I can’t believe that I found a copy of this on YouTube with English subtitles: Do Bigha Zamin! It’s been up for over two years, so I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. I have a DVD copy, but the YouTube version actually looks better than my copy (which is obviously not very good – and I think it’s gotten very scratched up as well). If you haven’t seen this movie, of course I recommend that you do. Here is one of my favorite parts:
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I did not know about this song or the movie Nagina before. Googling around, I found this strange (to me) article
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC43folder/NaginaConversations.html#n
The above comment is misplaced. It is meant for the next post.
Hi, Swarup. I haven’t read the article yet, but I can tell you that part of the music for this dance comes from the famous Hemant Kumar soundtrack for Nagin, (1954), starring Vyjayanthimala. There is also a film called Nagina, made in the miid ’80s, starring Sridevi, which involves major snake dances, worship, etc. But as someone actually told me here a while back, “Nagina” doesn’t mean snake; it means gem (right?) (And there is a magic, power-giving gem at the center of that plot, as I recall.) But since the music that I recognize is from Nagin and “Nagin” is the word for snake, I am thinking that maybe the Mayuri ensemble got confused regarding which word to use? .
Richard,
The music from Nagin is used in several films later on; I do not know whether it was common before. The words ‘ main teri dushman’ are from the Nagina song which also seems to be a hit, according to the Wikipedia article. I think, but am not sure, Nagina is used in the film for snake- woman, though the original meaning in Arabic(?) is gem.