Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Shanti Outta Brooklyn

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With only a couple of Mondays left for a #MusicMonday, I know I had to make this one a song that will stick in your head for a while.

The song is by an MC I’m really surprised hasn’t been covered by the Mutiny before. Brooklyn Shanti, a Bengali DJ coming outta…. well … Brooklyn,  I heard about via Mandeep Sethi, my connection to all the latest in Desi hip-hop. Brooklyn Shanti is ridiculously prolific – his website and his bandcamp have tons of songs available for download and he’ll be coming out with an album in the next couple of months. Of course, I have an affinity for all things Bengali, and I absolutely instantly fell in love when I heard his Bangla lyric-ed song Rani, Rani.

His theme song’s not so bad either. Keep an eye on this guy – Brooklyn Shanti’s going to be going far with these skills.

Check out his bandcamp discography – if you like the above songs, I’m sure you’ll like what else he has. You can download his full album from June 2011 for free right here: Brookylin Circa 2012

I hope you’ve enjoyed the #MusicMonday’s at Sepia Mutiny these past couple of years – I started them because I wanted to have some content to provide for you on a weekly basis. After a while though, it became more of a scavenger hunt and a game to find the songs I would actually listen to on my iPod. I’ve found and befriended many of the artists profiled on these pages – and I’m hoping that my fantastical dream of Alterna-Desi Music Fest on the So Cal desert of Bombay Beach with these bands will happen some day. Some day…

Your Last Chance… *UPDATED*

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UPDATE: To accommodate our adoring mutinous mutineers – we’ve shifted the location and time. Same date, March 31st 2012, THIS SATURDAY.

NEW TIME: 2:30pm – 6:30pm

NEW LOCATION: The Liberties Bar, 998 Guerrero Street  San Francisco, CA 94110

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What’s that you say? It’s the end of a mutinous era and you never even made it to a Sepia Mutiny Meetup? Rajni the Monkey went wild in the bunker once he heard this news and is now throwing poop at your computer screen. But ask and The Mutiny delivers – at least for the next 15 days till the April 1st door slam. ANNA revived the 55 Friday because of this tweet and hell, thanks to this forlorn tweet from @YungCoconut and @AmericanTurban, I will do the same.

Join Manish, Vinod, Pavani and myself for the Cali swagest meetup of your mutinous lifetime in San Francisco on Saturday March 31st. We know that you Alterna-Desi types have already bought your tickets to the 8th annual Yoni Ki Baat performance. “Yoni Ki heh…?” you ask? Desi, please.

South Asian Sisters are back again to present another brand new script with funny, touching, sensational, and thought-provoking raw performances submitted by South Asian women across the country! [southasiansisters]

 

For more info and to purchase tickets to the March 31st & April 1st San Francisco Yoni Ki Baat shows, please check out their site here.

As for the LAST CHANCE AT GOING TO A SEPIA MUTINY MEETUP…

  • New Time: 2:30pm – 6:30pm
  • Date: Saturday, March 31st, 2012
  • New Location: The Liberties Bar, 998 Guerrero Street  San Francisco, CA 94110
  • Facebook Event Page Right Here

 

Please comment below if you will be able to make it! Since this is the last meetup – EVER – I highly suggest out-of-towners fly into SF for a Cesar Chavez long weekend of Mutinous fun. If you have a bar/lounge suggestion (that is open at 4:30pm) do let me know and we can change the local, as long as we keep it in The Mission. And if you can’t come to the meetup but want to keep in touch – you can always find us on twitter, too.

It’s not goodbye – it’s just a farewell, for now. I’ll see y’all on the internet flip side and by that I mean IRL.

55Friday: The “Doowutchyalike”-edition

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Well.

It’s been an eventful 24 hours, hasn’t it? The end of an “era”, is how some of you readers generously termed it on various social media sites. It’s really just the end of a site that was once bigger in every way than it currently is. What was once a “must-read-daily” turned in to an “Eh, I’ll poke my head in weekly”-sort of a blog and that’s perfectly understandable. The party has been over for a little while. But while many of you wish we would stay around for at least those weekly visits (you are creatures of routine, aren’t you!), that wouldn’t be right.

We can, however, resurrect SOMETHING weekly: the 55Friday flash fiction challenge. See? I didn’t ignore ALL your tweeted pleas.

I know in the past that I picked a theme to help you start your engines, but somehow, I don’t think that will be necessary this time. Write about whatever you like– just contain yourself in 55 words when you do it. Ready? For old time’s sake…go.

Mathai Rocks ‘The Voice’

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSnrLqdt6oc&feature=relmfu

Could an 18-year-old singer named Mathai be the next winner of NBC’s The Voice?

Billboard called Mathai’s performance on the show last week “awe-inspiring” and noted she was “one of the few [contestants] who understands nuance and power.”

I hope that as the season progresses we’ll get to see Mathai do more ballads. This 2010 talent show performance, in which a then-16-year-old Mathai covers Adele’s version of To Make You Feel My Love, is incredible. (You can check out more of her songs at her official YouTube channel.)

Q&A with Daisy Rockwell AKA Lapata

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Unsettling. The Little Book of Terror, a slim, brightly-colored book of paintings and short essays by Daisy Rockwell hardly contains standard coffee-table fare. Divided into five sections, this cheeky little volume features your usual gallery of big-name, international rogues. Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein. But the feeling of uneasiness comes not from these over-chronicled villain archetypes whose images we’ve all seen scattered over televisions a hundred times over.

Instead, it comes from candid portraits such as that of Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, a 20-year old in New Jersey who was appended by the FBI after he tried to join a militant group in Somalia. In her portrait of Alessa, Rockwell depicts him in bubble-gum pink tones, prone on a floral bedspread, cuddling with his beloved cat, Princess Tuna. Unsettling. The narrative of terror that we often see seldom contains photos of wannabe terrorists cuddling with their kitty cats, or of the underwear bomber as a sullen teenager, posing during a school trip. Continue reading →

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Wins Oscar For ‘Saving Face’

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Journalist and documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy became Pakistan’s first Oscar winner last night when her film Saving Face won best documentary short.

Saving Face tells the story of two women (39-year-old Zakia and 23-year-old Rukhsana) who were severely disfigured after becoming victims of acid attacks. According to the film’s website:

Every year in Pakistan, at least 100 people are victimized by brutal acid attacks. The majority of these are women, and many more cases go unreported. With little or no access to reconstructive surgery, survivors are physically and emotionally scarred, while many reported assailants – typically a husband or someone close to the victim – are let go with minimal punishment from the state.

 

The film follows Dr. Mohammad Jawad, a British-Pakistani plastic surgeon who traveled back to Pakistan in order to assist Pakistan’s acid attack victims. During her acceptance speech Obaid-Chinoy dedicated the award to Dr. Jawad, Rukhasana and Zakia, and “to all the women in Pakistan who are working for change.” She added, “Don’t give up on your dreams.”

Hopefully Obaid-Chinoy’s Oscar win will mean that more people in Pakistan will have the opportunity to see the film. The filmmaker told the Wall Street Journal in November that she planned to show the film in private venues and recently told the Asia Society that “contractual restraints” prevented her from showing it to large audiences.

HBO will be broadcasting Saving Face on March 8. Mark your calendars.

Naeem Khan at Fashion Week

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Designer Naeem Khan showed his Fall 2012 collection at New York Fashion week. Worn by the FLOTUS and on the red carpet, his work is often in the public spotlight. Titled “The Body As A Canvas: From the Mughal Paisley to the Hindu Tilakas” the show brought Indian-inspired bling to the runway.

The Washington Post writes that “there was so much beading that the audience in the front row could hear the pieces chiming against each other as the models walked.”

The New York Times India Ink interviews Khan and asks about the inspiration behind his latest work. Continue reading →

Spills All Over

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This Valentine’s Day, feel free be prepared to spill your heart with this week’s belated #MusicMonday. Breaking into the scene with his first solo album, Feel Free, 25 year old Sid Muralidhar otherwise known as the NYC beat master Spills has released an album that gives The Weeknd a run for his money. The first half of the album start with a slow drawl with songs like Pregnant Silence and the two stepping Siren featuring Basim Usmani’s falsetto and leads up to the second harder half of the album with deep beats, such as in Mariah Carey’s Satanic Offspring.

But you don’t have to take my word for it – the album Feel Free is available … well, for free. So download it for free now!  

Two things I love about Spills. First, I love that he was part of an acoustic dub/hip hop duo called Two Dirty Desis. And the second is this:

For those who want to delve further into his creative mind, Feel Free Ableton session files will be available to be used in any way, shape or form on February 21, 2012. On his decision to release the Ableton files, Spills remarked:

 

“Honestly, I would have never even thought to give away ALL the session files… some would say a hip hop producer is only as good as his samples and synths. But that whole Internet black out thing to protest government and corporate censorship really inspired me – made me realize that we’re only as powerful as our connections to each other. So everyone should feel free to do with this project whatever they want … go nuts.”

 

You heard him. Go nuts!

Q&A with Outdated Author Samhita Mukhopadhyay

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When Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Feministing, announced she was writing a book on dating, I knew we had to have her on SM. Because as those of us who follow her on Twitter know – Mukhopadhyay is everything dating books are not – i.e. funny and whip smart. (Yes, I may have a wee bit of a girlcrush.) In fall of 2011, Mukhopadhyay released Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, a humorous take on the self-help genre chockfull of anecdotes from the author’s own love life. Topics covered include: “dating while feminist,” the masculinity “crisis” and more. Apropos to Valentine’s Day, I asked the author to tell us more about Outdated.

Why did you feel you had to write Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life? And why this particular title?

I wrote Outdated because I couldn’t believe how profoundly ignorant mainstream books on dating were and I couldn’t believe that no one had already written a book discussing how deeply problematic the assumptions about gender and love were in them. I felt the young women in our generation deserved something better. Continue reading →

Raza Jaffrey Stars in NBC’s “Smash”

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Raza Jaffrey of NBC's SmashDid anyone catch the premiere of the new NBC drama Smash? It debuted on Monday after a multi-million dollar promotional campaign and many hope that it will be the hit show NBC desperately needs. The hour-long musical drama is about the creation of a Broadway show based on the life of Marilyn Monroe and is produced by Steven Spielberg.

British actor Raza Jaffrey plays Dev Sundaram, the live-in boyfriend of main character/Broadway actress Karen Cartwright (played by former American Idol contestant Katharine McPhee). Jaffrey’s best known for his role as Zafar Younis in the BBC drama Spooks.

From his character’s mini-bio on the show’s official website:

Devan “Dev” Sundaram was born in Wimbledon in the United Kingdom, but has split his time with relatives in Queens for much of his life and has lived in New York City for several years. With a B.A. in Classics and Political Science from Oxford University and M.A.s in Communications (from Columbia University) and International Relations and Journalism (from NYU), Dev has worked as Deputy Press Secretary in Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s office since 2010. He lives in Lower Manhattan with his girlfriend, Karen Cartwright.

 

Masters degrees plural. Of course. It will be interesting to see how the show portrays New York’s South Asian community and, since the show films in New York, to see if they visit any notable landmarks. I also wonder if there will be any subplots involving the character’s relatives in Queens. I only caught a few minutes of the episode, so I don’t have an opinion on the show yet. The entire pilot episode can be seen here.