It probably won’t surprise many people if I mention that these days we aren’t getting much sleep in my house. Our newborn, Puran, tends to wake up hungry every 2-3 hours at night. The feeding part is usually relatively straightforward; it’s getting the little guy to burp and then sleep again that takes some time and persistence. The best tactic involves picking him up and pacing for fifteen minutes.

One of my colleagues in the English Department suggested reciting poetry while walking; the sound of iambic pentameter is said to be soporific. But sadly, I’m not that kind of English lit. person — with my new-skool education, I never actually managed to memorize anything. Instead — and it’s not a bad substitute, really — we tend to sing to him, basically whatever pop songs come into mind (the Beatles are especially good: “I’m so tired/ I haven’t slept a wink…”; “Cry, baby cry/ Make your mother sigh…”).

One trick to make the late night hours roll along more quickly is a little game we came up with: take a classic Hindi/Urdu romantic song about sleeplessness, and tweak it slightly to fit the current context. For instance:

O ho ho ho, khoya khoya chaand, khula aasmaan
Aankhon mein saari raat jaayegi
Tumko bhi kaise neend aayegi (full lyrics)

Hidden, hidden moon; open skies
In your eyes, I’ll be awake all night
And how can you sleep either?

And the travestied version might be:

O ho ho ho, khoya khoya chaand, khula aasmaan
Dikaar mein saari raat jaayegi
Humko bhi kaise neend aayegi

“Dikaar” means “burp.” You can see the old song at Youtube ; it’s Dev Anand in a film called Kala Bazaar. Continue reading →

For those of you mutineers who live near L.A. and are fiending for something fun to do this weekend I got two suggestions for you:

The Throws (picture by Preston Merchant)

1) Aditya Rao and his band The Throws will be playing at Hotel Cafe in Hollywood at 10:30p.m. Saturday night (only $7). I’m going to try and make it out.

If summer’s end could be perfectly punctuated, it would be an exclamation in the form of a song by L.A. band The Throws. Comprised of lead singer Aditya Rao, bassist Johnny Vergara and drummer Joey Ponchetti, this melodic neo-British, indie-pop outfit is a triple threat, cultivating a decidedly superior sound in a town where rock bands are as quotidian as a gorgeous day in Los Angeles.

Formerly known as Lovely, the band was obliged to change its name in July 2006 after learning of a Portland glam rock band also registered with the name, and The Throws it became. But it was clear this talented group had gained a sparkling opportunity to reinvent itself and woo new audiences. [Link]

Can’t make it? Are you one of those “popular” people who already know what you are doing on Saturday night? Well how about Sunday night then?

2) Shaheen Sheik [see previous posts 1, 2, 3, 4] is about to launch her second album and is previewing some of the songs on it at The Gig on Sunday night at 9p.m. She adds:

it seems that mtv desi is excited about my set of new songs. they’re coming to shoot the night.

I think I should go. In addition to getting the chance to listen to Shaheen play again, there is a chance I might be on some of the MTV desi footage and then…there is a chance that SHE might finally notice me.

Continue reading →

For about the past year I have been enjoying the sounds of the L.A. based band Goldspot. In 2005 NPR classified their release as one of “The Best CDs You Didn’t Hear This Year.” Here in Los Angeles they actually get radio play fairly often on KCRW (unrepentant and pretentious music-snob that I am, KCRW and KEXP are the only radio stations in America that I will allow my ears to listen to). As long time SM readers know, I don’t do reviews. I will however, post about music that I dig. Here is what the L.A. Weekly had to say about them:

“The stars aligned for Goldspot recently — after years of tilling the fringes of L.A.’s play-to-your-friends club scene — with the release of their elegantly singable debut album, Tally of the Yes Men…Gorgeously oblivious to fads and fashion, Goldspot have woven their Cure/R.E.M./Smiths patchwork with threads of exotic melody lingering from main-man Siddhartha’s [Khosla] Indian upbringing. Onstage they rightly bask in the strength of their material, and Siddhartha’s a willing focal point, complete with love-it-or-hate-it affected-eccentric demeanor. And note to bands everywhere: Goldspot reign in the instrumental volume, allowing Siddhartha to examine every nuance of his Buckley/Orbison timbre.”

-LA Weekly (Paul Rogers)

From their Myspace page:

Imagine Paul Simon heading to Mumbai to record his next record and listening to the Cure on the flight and you’re getting close.

Siddhartha (founder, lead singer / songwriter of Goldspot) is quick to pay tribute to his early influences: “I grew up listening to whatever my parents had in their cassette decks – Mohd. Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh – these were great Indian playback singers from the 1940’s and 50’s. The melodies were brilliant. And then one day when I was 14, I figured out that if you flipped the switch on the stereo from ‘tape’ to ‘radio’ you could hear music with English words. That’s when I heard R.E.M.’s Green, and it was my first introduction to Western music…” [Link]

Here is the video for the catchy Time Bomb:

Continue reading →

The apparent suicide of Moses “Moss” Khumalo in West Rand, South Africa comes as a shock to the global jazz community. 26 years old at his death, the saxophonist was a star on the rise, having performed at venerable New Orleans venues such as Snug Harbor (with Irvin Mayfield) and The Red Room while only 21. In fact, it was in this city that he was discovered as a potential jazz great.

Given the New Orleans proclivity for rearing some of the world’s best musicians, this is yet another loss for its rich musical history at an already bad time. As Mark Clague, assistant professor of musicology at U. Michigan says, “Born at the confluence of Latin, Caribbean, African and European peoples, the music of New Orleans thrives on such a diverse human resource. Today, [its] musicians are scattered. Diaspora is a disaster for New Orleans music.”

Here are just two directories of our displaced or affected music community, all the way from the locally-popular to world-famous greats like Irma Thomas and Henry Butler. Thanks to efforts like Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village and other grassroots work, New Orleans musicians like Fredy Omar are able to return home. Continue reading →

Jazz pianist Zoe Rahman has been nominated for the Mercury Prize, Britain’s top music award (thanks, Red Snapper). She’s competing with rock bands like The Arctic Monkeys, Thom Yorke (of Radiohead), and Guillemots. All of them are critical darlings, so she might be a long-shot to win the prize.

Her father is Bangladeshi and her mother is British:

With a Bengali dad and a mum from Yorkshire, born in Sydney and raised in Chichester, Rahman has always felt an outsider. “I don’t know many Bengali musicians, but it’s obviously a big part of who I am. The only person I knew who spoke Bengali was my dad, and he never spoke it to us.” She’s been trying to learn Bengali in time for a trip to Bangladesh next week – partly a voyage of discovery into Bengali music and partly an excuse to party with 300 or so relatives. “I’m still on chapter seven of Teach Yourself Bengali at the moment. I’ve got a long way to go …” (link)

Ah well, one does the best one can. There are some Bengali touches in her music — check out the clarinet by Idris Rahman (Zoe’s brother) on “Muchhe Jaoa Dinguli,” which is track 6/9 at her website. But for the most part, her piano-playing is contemporary and quite fluid — think Keith Jarrett (Siddhartha could probably name some jazz pianists who might be an even closer match).

Zoe Rahman’s music doesn’t appear to be available via Itunes or Rhapsody yet, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she were added sometime soon. Meanwhile, online retailers like Amazon.co.uk are selling her recent CD, Melting Pot.

Asian Underground computer whiz Talvin Singh won the prize in 1999 for his CD Ok (Black Star Liner was nominated the same year). Apache Indian was also nominated for the prize in 1993 (for No Reservations). As the Wikipedia article indicates, the prize is somewhat controversial in the UK, mainly because the choice of winners seems pretty idiosyncratic. As with many artistic awards (literary, musical, and filmic), the true value is in the shortlist, not the actual winner. Continue reading →

Ustad Bismillah Khan, who played the shehnai at the Red Fort on the eve of India’s independence and brought the instrument to prominence in Hindustani classical music, passed away today. He was 90 or 91 (reports vary). Born in Bihar, he came to Varanasi as a child and remained there the rest of his days, living a simple, impecunious life when others of his musical generation achieved fortune in India and overseas. He was a devout Shia Muslim who also took part in Hindu worship, believing in the unity of pathways to God and in the spiritual role of music. Although he had disciples and his sons all became musicians, he leaves — as far as I know — no single obvious musical successor.

An obituary from the BBC is here. The Indian papers covered Khansaheb’s illness and will presumably have tributes and recollections in the coming days. Here is a 2005 interview with Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta that gives a sense of the character and his outlook.

Here is a link to two articles: the second one, which apparently ran in India Today in 1986, includes this description:

His house in Varanasi, in Sarai Harha, is an ample but decrepit structure. His living room which also serves as guest room, is sparsely furnished with creaky wooden benches and a large takht on which, at given time of the day, his children perform namaaz, oblivious of guests and visitors. Still in incessant demand as a player he travels by train regularly with his troupe, often by second class. He hates to fly. And when travel arrangements are being made, the house buzzes with activity as instruments are laid out, ancient steel trunks and torn British Airways flight-bags are packed with clothes and lunch boxes stuffed with rice and samosas. The shehnai player, whose name is familiar even to the international jet set as that of Ravi Shankar, travels by cycle rickshaw. And as he wheels down the city’s streets at the head of a caravan of rickshaws, smiling at well wishers, he looks as happy as a British Lord in a Rolls Royce.

It also includes this quotation:

“I am getting old now. Not in my heart. But in my body. The heart yearns to go on and on but this body sometimes tires and these wretched knees start aching after four hours of playing. And I now have that all-too-human worry. Thirty years ago, I used to think I had conquered or was about to conquer the world. What foolishness! Now I say, Bismillah, you haven’t reached anywhere. The world may know and listen to your ragas, but Bismillah, life will soon finish and your yearnings will still remain. This music is still an ocean. I want to cross it. But I have barely reached the shore. I haven’t yet even taken a dip in it.”

Continue reading →

I saw a group called Indian Ocean last night at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia — and they rocked. I’ll review the concert in some more detail below, but before going any further I wanted to mention that they are doing a small North American tour right now. Upcoming venues include Stamford, Connecticut, Chicago (this weekend), New York (early next week), Houston, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Missisauga, Canada. If you live in one of those cities, go buy tickets!

Indian Ocean are based in Delhi, and have been together since the early 1990s. Though they’ve flirted with crossover commercial success, the band has built up a devoted underground following without selling out to the demands of the market. (The audience at last night’s concert seemed to know all of their songs.) They play a unique style of music that fundamentally defies categorization. A phrase on the Indian Ocean Wikipedia site takes a stab at it: “Indo-rock fusion with jazz-spiced rhythms that integrates shlokas, sufism, environmentalism, mythology and revolution.” Another phrase they use is, “organic fusion.” Whatever it is, it works. Continue reading →