This one’s labeled “Aankha Marae.”
This one isn’t labeled in English, but whatever it is, it’s positively delightful.
This one’s labeled “Aankha Marae.”
This one isn’t labeled in English, but whatever it is, it’s positively delightful.
The song is “Murcha Miyon,” from the album Zindagi. (By the way, when you go to Shabnam’s Web site, you’ll see the name spelled differently. But that’s OK, it seems to be spelled differently in a lot of places. According to Wikipedia, lots of spellings are acceptable.)
P.S. I recognized the sampled patois intro right away from Natcha Atlas’ Eye of the Duck; I think that’s the voice of Princess Julianna.
(from the film Nasho…)
My original post on this subject reflected a lot of confusion regarding the movie Agathiyar. But I have finally solved the mysteries and misconceptions. So here are the facts:
1. Both clips (below) come from the same film. I know this now, because I watched the film. I found it for free viewing at some site called Media.PkP.in. (Unfortunately, no subtitles. I did fast foward a little during some of the speaking parts. But, as you see here, there are some great song-and-dance scenes! And there are a few more great ones beyond these two clips.)
2. The ‘1957″ date stated in the original YouTube post is wrong, at least for these clips. The YouTube post cites as its source iTalkies, but the listings for that Agathiyar are not the same. For instance, that listing says that the director is A.P. Subbarao. However, the director for the film that these clips come from is A.P. Nagarajan. (So either there are two different films with two different directors, or iTalkies is just confused.) That makes a lot of sense because there are a whole lot of similarities between this film and Thiruvilayada, a film from 1965 that features some of the same actors (not comparing names here – I just recognize them) and has very much of the same look. The film that these clips came from is listed correctly (I am certain now) at the Indian Cinema Database. This database lists the release date for Agathiyar (or this Agathiyar, at least) as being 1972. And that’s when I thought it was, because Sridevi is the child artist in the second clip, and she was born in 1963.
I originally said they were two different clips, because I sort of believed the “1957” date for the first clip. Nonetheless, I also felt that the first clip didn’t look at all like a 1957 clip. First of all, it’s in vivid color, and that would have been very unusual in a Tamil movie at the time. (Unless it was colorized later – but somehow, it didn’t look that way.) Also, that clip looked a lot like other clips that I’d seen, mainly from the late 1960s. (By the way, this director, A.P. Nagarajan, also directed Thillana Mohanambal, which I’ve used as a source of clips before. That one stars Padmini in some of her most famous dances.)
Anyway, so, I’ve done some research to solve a big puzzle, and it was all very satisfying. (Don’t know if anybody else cares, but this was fun for me.) Having corrected all the information, I am now going to turn this into a new post (now that I know how to change the “published” dates). And for anybody who may have missed these clips the first time, you should check them out now – I think they are great!
Shabnam Soraya is from Tajikistan. She sings in Farsi, and this song is from Afghanistan. It’s on her album Zindagi.
Some good basic info on this duo from a site called Bombay Bitch:
Monica aka Shaair (from the Urdu word ‘Shayr‘) is an Indian girl who grew up in the US. She is from NYC and comes from a performance art background, having danced and performed on Broadway and has been singing since she was five. She grew up listening to Indian classical, ghazals and Bollywood music.
Randolph Correia aka Func is a Goan from Mumbai who grew up listening to Metallica and playing in a popular Indian rock band called Pentagram. He is an art school graduate from Mumbai and is also a producer who has worked and collaborated with several bands and also composed for TV and films. Together, they‘re India‘s hottest underground electronica/rock act – Shaa‘ir + Func.
. . .
S+F is the freshest sound to emerge from the ever-evolving Indian underground.
And we hear that they‘ve already finished shooting for a song in a Bollywood movie…
Yes, this time it’s a guy with a Master’s degree – in philosophy – who remains unemployed for a long, long time. And even when he gets a few jobs (not very good ones), he ends up losing them because of his principles. This one’s a Tamil movie. It’s called Varumaiyin Niram Sivappu, and I found it for free viewing at Rajshri.com, where this basic point is summed up nicely in the plot description:
Rangan (Kamal Haasan) has an M.A. in philosophy and is an idealist… He leaves his Chennai home and goes to Delhi to find a job and a footing for himself. Brilliant that he is, he tries his hands at various jobs but has to quit each of them soon as he refuses to compromise on anything that is against his ideals. He meets Devi (Sridevi) who gets attracted to him due to his qualities. She works for a drama company to earn a living…
And of course, a character who works at a drama company knows how to sing and dance. Though he does as well (maybe because it’s in his genes – since his father, whom he dissociated himself from, is a famous Carnatic singer…but that’s a whole other branch of the plot). This isn’t as dramatically impressive as Shree 420, but it’s very sweet. Here’s a song from the movie, “Chippi”:
The Verve song is at the beginning… I think this was very nice use of that song on the part of Roshan T. (RandOceans). I briefly posted a longer, later version of this video, but I think this one is better. I briefly posted the Verve song video to go with it, but I like that one only for the first minute or so. But I do like this…
Bob from Brockley has sent me a music meme:
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.
In Bob’s own post, he wrote a nice little bit about each song and added at the end, “Note to the tagged: don’t feel obliged to write as much about your songs. I can’t help myself!” Unfortunately, I knew when I took on this project that I might end up writing three to five times as much as he did. Seems I can’t help myself either…
1. “Raakkammaa Kaiya Thattu” by Ilaiyaraaja, sung by S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and Swarnalatha, from the movie Thalapathi (1991). I posted this and two other songs (including “Kaatukkulle Manasukkulle,” sampled in M.I.A.’s “Bamboo Banga”) over here. This is just such a great song (though I don’t know what the lyrics mean – but the music and the singing are fantastic)… Ilaiyaraaja’s film music is so lively and at the same time so sweet, it can make you smile from ear to ear. Some of it can be very sad too, but this isn’t one of the sad ones; it’s just very uplifting. And I also love the more classical part at the end, when the song gets much more serene, which matches the scene in the film clip where Shobana shows up in that group of spiritually inclined women and children, carrying the candles. Incidentally, this is part of a mix of Tamil film music that I put together to listen to on the subway. It makes the ride so much better…
2. “Knockdown” by Pardesi. OK, I might be cheating here, because I just discovered this song within the past day. But I think I’m going to be returning to it a lot. Pardesi is a collaboration between two Vancouver DJs, Lady Ra (whom I’ve written about before) and Timothy Wisdom. What they do in this song is take Alesha Dixon’s slightly show-tuneish dance pop/hip-hop number Knockdown and remix it into a bhangra song. And they make it more of a bhangra song exactly where Alesha makes it more hip-hop. The change is quite funny, and good. (P.S. “Pardesi” means foreigner. I’ve seen at least half a dozen Bollywood movie numbers made to songs with “Pardesi” in the title. My favorite is this one.)
3. “Aadal Kaneero,” by G. Ramanathan, sung by M.L. Vasanthakumari, from the 1957 Tamil film Madurai Veeran (I posted a clip of it here). This is basically Carnatic music, I think, maybe just slightly changed for the cinema. And I love it, in all of its intensity… Also part of the Tamil film music mix that I put together for the subway rides.
4. “Sound of Kuduro” by Buraka Som Sistema featuring M.I.A. This song‘s got a crazy beat that’s gonna kill ya! Not to take any credit away from Buraka Som Sistema, but it’s very hard for me not to just think of this as the latest M.I.A. song. One reason for this is that her voice is such an important part of it for me, and it goes so well here. And also, this Angolan Portuguese-language kind of hip hop isn’t that far away from the baile funk that she was delving into in Arular. But I’ve checked out Buraka Som Sistema separately and they are pretty good too.
5. “Minor Swing” by Belleruche. I mentioned this song a while back, am still returning to it…swinging, jazzy turtnablist trip-hop with a really good old-fashioned r’n’b-style female singer… Some of their songs sound a bit like Portishead, but this is a bit less Portishead and more Duke Ellington. As it says, “Minor Swing.” But with some good contemporary beats, nice work on the turntable, very danceable.
6. “Sound and Vision” by David Bowie. Since I posted this song with the dance interpretation by Pans People, it struck me how much I still like it after 31 years. David Bowie’s Low became my favorite album when it came out, when I was about 15 years old, and this was probably my favorite song from that album. And all through the years, I never went through any phases when I said to myself, no, I can’t listen to that stuff right now – I always liked it. That’s quite remarkable… I guess I always liked the fact that it’s kind of avant garde but at the same time so catchy, spacey but melodic, a little edgy but pretty damn ambient too. (Eno’s collaboration on this album probably helped there.) Plus, I always liked the lyrics, about sitting alone in a room in solitude with the blinds drawn, waiting for sound and vision… Not your usual pop music material by any means. But sitting alone in my room with the blinds drawn is actually something I’ve done quite a few times in my life.
7. “Gori Gori Kudi” by Bally Sagoo (sung by Shreya Ghoshal) from a movie that he directed last year called Sajna ve Sajna. For this song, Sagoo ripped off most of Reshmi Salwar Kurta Jaali Ka from the 1957 film Naya Daur and added a modern Punjabi beat. That bothered some people (as heavy sampling often does); it doesn’t really bother me. And unlike the vast majority of remakes and remixes of old Bollywood songs (at least among those I’ve heard), I actually find it as enjoyable to listen to as the original. (By the way, I wish I could find a full video for this, but I can only find a snippet. The song is easily searchable and downloadable for free, especially if you’re subscribed to something (I dowload some of my filmi music through Cool Toad), but it’s probably advisable to have a pop-up blocker and anti-virus detector.)
Now I’m supposed to tag seven people… Well, I don’t really expect everybody or even anybody to take me up on this, so no need to worry about any expectations, but I also might as well at least tag blogs that have appropriate formats and might be able to make room for this sort of thing. So, my favorite Bollywood blogs are out (I don’t think they would do this sort of thing), though if any of my favorite Bollywood bloggers want to pick this up, that’s fine. Meanwhile, for now, I’m going to tag (and I’m listing by first names here, since that too seems to be part of the game): James, Anda, Mark, Ellen 9, Transpontine, Helen, and Chuck.
A very nice thing to find for Madhuri Dixit’s birthday… I like this stage show a lot. I might even like these songs more in the stage show than in the original film scenes.
Tamma Tamma:
Key Sera: