Miss India-na

A tipster notifies us that Miss Indiana, who appears at the Miss USA pageant that is on NBC tonight, is an Indian American woman by the name of Courtni Shabana Hall (more pictures here):

Courtni Hall, a 5’5″ brown eyed brunette, is the 22-year-old daughter of Barbara Hall of Crawfordsville. A senior at Indiana State University, Courtni’s career ambition is to obtain her Masters degree in Communications and to work in the entertainment industry as a television personality. Courtni is a spokesperson for Children’s Hope International and serves as an advocate for adoption, as she was adopted from India at just five months old. Her hobbies include singing, traveling, acting and volunteering as a Spanish tutor. [Link]

Her profile at NBC’s website has a bit more concerning her adoption and a few of her interests:

* Born in Calcutta, India weighing only 2 lbs., 2 oz., she was abandoned at birth, and adopted by U.S. parents and brought to Indiana.
* Working towards getting her pilot’s license.
* Has a beaver, 56 tigers and a pet alligator. [Link]

Mad respect to anyone working toward their pilot’s licence because I appreciate the commitment that takes. However, I am a bit concerned about the 56 tigers and the pet alligator (owning a beaver is probably not as dangerous and I think is fairly common in some parts).

In case you want to “friend” Courtni or become a fan, her FB page is here.

I for one will be tuning in and keeping my fingers crossed for the gorgeous Courtni (who speaks so well), and perhaps I shall follow along in the Twittervesre.

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Jai vs. Bhay ho, slumdog fight

It’s election season again in India, and with an 80% reduction in Bollyflix released this year (a side effect of the finance crisis), the real action is in political ads. Recently, Congress bought the exclusive rights to play Jai Ho at its rallies for a whole year, much to the dismay of the BJP which objected that “Anyone should be able to use the song. ‘Jai Ho’ should not belong to any one; it belongs to the country.” [link]

Congress wasn’t just interested in playing the original song, it actually redid the whole thing, gutting the original and producing a muzaked easy-listening patriotic version for use in a political ad:

The BJP struck back with Bhay Ho, a dark tale of international terror:

Both of these clips hint at what a mainstream Indian studio would have done with Slumdog, assuming that they had been interested in the concept at all.

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Two “Lucky” Films

Since my son was born two and a half years ago, I have pretty much given up on staying current on Indian cinema. It’s difficult to get out to the movies, and our local Indian store really doesn’t seem to have a very good collection of stuff. I saw more Indian movies on the plane from Mumbai to Newark in January than I probably did in all of 2008.

On a recent day-trip to New York, we picked up two DVDs of what might be termed “anti-Bollywood” Hindi films that might get us back in the habit, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, and Luck By Chance.

By anti-Bollywood, I mean films that try to be “realistic” rather than sentimental, and that have limited use of songs to accompany, rather than interrupt, the plot of the film (the “diegesis,” for you film geeks). Many conventional Bollywood films don’t have written scripts, and star-power, branding, and memorable songs often have more to do with the success of those films than acting skill, or good, believable stories. In the old days, the emphasis on realism in Indian cinema was mainly the province of art-house directors, and mainly involved glum themes and a certain ponderousness. Happily, in the past few years, with the rise of Indian multiplexes, a realist sensibility has started to take hold on the margins of Bollywood itself. To my eye, the movement started with gangster films, and directors like R.G. Varma. But now it seems like we’re increasingly seeing a broader range of themes and styles of filmmaking in this space: an anti-Bollywood Bollywood. (Meanwhile, the same-old same-old of Hindi commercial cinema sputters along, effectively unchanged.)

Below are my brief reviews of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Luck by Chance. Continue reading

Oblique Brown’s Dust Storm

dust_album cover.jpgChee Malabar is hitting the internet airwaves once again. One half of the duo Himalayan Project, last month, Chee dropped a solo EP project under the name Oblique Brown. Titled Dust, the four song EP takes us on a lyrical dust storm where hip hop is a religion, words are an ode to life, and poetry slams with beats.

I met up with Chee at a coffee shop in downtown Los Angeles to ask him some questions about his new EP, his life as an artist, and his work bringing poetry to incarcerated youth. As can only be expected with the Murphy’s Law in my life, when we walked out to Chee’s car after the interview, we saw that it had been towed – for a movie shoot going on in the street. So, please, read the interview and after you are done go to Itunes or CD Baby and download Oblique Brown’s Dust today. And hopefully, all will be forgiven.

Taz: When did you first fall in love with hip-hop?

Chee: Is that from the movie Brown Sugar? Uh, okay… Basically, I moved to my neighborhood in San Francisco when I was twelve and all the kids in my neighborhood listened to hip hop. I fell in love with it in the sense that it was so different than anything I’d ever heard before. But I didn’t really understand what I was listening to back then. I liked the beat. I could nod my head. And the kids seemed to like it and I knew I should like it. That’s how it started…I was listening to Ice Cube, Paris, NWA…You start making connections to what they were saying and you start looking around and saying, “Oh wait, what they are saying is kind of important because things are kinda fucked up.” I would say that is the first time I fell in love with hip hop.

T: Was there an album that really influenced you?

C: I loved the Paris album, Sleeping with the Enemy with the song Bush Killer. I just loved that album. And all the NWA stuff and Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Predator…For me it was like playing catch up, I had missed all the hip-hop history… I remember the kids at school they‘d give me a tape, and I’d ask who’s this what’s that. For them it was something that had past but for me it was something brand new. I‘d go up to friends and say, “Have you heard this?” They‘d say”…uh, yeah. it‘s four years old.”

T: When did you start performing?

C: I started writing a couple of years after that, but I kept it to myself. Talking over a beat, you know. Not seriously until high school. Ray, who’s in Himalayan Project with me, he and I would make little tapes. Ray and I have known each other since sixth grade but we didn’t start really connecting until high school …we started talking about music… and we’d make a mix tape battling each other. I’d make a tape, and I’d clown on him, and I’d give it to him. And he’d respond. So that’s how we started…

I remember that we pressed up a bunch of tape, and we’d try to sell it. We went to somewhere in the Haight where they used to sell mixed tapes. We went to the guy with this cheesy ass cover of us on the tape. Like an actual cover. Photocopied and made with a cheesy tape cassette. The guy was super nice about it. He said, “Yeah, I’ll listen to it. If I like it you guys can stop by and drop more tapes off.”

T: Did he like it?

C: I have no idea. I dunno. We were too embarrassed to go back and find out. We were like kids, pretty much. But that’s pretty much how we started.

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In My Gully, Rupees Beat the Dollar…

In the ten plus years since Asian influenced electronica started making the musical rounds, the sound has gone in various directions. From the pulsating Indian classical-oriented tabla and bass to bollywood dub step, the music has evolved and morphed with other styles of contemporary and popular music. A prime example of this evolution can be found in Hello Hello, the most recent studio album put out by the New Delhi-based duo of Tapan Raj and Gaurav Raina, collectively known as the Midival Punditz. Hello, released on Six Degrees Records, sees the evolution of Punditz’s engaging electro-desi sound into new directions I haven’t see the Punditz delve into in past albums. Don’t worry though, it’s mostly a good thing!

The album’s opener, Electric Universe, is a strong tune, that marries a bansuri based melody with the now very-trendy vocoder lyrics and an up-tempo western dance groove. Universe is a good start to a very good album, and serves as a nice introduction of the diverging sounds to come. The last track is an acoustic version of Universe, except with unadulterated vocals and acoustic guitar by fellow Asian-massivist Karsh Kale. In fact, Kale’s influence on the album is heavily felt, with credits on more than five of the album’s 11 tracks.

With Hello, it’s clear that the Punditz haven’t forgotten where they came from, or the type of music that has led them to be called “the sound of 21st century India.” The album has the raga and folk influence I have come to expect and love from the Punditz, but also a classic rock and pop influence that one might hear in the nightclubs of Delhi, Bangalore, or Bombay.

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Oh my God they killed Kutner. Bastards!

Spoiler Alert (DVR users should avert their eyes): All of a sudden our website traffic doubled in the span of a couple of hours. What the hell is going on I wondered. House M.D. was on earlier tonight and I guess a lot of people switched over to watch since the NCAA final sucked so much. The Fox network has put up an obituary of Dr. Lawrence Kutner, played by actor Kal Penn, online:

Dr. Kutner was born in Freemont, California. Tragedy marred his early life as he lost his parents, Karamchand and Niki Baidwan, who were shot during an armed robbery. After a couple of years in foster care, Julia and Richard Kutner adopted Lawrence. He showed great promise in high school, winning a Westinghouse Science award for an experiment involving dark matter. His adoptive parents mused that he showed a freethinking, inventive streak from a young age.

Kutner received a full scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Physics. He then attended the University of Tel Aviv Medical School and completed an internship and residency in Sports and Rehabilitation Medicine through the University of Colorado. “He wanted to be a doctor since seeing ‘M.A.S.H.’ as a kid”, said his close friend and colleague Dr. Chris Taub. “I think he modeled himself a little bit after Hawkeye Pierce.”

Kutner’s girlfriend Nicole Brewster remembered that Lawrence, being adopted and of Indian ancestry, always felt like an outsider. But she said he didn’t resent it – instead, he felt the experience gained him added insight and perspective. [Link]

There is the possibility that this is all a dream and that House will wake up tomorrow to find Kutner alive (maybe in the hospital’s shower). Hey, at least he wasn’t killed by a black smoke monster. Let’s see what @kal_penn has to say about his future plans tomorrow.

UPDATE: Penn has announced his plans. Click “Read More” to learn what comes next for him

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Posted in TV

So what happened to the banners?

With regards to our website’s new design, the single biggest gripe heard from many (including from within the bunker) has to do with the naked header space. Where the banners at? People miss the variety and the colors previously found at the top. Why is the space so darn naked? Well, before answering that question I would like to explain a bit of the philosophy behind the site design. We have tried to make it a more community driven while still maintaining our editorial rights. When the news column was hidden away on its own separate tab it wasn’t being utilized to its maximum potential. Already, since our launch last week, I have been very happy with the quality of news links posted in the right hand column. People tend to step up their game and participate more when their submissions get more face time. We will continue to delete junk and spam from that column and the features (including comments) will soon be working. Likewise, the incorporation of Twitter allows us to communicate with and receive relevant tips from a much larger community.

And that brings us back to the missing banners. There was always a plan.

We are looking for submissions from the Sepia Mutiny community. We want artwork, several original designs, to adorn the top of our website. As with the banners, we hope to rotate the designs. Notice I said “artwork” and not just hastily designed graphics. We want you to wow us and blow SM readers away. This means you have to be pretty darn good at using Photoshop, Gimp, or the equivalent. Instructions follow below the fold.

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Valare Upakaram, Google

Indic_screenshot.jpg Via the “web clips” which perch above my 5,090 unread GMail messages, news that Google’s email is now down with some brown languages:

Until now, there hasn’t been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice. That’s why I’m happy to announce a new feature for Gmail that lets you type email in Indian languages. If you’re in India, this feature is enabled by default. If not, you’ll need to turn it on in the “Language” section under Settings. Once enabled, just click the Indian languages icon and type words in the way they sound in English — Gmail will automatically convert them to their Indian language equivalent. [link]

3410684214_542408482e_m.jpg Oh, if only there were some way for me to type Malayalam words the way they sound in English to me…and have GMail (or anything else, for that matter) automatically convert them to the correct Malayalam-in-English spelling equivalent.

For example, sometimes while I’m writing, blogging, tweeting or commenting on your Facebook crap, I feel the compulsive need to refer to the side dish I loved most as a small child: a fried, potato-y concoction which I’d spell “oorelkarunga merehkwerty or in a similarly butchered fashion.

Do you know how that shiz is actually spelled?

urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti

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Save Ourselves, the Ameish Way


AMEISH – “Save Ourselves” from Secret History on Vimeo.

Straight outta Los Angeles, born and raised, 25 year old unsigned artist Ameish Govindarajan is hitting the hip hop scene by storm. Taking a unique ‘web 2.0’ tactic of dropping his first single Save Ourselves with a viral music video even before an EP is pressed and on itunes, Ameish is part of the new generation using the internet to spread the lyrics. I stumbled across this video in my inbox last week and was blown away. The visuals were clean and crisp, enhancing the smooth hip hop hook and lyrics. I couldn’t get the song out of my head all week.

I sat down (virtually) with Ameish to ask him a few questions about life. Here’s what he said.

I saw on your facebook profile that you graduated from UCLA with a pyschobio degree. That’s quite the change from hip-hop… How’d you first get involved with hip-hop? How do your parents feel about your musical foray?

Yes, that is kind of an unexpected background for an artist, I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to be educated. Music has always been around me since I was young, but the first time I heard hip-hop was around ten years old. I picked up a tape off the ground, which I still have, Brand Nubian. And from there I fell in love with the beats and rhymes. I was an avid listener for five years, listening to everything from Ice Cube to Wu-tang. Me and my boys started rhyming at the age of 15. We used to record on a karaoke machine and rhyme on top of the radio, then on instrumentals. My parents are fully supportive of whatever my passions are.

I saw this video last week and thought it was really polished looking and you have a great sound. I’m surprised that you are still unsigned and that I haven’t heard of your music yet. Is this your first single?

Yes, this is my debut single off the “Save Ourselves” EP. There’s plenty more music to come.

Who did your music video?

The video was a collaborative effort from four parties. The directors were from the crew Secret History. They’ve done videos for other rap artists like The Grouch and Paris. The producers are Bucks Boys Productions who worked on Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights” video. The director of photography is from the ReelRoots crew, and Digital Gypsy provided the rest of the production.

I came up with the concept for the video as I wrote the song, and these productions companies were able to bring my vision to life.

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