Has everybody noticed the Jackson Heights mannequins that I added to the top of the blog?  This seems like a fitting way to welcome them…

I posted this once before, but it was near the beginning of my time on this blog, and at first I only posted a link, not the actual clip.  So, I thought it would be nice to have a rerun.  Part of the reason is that one of the blogs that I link to out there just included an mp3 of this song, “Romeo,” by Basement Jaxx.  And part of the reason is that it’s exactly six years now since I started that terrible captioning job…  You see, back in May of 2002, I got a job captioning music videos for the hearing impaired.  (Yes, it was a rather odd job, and it didn’t last very long.  They laid me off in a month, ostensibly because MTV had chopped their order in half and there was no longer any money left to pay me…) 

Anyway, most of those videos that I had to caption were awful, but when I started on this one, it was like that proverbial breath of fresh air.  My supervisor gave me a strange look when he noticed me playing it a bit too many times…

Often I’ve talked about how M.I.A. was the person in electronic dance music who sent me on the road to Bollywood/Kollywood movie addiction.  But maybe it really started five years earlier, with Basement Jaxx… 

I just kind of stumbled upon this one.   The same year, 1971…  This was a British dance group called Pans People…

Commenting on my post from a week ago, Sitaji of Bollywood Food Club reminded me of the excellent post that she wrote on the movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna, centered on the same clip that I posted here, for the movie’s hit song Dum Maro Dum. 

(Although that wasn’t the first time I’d heard that song, nor, curiously, did I first hear it from any clips from the film.  I first heard it in a different, live version about a year and a half ago, when I picked up a compilation called Sitar Beat! Indian Style Heavy Funk Vol. 1.)

The Bollywood Food Club post also mentioned another song, O Re Ghunghroo Ka Bole. 

But neither of those songs is my favorite from this superb soundtrack.  Now that I’ve seen a few clips (though, admittedly, not the full movie yet), I have to say that my favorite song is the one with the English title:  “I Love You.”  As with a few choice songs out there, once I heard it, I just couldn’t get it out of my head!

That’s Shobana and Amitabh Bachchan  in the video for Bally Sagoo’s remix of a classic Bollywood song, Kabhie Kabhie Mere Dil Mein.  Bachchan was the star of the film that this song came from, Kabhie Kabhie, which came out in 1976.  Bally Sagoo picked up that song around 25+ years later and made it nice and dubby…

When did Shobana dance on Broadway?  It’s almost impossible to find out when, as all references to the DVD that came out seem to omit the date of the original performance.  But from what I can tell (with a whole lot of searching), it was a performance that happened last summer, maybe August.  Well, now I’m going to keep an eye out for the next time that Shobana visits NYC.  I don’t plan to miss it…

Someone called Minaiminai (whose YouTube channel is great, I might add) was good enough to post this piece called “Folk” in two parts.  The first part is mostly intro, though, so I’m going to leave it off here, but if you want to get introduced to the dancers, the story and the characters, go here.  The second part is great to watch even if you haven’t seen the intro, and I particularly like the snake dances in the middle (and the dance of the eagle devouring the snake!) - also a beautiful way to continue the theme that I started here ten days ago…

Well, I don’t claim to know much about belly dancing or tribal fusion (which I feel that I need to say now that I know about a couple of people who might be reading this), and I hadn’t ever heard of this person before…  But I thought this was pretty cool (not to mention unusual).  Though I like the second half more than the first…  The first half is done to “Gutter Glitter” by Switchblade Symphony; the second half is done to “Futile” by Velvet Acid Christ.

Found completely by accident: “What’s Your Fusion” Promo for Dance Fusion 2006 (”Get cracking!”) (I bet this would have been fun to go to…)