, I’m going to step out on a limb here and say I’m slutty one with the gay vibes going on (you know there’s always one). Q, as I’m pleased you’ve noticed (the gay osmosis occurs at last, my secret homosexual rays are working!) does strike me as a bit queer. The music’s quite good though, but I tend to like pop as a rule of thumb.
Where do I sign up.
No, no! No brown wars. When I first read your comment I though you meant the kid was brown because she was 1/4 filipino, but I remembered reading about the Indian part somewhere, so I thought I would clarify in case anyone else was similarly confused.
Boy Bands are a decade-old phenomenon. These days it’s goth-punk bands.
Does that make the Beatles a boy band? The thought makes me ill…
Man, music would have been so much more awesome if New Kids had pulled a “Revolver” or even a “Sgt. Pepper”
I always thought the Beatles WERE the original boy-band.
eih, why do all the cute boys have to set off gaydars…leave some hotties for us too…harumph!
Does nobody think Rup is cute? Or does nobody think he’s straight? Why is the brother with the turban getting no lovin from the crowd?
They just set them off. They all go to you in the end anyway 😉
Personally, it’s because I’m a huge fan of the desi ‘fro. It’s probably because I keep my own head shaved.
I think they are. But I realized it only just now. Now I have to come to terms with the fact that I’ve spent my whole life worshipping a boy band. But they’re British, so maybe that makes it okay?
He’s not wearing a tight green t-shirt in that picture. So he doesnt count.
Now that Sin is in the area with his spectral conspiracy to gamma ray us all to the other side of the bread, I feel a strange compulsion to do a youtube and google search for “Arjun Rampal + topless”
It makes most things OK.
They started out as a boy band but then they became like geniuses.
Where are Sonia and Patty Kaur … Rup needs some appreciation. Equal opportunity for men without the abs to pull off that shirt 😉
Boy band? Boy Ennis you are turning uncle on me come on stay with me! Boy bands are so 1990s!
I don’t know what they are anymore but before the 90s duo bands were quite popular…hello WHAM! Milli Vanilli (ducking), Hall & Oates, Pet Shop Boys, Thompson Twins…so the duo concept is just fine with me thank you 🙂
Forget the abs, it’s about the pecs in that one’s case. 😉
Plus, hello. MONTREAL. Good grief I love Montreal men so much.
Aww Sin, we can split them 🙂
I LOWE IT the desi fro…I also lowe it the baldy…ok, I just love heads 😉
no, no, and I was simply responding to what was being said… ie. I think he’s cute, and straight, although he could be gay, who knows) and stop putting words into my mouth Ennis-ji 😛
Hmm. Don’t you need a badass/tattooed member to balance everything out? Ex: AJ from BSB. (eeeyuck…I said BSB)
Awww. I went through a boy band phase…once.
Thank god! 🙂
There were a few boy bands before them, mostly in the jazz and rockabilly genres. But if you want to name one band THE original (internationally recognized) boy band, it would have to be The Monkees, whom the Beatles were trying to emulate when they first formed the band.
Would a desi Beatles-type band be the Macacas?
Hilarious comment, btw Shruti …
SIN!!!
[link]
You should TOTALLY use your SM guest blogger celebrity status to gain access to the set!!! And then blog about it, for the sake of all us kiddies that are now totally crushing these two hotties.
That is one handsome fellow. Even I can see that, and I’m not even remotely as gay as
Ennissome Mutineers are.I agree. What a suspiciously deafening silence. It’s a heinous omission on the part of the SM community. Let’s have more objectificational exotificationizationalistic ogling of our handsome sardar, laydeez !
And leave some complements for Rup as well! Amardeep and I aren’t selfish, you know …