Not long ago, I was cajoled by my better half into coming out of DJ retirement for an Indian Independence day Bhangra party sponsored by NET-IP Philadelphia. It’s been about three years since I’ve DJed even a house party, and for two of those years we’ve been new parents, listening to a lot of “Wow wow, wubbzy!” on Noggin (an insidious little brain-hammer of a song), and not much in the way of desi dance music.
I’ve been trying to get back into it a bit these past couple of weeks (no more grousing, I promise!), and I have a preliminary playlist of old and new favorites. My main focus has been on hip hop-influenced Hindi and Punjabi music:
- “Right here right now” from Bluffmaster
- “Singh is Kinng” from Singh is Kinng (this song was panned by Mr. Cicatrix as a “hot mess,” but it makes my son nod his head and do a little bhangra motion with his wrist every time)
- “Uncha Lamba” remix by Dr Zeus, from Welcome 2 Da Club (original song from the movie Welcome)
- “Kiya Kiya” remix by Dr. Zeus, from the same album (Puran likes this one too, and cutely starts singing along to the repetitive chorus — “Kiya kiya, kya kiya, kya kiya hai sanam”)
- “Glassy” by Jazzy B/Sukshinder Shinda (not to be confused with Hard Kaur’s “Glassy” — a song that I’m a little tired of)
- “Pyaar Karke” from Pyaar ke Side Effects (can’t go wrong)
- “Teri Baaton Mein” by Raghav (a brilliant conjoining of a sweet Hindi love song to a well-known dancheall riddim)
- “Basement Bhangra Anthem”, by DJ Rekha (with Wyclef), off of the Basement Bhangra CD
What tracks am I missing? I will also probably play classic bhangra, and popular Bollywood tracks like “Bhool Bhulaiyya,” “Mauja hi Mauja,” “Ya Ali,” “Meter Down,” “Om Shanti Om,” “Soni de Nakhre” (“oh kaindi e, Pump up the jam!”), and “Pappu Can’t Dance,” but the above playlist is probably the music I’m most into right now.
Below the fold, a couple of technical things related to DJ software, for anyone who might be interested… and a little something extra.The big change that’s happened over the past few years is that it no longer really makes sense to use CD players, even for burned CDs. DJ software (I am using Virtual DJ) has gotten good enough that it seems more efficient to simply run the show from a laptop. Virtual DJ in particular has a nice beat-matching facility, which makes it much, much easier to transition between tracks (the software doesn’t, of course, work for traditional Bhangra, which it tends to read at nearly twice the actual rhythm).
What you lose on a laptop, of course, is the ability to cue tracks in advance using headphones, but if you know the tracks you’re going to play well enough, it’s not a huge loss. It’s also a bit annoying to be dependent on a mouse, giving you effectively only one hand; by contrast, with DJ CD players and a mixer, you can use both hands to, say, cue a track and slide the cross-fader at the same time. But the other advantages are too great to ignore. If there are any “real” DJs reading this, how are you doing it these days?
If any of you are going to be in Philadelphia this Saturday, we will be at Anjou; it would be nice to meet you.
Talli Ho Gaye its in ugly aur pagli soundtrack
this is a bit of a sidetrack becacuse it’s not hip hop, but there’s a really great mix of Galang with the Supermario brothers soundtrack (an amusing track to rest to between dance songs, not a hip hop dance track) that a British DJ named Josh Console did a few years ago. It’s called Supergalang, but since then my hard drive crashed, and I don’t have it anymore and can’t find it 🙁
Amardeep,
Aside, I love the food at Anjou and the open space they have at the bar. Are you playing there this weekend?
Captain bhangra, tedi pag waleya, bishani..jus some more to get your DJ credentials up.
Try Leeroy’s (Ex Saïan Supa Crew) Bollywood Trip. He picks the usual suspects, so jaded party people may find it boring. But unlike a certain blunted producer who shall remain unnamed, he knows his desi tunes.
Umber Desi, yes, here is the info.; I’m not doing promotion, so I have no idea whether it will be a well-attended event or not. I’m also not getting paid, except for reimbursement for the PA rental. This is really just for fun…
At any rate, if you’re around, it would be great to meet you.
Thank you for the offer, I would love to but I moved out of Philly three years back but I am going to send it to my friends who are still there. All the back for the comeback ïŠ
very cool! Thanks for the heads up on virtual dj- very useful. I have a (kind of old?) suggestion- include Nari, Nari, the version by the Egyptian Hisham Abbas. The video is great and the mix makes me happy at least! (ok, so I’m kind of simple…)
8 · zazou said
Awww, who cares if it’s old. That song makes lots of us happy. 🙂
Here’s one suggestion for you A-man [picks up after 0:15]. Caution: the central character is wearing a thong. I especially like those butt smacking moves.
Actually, quite a bit of the newer dj programs let you set custom cue spots for songs, and if you know the keyboard well enough, it’s not so bad.
how about these classics: chaiyya chaiyya (dil se) hummaa hummaa (bombay) mehbooba mehbooba (sholay!!!!, plus the song’s got 10 million (or crore) remixes) kajra re (bunty aur babli)
and there’s some more of ze good punjabi stuff: ah ni kudiye (dr zeus / lembher) je jatt vigad gaya (zeus / lembher) akh da nishana (zeus) aashiqui (jassi sidhu, my personal fav)
and what happened to himesh? jahalk dikhlaja jhoom jhoom
there’s the immensly popular zara zara (race) that i personally despise.
finally, not to forget:
aja nachle (remixed by bally sagoo) gud naalo ishq mitha (remixed by bally sagoo)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/londonmela/2008
was there on sunday, pure class. highlights were jassi sidhu, labh janjua, taz’s top. a good number of the sets or on the link. oh and the FOOD! woooo!!
Well “Talli hua” from Singh is Kinng is also good for partying …
“What you lose on a laptop, of course, is the ability to cue tracks in advance using headphones, but if you know the tracks you’re going to play well enough, it’s not a huge loss.”
There are several dj programs which allow you to preview the next song while the current song plays when you have an external sound card. The external or plugin sound card also gives a dramatic increase in sound quality as all laptops have fairly cheap sound cards built into them.
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Echo-Indigo-DJ-Dual-Stereo-24-96-PCMCIA-Output-Card-247019-i1126285.gc
Additionally, I’m a big fan of loss-less audio formats, otherwise anything going out over a sound system for a crowd needs at min. 292Kbps encoding. When music travels thru space and it’s been encoded at lower bit rates, it pretty much sounds like crap.
Lion, thanks for the pointer on the external sound card. I did some research, and luckily there are some that are cheaper than $200 (which is way out of my budget). In fact, the software I’m using does have an option for multiple line output configurations, but my current laptop (as you guessed) only has a minimal headphones output (which actually doesn’t produce enough sound anyway, so the exterior card should take care of that as well). I hope USB is as good as PCMCIA…
Also, I’ve known about the bitrate problem since I first started to play around with this a few years ago (I DJed part of a wedding from a laptop once, before someone spilled champagne on it!). For the most part I’m ok because most of my music is ripped directly from CDs. Unfortunately I do have a few important tracks at 128 bits — not a good situation… but I’m not sure I can rectify it entirely by Saturday.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I didn’t know about many of them.
16 · Amardeep said
would you have access to the space in which you’ll be djing before the event? It’s generally a good idea to see how your songs sound in the performance space (you’re the star!) when turned all the way up.
good luck!
16 · Amardeep said
USB2 is a little bit on the cheaper side, $50-$200 and they do tend to have more problems with latency. However that’s beyond the scope of your intended use for the external sound card.
In the future, you may want to insure you encode songs from the original cds. Copying songs from burned cds can result in second, third generation degradation if they were encoded at lower than loss-less or wav formats. Again this becomes much more noticeable when playing over a sound system in public versus on your ipod’s headphones.
dude its pop not pump. pata nahi kahan se aa jate hain nautanki saale. btw most important track is dil main tanatantani bhi hai. why that tanatantani ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLY_jlDxoJk then hard kaur sriram raghavan track important as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9vcdzgWVnQ finally are you the same chap that damned SIK as a flop movie just last week ? cleared some 70 crores since you last spoke, so look who’s talking too etc. ingrate.
then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJp4MRHv-7M white white face.
Amaradeep, You should listen to whats called Pappara music of Sri Lanka. Its a feature at cricket matches (helps the Sri Lankan motto of “Win or Loose we Booze”). Basically South Indian Kavadi Music, with heavy Portugese/Kaffiringha influence.
A link, the studio version (video is who knows where). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7TmWCw2DmM&feature=related
At cricket matches http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWU_P2J2TX4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d51qxQy_cqQ&feature=related
finally are you the same chap that damned SIK as a flop movie just last week ? cleared some 70 crores since you last spoke, so look who’s talking too etc. ingrate.
Yes, that was me, though it was actually a couple of weeks ago (July 23). I can comfortably admit that I was very, very wrong about the box office success of the film.
I forgot rule #1 for anyone who wants to avoid being wrong: don’t make predictions!
That said, I may have been wrong about SIK, but I did give the music credit before the film opened, even though friends who know their music panned it.
Also, calling me an “ingrate” seems a bit over the top, and perhaps also semantically inappropriate (an ingrate is by definition an ungrateful person, a person who shows no gratitude, not a person who is wrong about the Bollywood box office). How about just simply: “ha ha, you’re wrong” ?
dude its pop not pump.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure it is “Pump up the jam”. See the original Technotronic song that Soni de Nakhre is copying.
Soni de Nakhare- From Partner. Its awesome!
you can also try a DJ console something called the Behringer BCD3000. It pretty much acts as an external soundcard that lets you mix/scratch/play mp3’s as if they are records. in fact the actual console has two ‘scratch pads’ and a crossfader/mixer that lets you use your hands. The only time you need to use a mouse or the laptop is to load each song. it also reads bpm’s so it lets you find songs which have the same beat to make it a better transition for mixing.
the only drawback is you need quite a high speed computer with very little other software so that the driver doesnt freeze while you’re jamming.
check it out: http://www.behringer.com/bcd3000/index.cfm?lang=ENG
Oh, and I’m pretty sure it is “Pump up the jam”. See the original Technotronic song that Soni de Nakhre is copying. When it’s not copying Pagla Hawa by James 😉 (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xKPLTSO6A )
Great songs. Pappu Can’t Dance should be at the top of the list. What about the weird trend these days of turning ballads into dance songs – Judaai and Pehli Nazar Mein come to mind – for some reason this puts people in a party mood.
I second Talli Hua – my fav song from Singh is Kinng.
Oh – and don’t forget the remix of Khaike Paan Banaraswala!! Dance floor fillers all.
Chaka Demas and Pliers “Murder She Wrote” uses the same beat as Teri Baaton Mein.
Thanks for the links. Cool tunes.