Category Archives: Music

Sanskrit Rocks!

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As summer fast approaches we are all eyeing those concert schedules to see which one’s we’d like to attend. Here is one for the mix that I ask you to consider: Sanskrit Rock [thanks for the tip Dinesh Rao]:

Shanti Shanti is a performing group consisting of two young sisters, Andrea & Sara Forman. They are gaining worldwide recognition for their Sanskrit chanting as well as for their unique approach to New Age music. Sanskrit is the ancient language of India and is known for it’s tranquil and harmonious effects.

Andrea & Sara Forman have been chanting Sanskrit since they were nine and seven years of age, respectively, and are now considered among the top scholars in the U.S. in their field. The girls have performed Sanskrit nationwide, including appearances on PBS television programs, and on various radio broadcast shows.

Andrea & Sara have just released their fourth album, which steps into a whole new level of enchantment as they chant, in Sanskrit, the traditional Vedas from India, as well as perform ancient Bhajans. You will also enjoy the magic of their new, original songs, which are causing such a stir in the World Music community.

You’ve got to see the clip for yourselves. If they ever decide to add a band mate, I have a great suggestion for them. If any of you live in Colorado Springs go check them out next Friday and report back to us your impressions if you can. MP3’s of more of their music can be found here. They aren’t the Corrs sisters but I’d watch them. Incidentally, I also highly recommend Sheila Chandra for those that enjoy “Indian Gospel” music. Continue reading →

Kitsch-mish

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For your kitschy pleasure:

‘Indian God.’ A music vid of Ganesh as petulant recording artist.

I’m a fuckin’ Indian god, baby that’s a fact
I’m a fuckin’ Indian god, girl I want you baaack
How can you leave an Indian god, baby that’s fucked up…

Fuckin’ Indian god, man, you can’t leave that.
It’s too good, mmm!

He said he’s an Indian god, baby, not a fuckin’ songwriter. Watch the video.

‘Handy Hindus’ finger puppets. They’re Hindu gods done up Elmo / Sesame Street style in cheap plastic.

‘Hindi Bendy’ toy. Here’s a quick way to make money: take a boring old toy, slap on a bindi and add some extra arms.

Here’s their entire section of Hindu products; Archie McPhee sells novelty products by mail-order:

“I study customer’s actual orders. I see 100 voodoo dolls going to a software firm in Palo Alto. What does this mean? A Manhattan buyer wants every nun and Catholic religious item we carry and wants them by air. What’s the rush? And here’s yet another order to Japan. What are they doing over there with all this glow-in-the-dark string they order?”

Lest you think they specifically tweak Hindus, you should see the rabbi punching puppet and the bobble-headed Jesus. They don’t sell Islamic novelties, can’t imagine why.

Musical is first to perform Lennon’s ‘India, India’

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Yoko Ono, the almighty creator of cacophony and destroyer of institutions, allows a Broadway-bound musical to perform a pair of unpublished songs written by her late husband, Beatle John Lennon. One of those songs, “India, India,” received yesterday its first-ever public performance:

Lennon wrote ‘India, India’ in the late 1970s for a musical of his own writing named after his song The Ballad of John and Yoko. However, the show was never performed and the track remained unheard. It seems likely that in ‘India, India’ Lennon was writing about his 1968 visit to India, when the Beatles indulged their spiritual side at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh. [Apun Ka Choice]

Apun Ka Choice: Lennon’s ‘India, India’ on Broadway
Times of India: India, India lyrics

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Hip-hop yoga: It’s about fucking time

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Everyone holding their breath over a hip-hop version of yoga can finally exhale:

(Russell) Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records, released a video series on Wednesday titled, “Yoga Live”, with instructions set to 72 tracks of original hip-hop music — sounds that might have jarred the yogis of bygone days. Simmons said he tried to distil the spiritual from the physical in his tapes. “We packaged it intentionally in a way for people to digest the physical practice,” he told Reuters. “It’s not meant to get them worried about religion or spirituality.” [Reuters/Yahoo!]

It’s important to eliminate such worrisome items from yoga, as potential customers are already expected to have 99 problems (the bitch not being one, of course).

Reuters/Yahoo!: Yoga goes hip-hop as marketing takes hold

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Happy Birthday to one whose music sounds like “cats meowing”.

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ravi sukanya.JPG Today, NPR’s Morning Edition surprised me with a lovely present, though it wasn’t my birthday they were celebrating. Ravi Shankar is 85 today, and the story I blasted on my way to work was produced in honour of that.

In the latest report for the NPR/National Geographic co-production Radio Expeditions, NPR’s Susan Stamberg travels to New Delhi, the capital of India, to meet with the artist…
…Shankar is totally in his element when he performs — sitting on his oriental rug, sitar nestled in his lap, the air scented with incense, he appears lost in a trance.
“Ravi Shankar’s music is like a fine Indian sari — silken, swirling, exotic,” Stamberg says. “It can break your heart with its beauty.”

Oy, Ms. Stamberg…we could’ve done without the dreaded “E”-bomb, but we forgive you.

SM readers (and Mutineer Manish) might enjoy the legend’s take on why he is known as “Pandit”; personally, I was more amused by the piece’s description of Shankar’s wife as one “…in a crowd of Ravi’s lovers”. Ahem. No sex please, we’re Indian. Wait, too late for that–listeners are treated to Sukanya Shankar (“Ravi’s merry, dimpled wife”) trilling, “what you do to me!” in answer to a befuddled/barely-risque question that her husband poses.

Oh and yes, there is the obligatory Norah Jones ref; they played a snippet of “Don’t know why”, since THAT wouldn’t be predictable, at ALL. 😀

Enjoy the interview (and some “pillow talk”) here. Continue reading →

Exporting a South Asian viewpoint

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For quite some time now I have been interested in finding examples of Bollywood and/or other Indian media’s influence on Islamic societies, especially the more conservative ones. I try to blog about such instances when I can. As I have stated before, I see a tremendous amount of potential in the ability of a brown face to deliver a moderate message to another brown face irrespective of religion. Initially I was planning a blog entry only on this announcement today which I saw reported on Asians in Media’s website:

With Al Jazeera blazing the way for brand recognition amongst non-western news channels, no one can accuse India’s Zee TV of lacking ambition.

The broadcaster announced earlier today at an Indian media industry event that it is planning to launch a global English news channel to rival the BBC and CNN.

“The channel, which will be beamed from India, will have content in line with that of international news channels like CNN and BBC and would target a wider audience rather than the Indian diaspora,” Zee chairman Subhash Chandra (pictured) said at the Ficci-Frames conference.

He said the aim was to portray a more south Asian viewpoint to the world in response to global events.

I really believe that such a channel has the POTENTIAL to rival Al Jazeera in ways that any channel promoted or created by the West will never be able to. In doing some background research for this entry however I came across this story in Time Magazine about a 13 year old minstrel in Afghanistan. It was interesting enough that I got completely sidetracked from my original post. However, I will explain how the stories are tenuously related at the end. Continue reading →

Evangelical ghazals

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Afternoon TV is so funky sometimes. Today, the Christian channel was not showing a silver-haired white guy with expansive hand gestures, clad in a shiny double-breasted suit. Instead, it was showing a desi couple, the guy with those huge uncle glasses, singing a ghazal in Hindi, interleaved with clips of folk dancing.

The ghazal sounded completely traditional, but instead of being about love, melancholy or a Hindu / Muslim / Sikh God, it was about Jesus and Mary. ‘Prabhu,’ which usually refers to a Hindu or Sikh God, meant Jesus in this song, ‘Yehuda’ was Judas and ‘Yeshu’ was God. The song, broadcast by the South Asian Gospel Broadcasting Network (who knew?), was subtitled so New Yorkers could groove along. Talk about using the tools of the masters — this concoction merges the ghazal (which originated in Islam), Indian folk dancing and American-style televangelism.

Pardon my parochialness, but I’ve never seen this before. Fusion? Talvin and Karsh got nothin’ on the church. Similarly, I’ve always been fascinated by how omnivorously religious many Hindus are. They practice it like metareligion where other ‘one-and-only’ deities are merely slotted into the pantheon. I often see Bollywood philms where a Hindu protagonist’s idea of the holy trinity is to pray at a temple, a church and a gurudwara all in the same day. And many Punjabi Hindus attend their local gurudwara instead of temple. I’d imagine it all drives hardcore monotheists crazy.

Watch the video: torrent (MPG, 38 MB). Free BitTorrent downloader required: Windows, Mac.

Related post: The fight for the proselyte

Missing in Acton

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The Washington City Paper covers the M.I.A. buzz with some true musicology:

… M.I.A. [is] a battlefield acronym that’s also a play on her real name and the London neighborhood of Acton… despite being an exotic and a refugee, M.I.A. is no primitive. She found a well-worn DIY-aesthete’s path out of London’s housing estates, leading to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. As much a pop-music finishing school as anything else, Saint Martins offered an art career, but also introductions to Elastica’s Justine Frischmann, Pulp’s Steve Mackey, and electroclash diva Peaches… In her glammier shots, she looks a bit like multi-ethnic actress Rosario Dawson…

The title [‘Galang’] sounds Malay or Indonesian, not Tamil, although some experts insist that it’s actually a dancehall contraction of “go along…” “Pull Up the People” is a potential Peace Corps anthem with Baader-Meinhof attitude. “Fire Fire” name-checks the Pixies, the Beasties, and Lou Reed, but also invokes “Growin’ up brewin’ up/Guerrilla getting trained now…”

She’s been officially classified as a rapper, and though she’s no Celine Dion, that’s not quite right. M.I.A. is more of a chanter, and such vocal hooks as “Hello this is M.I.A./Can you please come get me” come as close to singing as the vocals of any monotone rocker… Arular recalls minimalist proto- and postpunk–maybe not Wire or the Stranglers, but definitely Suicide, T. Rex, and Bow Wow Wow…

There are but a handful of conspicuous samples on Arular, including the sitar bit that opens “Hombre”–ironically, given that the tune is a lustful plea to a Spanish-speaking hunk. (Sitars, by the way, aren’t prevalent in Sri Lanka, which feels almost as Indonesian as Indian, and where the dominant music is baile, derived from the Iberian dance music of the island’s former Portuguese rulers.)

Billboard reveals M.I.A.’s given name is Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam (subscription required). The magazine says she’s viewed by some as not a mere Asian, but rather the potential savior of UK rap (Dizzee Rascal has plateaued). She swaggers, saying she signed with XL Recordings because it was closest to her house, and so they’re lucky to have her. There’s this delicious little bit of braggadocio: she says she told the label, ‘Trust me, you’ve been looking for me,’ dropped off the ‘Galang’ tape, and they called her back 20 minutes later. She says her dad asked her not to use his name as the album title (maybe it increased his risk in the field?), but she refused. She’s sad he chose his cause over his family.

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I could get high off this La.

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cover2.jpeOooh La La La…It’s the way that they rock when they’re doing their thang, oooh La La La…it’s the natural La that the Refugees bring…oooh La La La La La La Lalala La Lah…

In Kuala Lumpur, it was a sweet thing:

Former Fugess Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean reunited onstage on Friday at a concert in Malaysia to raise money for tsunami-devastated communities.

On the set list: hits like “Killing Me Softly,” “Ready or Not” and “Fu-Gee-La.” When I read the line-up of acts, I was reminded of last year’s Coachella; a reunited Pixies dominated the buzz there, I can see the Fugees doing the same at this show.

The pair joined performers including actor Jackie Chan, the Backstreet Boys, Black Eyes Peas and Boyz II Men before 15,000 fans at the seven-hour Forces of Nature event.

“Forces of Nature” raised $2.6 million dollars for tsunami-affected nations like Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. Take a lesson, jack-asses at Hot 97.

…During an emotionally charged gig, Jean lead the crowd in a chant of “We’ll never forget the tsunami victims” and instructed the stadium lights to be turned off while crowd members waved lighted cell phones.

From his lips to our ears. Continue reading →

Monsters of rock

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India Abroad magazine just ran an excellent cover feature (zipped PDFs) on desi rockers and rappers in America, covering Stubhy of Lucky Boys Confusion, M.I.A., Karmacy, Chee Malabar of the Himalayan Project, Shaheen Sheik, Jungli and Funkadesi. They also shout out to ancestral rockers dating back to Freddie Mercury: Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Ashwin Sood (Sarah MacLachlan’s drummer-husband) and Tony Kanal of No Doubt. There are others, of course, such as Dave Baksh of Sum 41.

Stubhy, lead singer of 100K-selling ska-punk band Lucky Boys Confusion, vents his parental issues in his music:

… the artist formerly known as Kaustubh Pandav was something of a vagabond, sleeping on roofs and behind couches in Chicago… he had to decide exactly what he would have to sacrifice to pursue a music career. At the time, he figured it would be his college education. The parents weren’t happy. “They said, ‘Get the hell out of the house,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ ” What followed was a long string of “odd, crappy jobs,” like doing the midnight shift in a parking lot, or whatever else inspired him. “I threw parties,” said Stubhy. “Bought a keg. It was one grand scheme to the next. ‘Let’s go steal comic books from that kid and sell it.’ That would make about $15. Stupid stuff.”

… the song ‘Fred Astaire’ [is] a terse dialogue between a demanding parent and a son who can’t live up to expectations. The title, he said, could have just as well been “Amitabh Bachchan”… he still gets e-mails from Indian kids who thank him for writing the song.

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