Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Dogs Playing Poker, It AinÂ’t

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The Christian Science Monitor reports that collecting contemporary Indian art is the new rage in the art world. Some pieces are fetching anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000.

“The market for Indian contemporary art is turning bullish and aggressive,” says Anuradha Mazumdar of Sotheby’s. “India is now recognized as a major growth market, forcing international auction houses to pay more attention to it.”

I guess the big bucks that NRIs and Indian dot-commers are raking in have to be spent on something. But it isnÂ’t all FUBU (For Us By Us). Demand for these pieces is coming in from various parts of the world including France, Germany, Japan and the Middle East.

IÂ’m getting in on the ground level on a promising young surrealist. HeÂ’s going to be big some day. Continue reading →

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Tagore in America

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You might not know that Rabindranath Tagore’s first sustained experience of America was not New York or San Francisco, but the farming/university town of Urbana, Illinois. He went there in 1912, to visit his son Rathindranath, studying at the University of Illinois. Father Rabindranath had wanted his son not to study literature or the arts at a place like Oxford or Cambridge (or London, as Rabindranath himself had done), but rather agricultural science in the service of what Tagore hoped would turn into a program for village development.

You might expect this small-town Illinois experience in 1913 to have been a lesson in culture shock for the cosmopolitan (soon to be world-famous) Tagore, who just a few weeks earlier had been dining with the cream of the crop in literary London. But no, Tagore fit right in, impressing the local Unitarians and making friends as he would do wherever he went in those years. He quickly moved from Urbana to Chicago, where he was a hit with the literati there, and from Chicago he started getting invitations to lecture at some major universities, which he accepted.

Tagore actually made five trips to the US, starting in 1912, and ending in 1930, according to his biographers Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, in their excellent (but out of print!) book Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man. (Note: Their book is the source for most of the information in this post.) By looking at those trips in particular, we can get an image of the man rather different from the aristocratic ‘Gurudev’ that most people know. Tagore came to America, first, to visit his son (who did not stay long), then to raise money for his new university at Shantiniketan. But above all, he came to argue with Americans about American business, industry, and war. What he said and how it was received tells an interesting story about both Tagore and the U.S. in those days. Continue reading →

Bucky Done Underwhelmed

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Ananthan points us to a new music video for M.I.A.’s ‘Bucky Done Gun.’ The mix she uses, the official one from Arular, is so spare that it can hardly sustain a video, leaving me squirming during the long gaps when nothing’s happening musically. The version from Piracy Funds Terrorism is much higher energy.

The video is beautifully filmed, though, black and white recolored in pastels, much higher production values than her early efforts. It’s strange seeing gritty radical chic, itself poseur, turn glossy like a high end photography mag. The video recolors a pair of loudspeakers to match the Palestinian flag, and M.I.A.’s checkered tights evoke the PLO kaffiyeh. Its firebomb-throwing young men are porn for the ultra-left, but the images are carefully sanitized: you see colored Holi smoke streaming from bottles, but you don’t see any actual explosions or maimings. In another bid for hip-hop authenticity, the label surrounds Maya with a swarm of backup dancers who are black.

In M.I.A.’s attitude you can already see the shift from awkward ingénue to sexually confident diva. The video opens with M.I.A. in a boxer’s hood, mike dangling from the ceiling. A clear homage to ‘Mama Said Knock You Out,’ it’s the very definition of aggression. The gaze from beneath the bangs covering half her face is no longer diffident, it’s brassy, painted and unblinkingly heavy-lidded. Her previous videos have been much more playful; this one’s simultaneously more serious and more trashy, with Maya and her main backup dancer pole-writhing against a chain-link fence.

I should cheer for a performer coming into her own, but it feels like a Miltonian loss of innocence. Yeah, I’m already nostalgic for M.I.A. circa 2004 😉

Watch the video.

Update: Here are the lyrics:

They’re comin through the window
They’re comin through the door
They’re bustin down the big wall
And sounding the horn

What you want
The bucky done gun
What you want
The fire done burn
Get crackin, get get crackin

Time to spit new shit
I’m rocking on this new bit
I’m hot now you’ll see
I’ll fight you just to get peace

Heavy weight wrestler
Fight me in your comforter
Let you be superior
I’m filthy with the fury ya

I’ll hard drive your bit
I’m battered by your sumo grip
Lucky I like feeling shit
My stamina can take it

Gymnastics super fit
Muscles on the gun clip
Bite, teeth, nose bleed
Tied up in the scarf piece

Can I get control
Do you like me vulnerable
I’m armed and I’m equal
More fun for the people

Physical, brute force
Steel, iron, you’re the boss
Yeah, you’re so do-able
Grind me down sugar salt

Continue reading →

Sign Here, Here and Here

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Fresh bagels, Starbucks™ coffee, foot massages – the SM main office is indeed posh. Thanks for having me, just remember, I expect to be paid in cash.

So let me begin with a personal anecdote, For what better way is there to endear yourself to your readers but with something that will tug at their heartstrings or at least get them frothing at the mouth.

In order to prepare for our upcoming trip to London, the Mrs. and I went to get an American passport for our two year old son at the county clerk office here in Brooklyn. (I must mention here that I have been on vacation for the past week and have not shaved during the time. A quick glance at me in the CCTV puts me high on a lot of freedom-lovinÂ’ peopleÂ’s wanted list). The guy behind the counter was a big old queen, IÂ’m talking rings on each finger, dyed hair, in his early 60s looking like Tony Curtis and talking like Paul Lynde queen.

“Well, well” he says, “looks like another form printed from the internet, let me see if this is the right one they always screw it up.”

“Is it the wrong form?” I ask

“No, it’s the right one, but usually people screw it up” he replies.

He started to fill out other paperwork then asked for our I.D. (the US passport office suggests you bring a state-issued driver’s license as a form of I.D.). As he continued to write down information from our ID he looked up and says “Now you don’t have a Resident Alien card do you?” (I don’t since I am an US citizen, but he was talking to me.)

My wife interjected “Yes, I do, but I didn’t bring it.” (she’s Welsh with a UK Passport).

“Well, I don’t have to accept this application you know” he says with a flourish of his many-ringed fingers.

“I mean he (speaking to me, the swarthy looking one) looks like he doesn’t belong here but here, you are the one with the resident alien card. You really should bring it with you when you come for something like a passport”.

We both bit our tongue. Telling him to stuff it for that comment meant we would have to go back home, come back with more paperwork and go through this process all over again on the hottest motherchucking day of the year. Continue reading →

Q: What do the Buggles have in common with Rabbi Shergill?

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I was over at the MTV Desi website today trying to figure out how to get hired. Maybe I’m a bit out of their demographic. I am pushing up on the big 3-0 but I am mos definitely cooler than Carson Daly AND my full head of hair is easily spike-able. If word gets out that I am only in it to get close to a certain VJ, my chances will be totally shot. In case you were wondering, this is what they dropped first. Video Killed the Radio Star it ain’t (thankfully):

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The video for “Bulla Ki Jaana” relects the core values of MTV Desi’s audience and captures the panaromic sweep, breathtaking variety and secular beauty of South-Asian and Indian life. Having grown up in India, Rabbi is not technically bi-cultural, but his grasp of the human condition, the ache and kick of life, influences that range from Bob Dylan to Sufi mysticism, and the struggle to sing the unsung hero’s song, qualify him as a truly multicultural artist who deserves to be heard around the world. “Bulla Ki Jaana,” like MTV Desi, is iconoclastic, trippy, mysterious and inclusive, striving to create new emotional connections between cultures.

Naturally, I immediately jumped to the lyrics to figure out MTV Desi’s “core values,” to see if I’d fit in. Continue reading →

Anchors away

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MTV Desi chief Nusrat Durrani picked Brit TV personality Tim Kash for male anchor. As a fellow well-known Sri Lankan Brit, Kash is like the male M.I.A. — if she were as lame as Carson Daly. (That’s a slam on Daly, not Kash, whom I’ve never watched.)

Since Kash isn’t an American, I’m guessing Durrani didn’t find a male anchor he liked by launch time and had to go to the UK bench. I’m also guessing that he’s champing at the bit to get an American. But maybe he just wanted one of the anchors to be an old hand at MTV.

On the right is Niharika Desai, their female face. Here are the anchors’ official bios:

Of Sri Lankan heritage but born and raised in the UK, Tim Kash hosts the daily MTV UK News show… Tim began his career at MTV at age 19, becoming the youngest MTV VJ in history. Most recently, Tim co-hosted the MTV US/International coverage of the recent Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park that was beamed across the world.

Niharika is a film editor with a background in photography… [from] Poughkeepsie, Mumbai and Brooklyn… Niharika is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in Psychology and South Asia Regional Studies. She is conversant in Marathi, can read and write the Devanagari script.

MTV Desi apparently didn’t get the ‘must refer to self as Indian’ memo. Damn you, South Asian Studies! Anil Dash says Desai may beat Apu as the most famous desi American within the next 12 months. That would be a relief, but Miss MTV Desai only beams for satellite at the moment.

… I can’t wait for the day when there’s enough Indians in the mainstream media that we can complain about the offensive way in which we’re depicted. Somewhere between Temple of Doom and Apu’s appearance on the Simpsons…

Lilia asked me the other day who the most famous U.S.-born Indian American is, and I had to think a bit. It’s not Deepak Chopra, because I don’t think he was born in the U.S., and I was told [Ed.: by the friend who asked the question] Norah Jones doesn’t entirely count, since she’s half Indian. My guess was that maybe it’s Tony Kanal from No Doubt, but apparently he was born in the U.K. Maybe by this time next year it’ll be Niharika Desai.

Continue reading →

The transit of Venus in Mercury

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Mathangi Mian made the shortlist for the UK’s most prestigious music award, the Mercury Prize, today (thanks, brimful). The Kaiser Chiefs are favored to win. Coldplay’s also on the list, but rumour is that this year’s da bomb in Englistan: M.I.A. has a shot to balance out last year’s pick, the already established Franz Ferdinand.

Previous winners include Dizzee Rascal, PJ Harvey, Badly Drawn Boy, Portishead and Talvin Singh, for his groundbreaking OK in 1999. Sometimes the Prize gives me the heebie-jeebies. They once nominated the Spice Girls, which is neither desi nor kosher.

Proving yet again just how much cooler the UK is, there have been loads of desi nominees out of the 10-12 bands shortlisted each year. In fact, from 1998-99 there were two Asian bands each year. It’s like NYC where you’ll often have multiple desi parties or arts events on the same day because the market can support them.

  • M.I.A., Arular, 2005
  • Susheela Raman, Salt Rain, 2001
  • Nitin Sawhney, Beyond Skin, 2000
  • Talvin Singh, OK, 1999 (winner)
  • Black Star Liner, Bengali Bantam Youth Experience!, 1999
  • Asian Dub Foundation, Rafi’s Revenge, 1998
  • Cornershop, When I Was Born for the 7th Time, 1998
  • Apache Indian, No Reservations, 1993

Asians in Media complains that Singh’s win didn’t have coattails:

Remember the infamous ‘Asian underground revolution’ that was supposed to happen when Talvin Singh won a Mercury prize in 1999? Vivek Bald’s excellent documentary Mutiny Sounds showed how that fell apart when industry executives could not grasp how to sell it. Raghav seems to be in a similar bind. One the one hand he seems to be marketed only for Asians. At the same time faces resistance from those who don’t know what to do with an Asian artist. [Link]

Continue reading →

Say Cheese

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All day Manish has been foto-blogging (floging) highlights from the Indian State visit. He updated with this picture just a few hours ago:

This isn’t so much a post from me as it is a question to our Indian American readers. As an Indian-American, something with this picture just doesn’t sit right with me. I appreciate what the Administration might have been trying to do but…if the German Chancellor visited the U.S. would all the German American appointees be invited to pose for a picture with him? This picture (to me) smells of the unstated belief that Indian Americans somehow have a divided loyalty and are not simply American. Why the assumption that we would want to pose with “our” Prime Minister? I think I would have a hard time accepting such an invitation until I understood the logic of it. Why would I want to pose with him? Just because he is from India and so were my parents? I would most certainly want to meet and talk with him, but not in this manner. I wonder if a picture exists where the Indian American appointees were all called in to pose with just our President Bush?

I realize that I am probably over-reacting to this, but I am just curious as to what some of you think. Continue reading →

Bad News Brown Bear

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Good old Apul sends me this tip on the upcoming re-make of the Bad News Bears:

There appears to be a South Asian in the upcoming “Bad News Bear.” Don’t know much else about it.

Well, I inspected the dugout to discover one Aman Johal from Canada:

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AMAN JOHAL (Prem Lahiri) lives in Vancouver, Canada. “Bad News Bears” marks his film acting debut. Aman’s mother, who works as an actor and as a tennis instructor, always encouraged her youngest son to follow his dreams. His mother’s agent heard about the casting call for “Bears,” and Aman happily went, not expecting the fantastic outcome of being cast as one of the Bears. Aman has two older brothers, who are thrilled for their little bro. Aman has been a very competitive athlete, excelling in tennis, soccer and roller hockey. Since shooting “Bad News Bears” he has also developed a great love for baseball and quite the arm. Aman is also a big fan of music and “Star Wars.”

There is a very embarrassing picture from my youth that looks just like the one above. I was also bad news. Continue reading →

President Singh

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Manmohan Singh and Dubya are frolicking together like puppies. Bush even matched his tie to Singh’s turban, although G. Kaur couldn’t talk Laur into a sari. It’s all happening right now.

Bush rolled out full pomp and pageantry for Singh’s visit, with a bewigged fife and drum corps marching across the South Lawn during the welcome ceremony…

Administration officials say the pomp was designed to emphasize the growing importance to the United States of India, a rising economic and military power whose newfound affinity for the United States is something Bush considers a major foreign policy success. [Link]

An American army band played the Indian and American anthems, and Singh will address Congress tomorrow. In return, Singh promised Bush a reenactment of the Salt March, with be-lungi’d freedom fighters marching across the lawn to a fountain at Rashtrapati Bhavan. (Elapsed time: 30 seconds.)

  

Continue reading →