Check out the lyrical stylings of desi rap group Raja Wilco, about whom I can find damn near nothing on the Net except that they’re from Jersey. Fobio Patel says:

These tracks were ripped from Raja Wilco’s CD “Raja That!”, the 10-4 Sampler… May I draw attention to the fact that tracks 9 and 10 are missing. All of them, especially Raj Makhija and Raja Wilco should feel shame for even including those tracks on their CD. They had such a good thing going, and then tracks 9 and 10 totally fucked them up. It made my ears bleed. I’m bewildered by their extreme lapse in good judgement.

Notable tracks:

• ‘Chalo Chalo’ and ‘That’s Life’: great filmi and bhangra samples (can anyone name them?)
• ‘Peter Pank’: interesting syncopation and a reference to a Spanish punk comic:

… the anarchic 80s trash culture comedy PETER PANK, mixing JM Barrie with Johnny Rotten… The best Peter Pan adaptation ever created wasn’t Spielberg’s, or Hogan’s, or even Disney’s. It was made in the 80s, in Spain. In comic form. And it featured sex, drugs and enough rock and roll to get Elvis out of his secret retirement and send him on tour with zombie Sid Vicious and the ghost of Eddie Cochran.

• ‘Maharaja’:

Yo, I enter the picture like Shah Rukh Khan
Puffing a sto’ like Salman Khan…

From Oldbridge, Edison…
home of the desis…
Brunswick… Cherry Hill…
Freestylin’ under the Brooklyn Bridge
with Crooklyn kids…

You can listen to all the tracks, except the ones Fobio despises, at his site.

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Punjabi Boy points us to samples of chutney music from the Caribbean. Listen here.

It’s my first time listening in on this genre, and it’s wild. Sometimes it sets well-known Hindi songs (‘Jai Jai Shiv Shankar’) rendered in English to hyperkinetic calypso beats. Other times it’s creole music with snippets of Hindi lyrics and desi instruments. ‘Rum Shop‘ by Dil-e-Nadan reminds me of Karmacy’s harmonium-infused rap track, ‘Euphoria.’ Other tracks remind me of the Bollywood hits redone as Broadway / West End songs in Bombay Dreams and Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral.

Rajendra Saywack dissertates:

Chutney was the name given to the pop/folk music of the East Indians that lived in the Caribbean region… In the summer of 1996, the dance hit, “Calcutta Woman” [by Sharlene Boodram] made its debut on the North American & European pop charts… its Wine Yuh Waist lyrics were constantly being sampled by American [DJs]…

… Sundar Popo lept to fame with the song “Nana & Nani.” The song, almost comical in nature described the affairs of a grandfather and grandmother, perhaps his own… Sundar’s lyrics of “Nana drinkin white rum and Nani drinkin wine,” were heard just about everywhere…

The traditional West Indian Calypso was being merged into a new form of music called Soca… Chutney music was caught up in this change, which would later evolve it into a new style called Indian Soca… it was almost solidly dominated by Afro West Indians during its early days. Songs such as Baron’s “Raja Rani”, Mighty Trini’s “Curry Tabanca,” Sugar Aloe’s “Roti & Dhalpourie” & Sparrow’s “Marajin” dominated the Indian Soca scene…

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Bangladeshi-American rocker Arafat Kazi says the Dhaka rock scene is incestuous (via Tales from the Subcontinent):

… if you have one death metal band in Dhaka, there will be five death metal bands in Dhaka a year from now simply from osmosis… Elephant Road is a street which has three stores which had all kinds of LPs and later on CDs which they would copy onto cassette for you for a fee. This is how we ALL got our music until like 1999 or 2000. No CDs till then either… you had a band called The Attempted Band (featuring yours truly among others) which had the hottest girl in town and an enormous fat fuck who knows EVERYBODY in Dhaka city. All the bands that we knew clustered around us because we were doing shows, and eventually they started kicking ass as well. This could NOT have happened in India, where if you have a band in say Gujrat, there’s no fucking way it’s going to get to Cochin…

A big part of why you don’t see Paki or Indian bands doing rock music is because they both have HUGE cinema song industries (esp India). Why the fuck would Channel V show a rock band which nobody cares about when they can just as easily show a garam masala lust-laden video?

He also does a hilarious, purposely desi-accented homage to Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Shame on a N*‘ which reminds me of ‘Drop It Like a FOB.’ Listen and weep.

Kazi’s a member of a rock band called the Watson Brothers:

Farhan happens to have that wonderfully rare quality in a Bangladeshi bassist– he’s had sex…

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Yes, we’re beating the M.I.A. horse into a thick, gluey paste, but this is about free stuff, so there will be no apologies:

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NPR’s “All Things Considered” has an audio report about the modern-day usage of the Chitravina (Real and Windows Media, 7 mins.):

The slide guitar is a beloved voice in blues, country and rock music. In India, slide musicians favor an ancient instrument called the Chitravina. N. Ravikiran, one of the country’s best-known players, hopes to expand the instrument’s popularity and push its musical frontiers. [NPR]

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A commenter on Soul Strut’s message boards spots M.I.A.’s D.J. lover, Diplo, showing off his nose-picking thumb prior to her performance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

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