Did you all catch the most recent edition of the Forbes 400 Richest People in America? I was shocked that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is richer than Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch?!? How is that even possible? I have never spent a single dollar surfing Facebook (as far as I know). I am looking forward to seeing the new biopic on him though because there have been nothing but rave reviews so far. Anyways, getting finally to the desi hook. There are four desis on the list:
Four Indian-Americans are among Forbes 400 Richest People in America, a list topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The Indians who made the cut include Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, outsourcing firm Syntel’s founder Bharat Desai, venture capitalist Kavitark Ram Shriram and software king Romesh Wadhwani.
While Desai ranks 252 with a net worth of $1.6 billion, Khosla occupies the 308th spot in the list with fortunes worth $1.3 billion. Shriram is at 288 with assets worth $1.45 billion and Wadhwani 290 with a total valuation of $1.4 billion. [Link]
Maybe Desai, the highest Indian American on the list (who is the founder of an outsourcing firm), should have been hired as an advisor for NBC’s new show because they clearly did not have a clue.
Now I just have to figure out how I can make money from all of you surfing this site for free and I can be #5.
SM tipster Amol notifies us of some sad news today out of the UK:
An Indian pilot who flew Hawker Hurricanes during World War II has died, it has been announced.
Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji, 92, died at Darent Valley Hospital in Kent on Saturday following a stroke.
Sqn Ldr Pujji was believed to be the last surviving fighter pilot from a group of 24 Indians who arrived in Britain in 1940.
He survived several crashes and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for services in Burma. [Google]
The photograph in the article conveys the swagger of a pilot who knows he’s a bad-ass.
He seems to have given an interview earlier this year:
Mohinder Singh remembers the start of the war vividly. Just a year after it had begun, at the height of the Battle of Britain, he decided to join the Royal Air Force (RAF). He was 22 years old and in search of adventure.
‘I saw London being bombed, I saw what people were suffering and I knew what they were going through and how cruel the enemy was because they were throwing bombs on civilians. They were not fighting soldier to soldier and hundreds of people were being made homeless so that changed my perspective, then I was very keen to fight for the country, for this country where I had come to seek adventure really.’
Two or three pilots would be lost everyday and Mohinder almost became a casualty himself several times.‘From day one in every letter to my parents I said don’t expect me back.’ [Link]
Here is a newer picture from an article in The Guardian last year that detailed a permanent exhibit at the RAF museum (that I once visited as a kid) called “Diversity in the Royal Air Force”:
I will likely re-visit this whole topic in greater detail at some point in the future.
It started to drizzle as I waited for Tasneem on the Santa Monica Pier early on a July summer day. I couldn’t believe it. It never rains in Southern California but here it was, middle of summer and it had started to rain. Luckily, by the time Tasneem arrived, guitar and all, it had turned into a beautiful day for a ferris wheel ride.
Tasneem, otherwise known as Jungli, is back for a brand new edition with a whole new sound. A New York transplant to California, she’s taken the coastal change and reinvented herself and her singer-songwriter sound into a new Cali-vibin’ freshenss. She’s working on a new E.P. The Animal Days Are Gone set to be released in the next few months. Check out my one-on-one ferris wheel interview with the infamous Tasneem. She talks about why she makes conscious music, how she loves Bat for Lashes, and how her dad would make them listen to Afro-Pop on the drive to weekly prayer.
I realize the interview is kind of long, but I had a hard time editing it down. We had a lot of fun on our quasi-date and Tasneem is very personable. Conducting interviews on ferris wheels are my new favorite thing to do, and getting a personal concert while in a ferris wheel bucket was one of the highlights of this summer. Check out the following video where Tasneem sings “Mark Wahlberg” and you’ll see just what I mean. Continue reading →
As many of you know, last month I got the chance to attend Netroots Nation 2010. It was the fifth annual gathering and I was graciously a recipient of one of the scholarships given out by Democracy for America. It was an amazing conference of about over 2,000 progressives, politicos and internet social media moguls. And of course, bloggers. You can read about my experience on my blog (Part 1 and Part 2).
The whole time I was there, I couldn’t help but play “desi-spotting.” At first I felt a little weird about it, but seeing as how I was going on behalf of a South Asian American blog and I was the only blogger I found repping a South Asian space, I considered it “ethnic-targeted marketing” after a while. There were about a couple dozen Desis there too. I met some great people and grabbed some amazing stories.
With all this talk of elections, I was excited to meet an actual Desi elected while at Netroots Nation. Ash Kalra is a council member for the city of San Jose. Check what he has to say.
Way to set yourself apart from the pack, Uncle-ji.
Just in case it wasn’t clear from the billboard, Vijay Kumar may be brown, but he’s not one of those other kinds of brown people. Don’t get confused, Tennesseans. He’s just like you. But not me.
Vijay was born in 1954 in Hyderabad, India, to a conservative middle class family…. In 1979, Vijay emigrated to the United States because he felt uplifted by the values and possibilities inherent in the American way of life. In 1983, Vijay married Robin Minix, a native of Bowling Green, Kentucky. In keeping with his conservative family values, Vijay and Robin have been married for twenty-seven years. The Kumar family attends Bellevue Community Church in Nashville, Tennessee.[kumarforcongress]
To Google or not to Google? Like that was the question. 🙂 These signs are encouraging A2 residents to vote for a Democratic candidate for First Ward, Ann Arbor City Council. (The primary election is August 3, and since the Democratic candidates here are heavily favored in the general election, the primary is crucial.) This particular candidate grew up in Sri Lanka, came to the U.S. 19 years ago, and has been living in Ann Arbor for 13 years.
In Jaffna, Sumi was a student activist, and was involved with Poorani, a women’s organization. She’s now a CPA; she previously taught at Eastern Michigan University. I contacted her and asked if she’d chat with the Mutiny about her background and candidacy. She agreed, and so here, in four parts, her filmed conversation with me. Continue reading →
Four years ago I noted on SM that Sunil Gulati was appointed the head of U.S. Soccer. Right now the U.S. Soccer team is performing near its best in the modern era. 80% of the credit has to be given to the improvement in play by the U.S. team and to coach Bob Bradley. But lets also give some credit to Gulati. France and Italy have demonstrated that having some of the most skilled players in the world means jack if your organization is dysfunctional and poorly managed.
Gulati (left) is working with Clinton to try and bring the World Cup back to the U.S. in 2018 or 2022
He grew up playing football in Nebraska. Gulati, who served as USSF vice president for six years, was elected as its president in March 2006.
“Across the past decade, a platform for this sport has been built that did not previously exist, and we now have an opportunity in the coming years to achieve more for soccer in the United States than anyone could have ever envisioned 15 or 10 or even five years ago,” Gulati had said after being elected at the USSF President.
Former USSF president and Major League Soccer founder Alan Rothenberg has called Gulati the “single most important person in the development of soccer” in the country. It is he who appointed the current US soccer coach Bob Bradley.
In February this year, he was unanimously re-elected the USSF president. [ToI]
As Gulati said after the Algeria victory, “A new benchmark has been set.”
I guess not everyone appreciates him though. A blogger at Deadspin had this recent eyewitness account from South Africa:
PRETORIA, South Africa — A few hours before the gut-roiling USA victory here, I witnessed a tense moment of another sort when two well-lubricated American yahoos tore into Sunil Gulati, the head of the U.S. Soccer Federation. Here’s how it unfolded …
Sometime after noon, I made my way to Hombaze, the pre-game boozing site for hardcore Stars and Stripes fans. And boozing they were. Waiters were bringing around six packs of Castle beer. The lads were downing lager as fast as they could lay hands on a bottle. Everyone was sauced and ebullient. Then Sunil Gulati turned up…
It was then, from the balcony of the bar, that an evil howling commenced. Even over the patriotic commotion you could hear it, an expression of pure animal rage that ran through the crowd like a dirty shank.
FUCK YOU, GULATI!… (Their complaints about Gulati, I would later learn, were manifold, and their origins were difficult to discern. They had something to do with the USSF and banners being prohibited in stadiums and ticket sales and Mexicans sitting in their section and not having “a seat at the table.”)… [Link]
Win or lose today, we here at SM appreciate all Gulati has done for the sport of futbol/soccer in the U.S. I like the fact that it is the hard work of an Indian American who grew up playing soccer in Nebraska that has in part led us to this game against Ghana’s Black Stars. Open Thread below for the game. Let’s go U-S-A!
Yesterday, you saw Part I of my conversation with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer (who, by the way, is playing at Birdland again tonight!). Herewith, Part II!
Video of Vijay Iyer Trio’s version of M.I.A.’s “Galang”
Vijay Iyer Trio’s award-winning album, “Historicity“
VVG: What does it mean to be someone not only interested in making art, but also in articulating what it means? How did you get into writing? In a dialogue with your longtime collaborator, the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, you talk about being accused of being “full of words and full of himself.” (I have some sympathy with this, having once been described as “fast-talking.”) You say, “But I felt like, either frame the discourse with your own language, or else let them take it over and completely misrepresent you.” Does this get at why you chose to take on writing as another facet of your career? To what extent do you feel that you are required to explain yourself, your philosophies of work and your work itself more because you are South Asian?
VI: I didn’t frame myself as a writer at first, but I’ve been publishing things here and there, first in academic journals, then in anthologies, then in some online media, and then in print magazines. Most of it has been by invitation, and the last few times I even got paid, so I guess that clinches it!
But seriously, I think the space where I’ve strived to produce specific discourse about identity was in the liner notes to my albums. I’ve always taken this task upon myself, sometimes to people’s dismay. (The “words and himself” quote was from a prominent jazz critic who actually likes my music.) I think of it as a textual counterpoint to an album, or as a letter to the future. But also it’s a rare opportunity to reach a captive audience; people don’t necessarily intend to read anything when they buy an album, but now they’re going to have those words in their hands every time they take the CD off the shelf. (At least that used to be the case when people still bought and listened to cd’s!) So it becomes a way to reach thousands of people over many years. People who revisit the music will at some point revisit the words.
I did find that I had to contextualize the music and my relationship to it. For all the rhetoric of tolerance and inclusiveness, there are some things that just don’t go down easy for Americans, and a South Asian American jazz composer-pianist is one of those things. It also doesn’t go down easy for jazz audiences, or other South Asians, or for people in general!
It’s never enough just to solve the problem internally for yourself. You’re always encountering people who are at some other point in the journey of awareness, and so you are constantly re-solving it for someone else. So that discourse becomes pretty crucial; fragments of it are going to keep coming back into the conversation. Continue reading →
I have the album and love it and wanted to chat with him for the Mutiny; he was gracious enough to agree, and so here, in the first of two parts, is our conversation (which we did online).
(Tracks that are likely of special interest to some Mutiny readers: This track, a cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang,” has deservedly gotten lots of attention. An earlier album, Tragicomic, features a track called “Macaca Please.”
VVG: It’s been so exciting for me to watch your success, especially this year with “Historicity.” My older brother and I both played tenor saxophone relatively seriously when we were younger… Today, coincidentally, I am going to practice again for the first time in years! Your website describes you as “self-taught.” How do you teach yourself/practice? What’s your routine/process? How does your day as a musician work (when you’re not touring)?
VI: Thanks, Sugi! I am honored.
I’ve mostly grown musically over the years by trying new things. Sometimes that means trying to work through some existing musical idea that challenges me, and doing it very slowly; other times it’s about composing challenges for myself to try to play; still other times it’s through collaboration with others, whether in my area of music, in other areas of music, in other artistic fields like poetry, film, and theater, and even in less arts-oriented disciplines like the sciences. I don’t have much of a routine because I find every day is different – but my basic way of learning anything is by working on something for long enough that it’s not “practicing” anymore. As a player, I mostly practice being spontaneous; I practice improvising.
As for my day-to-day when I’m home, I spend an unwanted number of hours each day on business matters – emails, phone calls, paperwork, logistics. But I manage to make music every day, either playing or composing. And I spend as much time with my family as I can, especially my 5-year-old daughter. Continue reading →
I was first blown away by Riz Ahmed when I saw him perform on Britz. It was only afterwords that I realized that Riz wasn’t just an actor – he’s also known as Riz MC. Straight out of the U.K., his lyrics are dynamic and controversial and his sound dances on the edge of gritty hip hop and electro sci fi. Amardeep’s written about Riz MC’s controversial lyrics in the past. I had the chance to sit down virtually with the infamous Riz. Here’s what he said.
Taz: Though you’ve been MCing for a few years, MICroscope is your debut album. Why did you wait so long to release your first album?
Riz: I guess you could say it was because I was busy filming. But in reality, I also wanted to take the time to find my sound and set out a unique style of music and lyrics – dense lyrical ideas with bold simple electronic or totally acoustic sounds. This album took 18 months to make.
T: On your website you say that “the album is coupled with a groundbreaking live show and a trans-media online experience.” What exactly does that mean?
R: There’s a live show that goes with the album. It’s a gig or concert but it also has a story line in which the audience is involved in moving forward. It’s pretty unique as a concept and in the way it’s performed. There’s a short film that ties in with it too. Both the website for the album and live shows are cutting edge digital interactive. So it’s an album, show, film, and website all set at different points in the same story world. Continue reading →
