On Thursday morning NPR will be featuring an interview with this talented and hot young thing. She just goes by one name: Suphala (see Manish’s previous post about her).

The young percussionist known as Suphala studied for years with Ravi Shankar’s tabla player, the late Usted Allarakha.

She still goes every year to Bombay, but she also likes to see where else the tabla can take her. Her musical journeys have included a concert in post-Taliban Afghanistan and a tour with the group Porno for Pyros…

For the series “Musicians in Their Own Words,” Suphala describes how she gets the tabla to speak in many languages. [Link]

There are three tracks on the NPR link that are pretty sweet. You can either wake up to her tablas naturally by setting your alarm clock to NPR, or download the interview after 10a.m. EST. I’ve already made my choice.

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Any self-respecting, well-connected desi in SF has found himself at a DhamaalSF party or 2 over the years. Dhamaal’s recent Halloween party, for example, was a world-beater – at least when it came to mutinous content. Alas, the denizens of the city by the bay will have to go a while longer before the next one. Our boyz are back in da homeland –

Dhamaal Soundsystem, one of America’s most vibrant South Asian club performers and music bands, is currently touring India, and plans to set dance floors on fire in Mumbai, Goa and New Delhi.

San Francisco’s native sons are taking on the world with their unique twist on South Asian soundz –

The San Francisco-based group, which is a rage among alternative and South Asian music lovers in the US, consists of 20-odd members, including technicians, who trace their roots to different parts of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

“Our goal is to showcase South Asian or sub-continental music, including sufi, Hindustani and Carnatic classical with a Western perspective,” Maneesh Kenia, who set up Dhamaal in 1999 with DJ and producer Janaka Selekta, told IANS.

…”Please do not perceive us as another group which just hitchhikes on Bollywood remixes and Bhangra-hip hop,” said Maneesh, an Indian American who quit his career in music software to follow his passion.

DNA India gives us a few blurbs about the origins of this veritable SF institution –

Dhamaal was born when a few friends got together and hosted a house party seven years ago. “We’re a 20 strong group and we do the whole live experience with the DJs, video, artistry, etc,” says Dhruv.

Their parties are renowned for the eclectic mix of desi’s, non-desi’s, artistes, techies (we’re in SF, afterall), and alterna-culture fans across the Bay Area. Dhamaal’s website, gallery, and, most importantly, music clips can be found on their website – http://www.dhamaalsf.com/.

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I know as I write this that I’m going to be torn a new one in about a second by all the Indier-than-thou-types out there. You know who you are. I don’t care. I am going to just say it and let the chips fall where they may. I am a John Mayer fan. So what. Screw you. He is a massively talented lyricist and an even better guitar player. Unfortunately he is judged mostly upon his screaming girlie fans and that fact that he has a reputation of being a womanizer. Now that we’ve gotten past all that, what I really wanted to mention is that Mayer and Esquire magazine held a contest earlier this year (thanks for the tip Amit). In his own words:

I keep a note that I wrote on a taxi receipt
It says, “Don’t listen to anybody other than me”
I hit the big time for a nominal fee
You lose a friend in the end for every dream that you see come true

I got scars upon scrapes, I’ve got bruises on breaks
Masochistically committed to see how much of this I’ll take
Three years under water, and I ain’t even got the shakes
I’m going deeper and deeper and deeper

I’ve got dreams to remember, I’ve got days to forget
I’ve got some phone calls in to God but he ain’t called me back just yet

I’m still not done with these lyrics. But I don’t want to let them sit idly on my mind’s shelf. So here’s my offer: I’m inviting all aspiring songwriters to write their own chords and melodies around my lyrics. Go ahead, I’m not using them. You can tell people that we wrote a song together. I want to hear what you come up with, so send a CD of your song to the address listed below. The best submissions will be featured here on Esquire.com.

Well, one of the finalists that molded these lyrics into her own was a woman from Mumbai with great voice named Sonal D’Silva. Listen to her take.

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Even though the award is probably one of the ones announced at an event held prior to the televised Grammy Awards, I am still excited to see both Anoushka ShankarÂ’s Rise and Asha BhosleÂ’s You’ve Stolen My Heart- Songs From R D Burman’s Bollywood up for one of the prestigious awards. It is just too bad they are up for the same one. Announced this past Thursday, it turns out both Bhosle, sister of the illustrious Lata Mangeshkar, and Shankar, whose half-sister Norah Jones is also up for a Grammy, have each been nominated in the category of “best contemporary world music album.” While the Grammy category groups these albums together, I don’t think the albums could be more different.

From what I have heard of these two records, both are great, just in very different ways. ShankarÂ’s Rise is an interesting effort: traditional Indian classical meets contemporary that is sometimes touched by electronic via the Midival Punditz’s Gaurav Raina. Bhosle’s YouÂ’ve Stolen My Heart , which was done with the Kronos Quartet, is pure filmy, but a nice musical reworking of classic Bollywood.

Also nominated in the same category are Amadou & Mariam for Dimanche A Bamako, Gilberto Gil for Eletracústico, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo & The Strings Of The English Chamber Orchestra for No Boundaries. The Grammy’s air on CBS on Wednesday February 8. Let’s hope for a mutinous outcome, after all, there is a two out of five chance.

More mutiny on Asha/Kronos here and here. Also, here is a link to a piece the Village Voice did last week on YouÂ’ve Stolen My Heart, and some other Bollywood music. I donÂ’t really like the article because I canÂ’t take it when critics who cover South Asian music always make food metaphors.

The music is an electric curry of sweeping overdubbed strings playing a blend of devotional music and action film motifs.

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I figured that it is was well past time that I showed some love to the South Asian community down in Houston. Every Thursday from 3:30-5:30p.m., Houston’s KPFT 90.1 FM is taken over by GenerAsian Radio featuring DJs Yogi and Alex. You can either catch it live or listen to past shows that they have uploaded to the web:

GenerAsian Radio is a unique radio program featuring an eclectic mix of Asian Underground, Hindi, Bhangra, Arabic, house, and hip-hop. Started back in 2002, the show has been widely popular among the South Asian youths and also among Middle Eastern, Hispanic, European, American music lovers. The show features interviews with musicians and artists from all over the world, live mixes in the studio, and cultural community events. GenerAsian Radio airs live on the web as Real Audio or MP3 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM CST on Thursdays.

What I like to do sometimes is to listen to the GenerAsian radio clips while either writing a post for SM or reading a post written by one of my co-bloggers. Sepia Mutiny needs theme music to be properly enjoyed. I have long subscribed to the idea that life would be more worth living if we all had our own personal soundtracks. Unfortunately society has not yet reached my prescient conclusion, so in the meantime I rely on websites like GenerAsian radio’s to mix something up.

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M.I.A. says in an Urb magazine interview that she took a lot of flak for licensing ‘Galang’ for a Honda Civic ad:

Ahh, fake hipster outrage keeps me warm at night. Our own Sajit (Gandhi, not Ghandi) defends the TV spot in the story. The title’s a little familiar, too:

Read the whole thing.

Update: Another mag cover (thanks, Amardeep). Spin, spin, spin.

Related posts: Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching, Lolita Was a Man Eatah

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