Listen to Marhaba Jaanam

Sheesha in the Jazz and Taj Mahal use less percussion than usual, and there is some breathing space given to the instruments. Unfortunately, it is also too slow to really appreciate the talents of the musicians or to stay with the song long enough to soak it in.

Listen to Taj Mahal

In my review of Confluence I and II, I noted that Confluence II went darker and more electronica than Confluence I. Despite losing Clayderman and adding on a classical player from across the ocean, the electronica-style fusion continues to take over in Confluence III to the point that it is difficult detect much genuine Egyptian-ness in the album as a whole.

To wash out that vague feeling of elevator music, I’d highly suggest listening to the piece below from when Rahul Sharma did fusion of the kind that you could rock to.

Listen to an edited version of Garhwal Himalayas from the album ‘Mountain Trail’

One reason might be that Google is simply linking to the search results of music indexing services like Imeem, Rhapsody, Pandora and American media giants like EMI, Sony, Universal & WB – none of whom are known especially for carrying desi music. Or, perhaps, the prolific uploading industry responsible for the multitudes of [insert your Indian language here] mp3 files out there may not have bothered to tag it well enough for the Google spiders to find them.

We’ll see. If we know anything about Google, we know they’ll be in everyone’s music business given a few years.

Here are some links for your enjoyment. [Google Music Search] [CNet Article Link]

And some sample queries.

Missed the boat on Shankar and Sonu…

Searching for London Dreams and Jodhaa Akbar didn’t get me anywhere either, music-wise. I just got the official websites for both.

Getting hotter…

Home run!

Overall Album:

Picks: Actually, all of them. The vibe of this album is of one big concert. Either you’ll like the vibe and enjoy the entire album or dismiss it as monotonous. I’d recommend giving it a try because you’ll hear some promising new male singers on whom Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy have built a lush, high-energy album.

Music Director: Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy

Lyricist: Prasoon Joshi

I’ll gladly take back the complaints I issued for the dismal album that was Short Kut. Because, apparently, S-E-L saved up their energy and singing power for this one.

London Dreams is one large uninterrupted dose of rock, frenzied electric guitar riffs, percussion that will not let up and almost all male singers singing in pitches that will wear you out if you tried to sing along. It’s the kind of music that, when the song ends, leaves you exhausted from having tapped your foot along with the beat. The film is about the journey of two men, one of the kind that has to work hard to be famous and another that has fame dropped on him purely for being the more charismatic of the two, and Asin mucking it up between the two of them. I’ll let you work out who is who among the two men, but I’m hoping that London Dreams can bring back the magic that happened the last time Salman and Ajay were together on screen.

The album begins with Barson Yaaron by Vishal Dadlani and Roop Kumar Rathod – that combination being novel enough, Roop Kumar Rathod gets to sing his lungs out at the top of the register while Vishal honors his rock roots completely. Man Ko Ati Bhavey is Shankar Mahadevan’s party, a song entirely in hindi except for one iteration of the word ‘Bebe’ as ‘Baby’ (trivia for you…) and contains delightful phrases like “Main hoon sampoorna magan”. That every chorus ends in “Hai re Hai” should give you an idea of the overall point of the song. No? Here’s Salman grooving to it.

Next up, Tapkey Masti by a new singer named Feroz Khan (a quick search on Google shows links to some Punjabi singer, might be the same guy). When I heard this song the first time, I thought, Sukhwinder Singh, but better. He has the kind of full-throated reach that Sukhwinder Singh used much to his advantage in the famous Chaiyya Chaiyya, and is able to add extra ornamentation even at the very high notes. He makes a return appearance in the Tapkey Masti (Remix) which is a good listen as well.

Next, my favorite, Khanabadosh for the concert-song feel, the lyrics about dreams and hopes and ambitions, and the wonderful new singer named Mohan. The best comparison I can find for him, is Adnan Sami but more full-throated. He does a beautiful job of taking you along on the same journey as that of the characters in the film. The anthem-like treatment of Khanabadosh – Google tells me it’s a “Sufi word meaning one who carries his house on his shoulders”, sweet! – with the chorus echoing almost every phrase the singer sings, lulls you into this head-bobbing state with a tune that’s many-layered and memorable. Khanabadosh (Remix) distinguishes itself with a crisper beat and more synthesizer melodies layered on Mohan’s singing.

Khwab Jo is a melodic, melancholy song performed very well by Shankar Mahadevan and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Both Shankar and Rahat get a chance to throw in ornamentation, hit high notes comfortably and create this lush song that still resonates after the song has ended.  Yaari Bina is slightly an odd-duck – Roop Kumar Rathod, accompanied by Milind (new guy?), starts off what sounds like a typical Sufi number. Then it transitions to what sounds like a typical Yash Raj Punjabi number meandering along on the lower register, then Roop Kumar Rathod starts belting it out in the higher registers to a more pronounced Bhangra beat. Sort of meh, but the singing is good as always. It sounds like the kind of pointless high-register singing that populated Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

Jashn Hai Jeet Ka is one of the two anguished songs in the album, performed by another new singer Abhijeet Ghoshal (who is he, and is he related to the other Ghoshal..? Google couldn’t tell me). You could draw a parallel between this song and Main Kya Hoon from Love Aaj Kal. Shola Shola is the second of the anguished songs, and is sung by the fifth new singer of the album (if you’re keeping count), Zubeen Garg. The theme of the song seems to be to “egg the flames on”, and if you read the movie preview as I have, you might guess that it is about the widening rift between the two principal characters. Zubeen puts in great ornamentation in the song, making the song a good listen.

This is not another Rock On – there are a lot of pop and Bhangra sensibilities to the songs which necessarily make London Dreams different from the rock genre that informed Rock On. Farhan Akhtar could do only so much in the songs he sang for Rock On, but here, there are plenty of very talented singers pretend-singing to rapturous 10,000+ concert audiences. I look forward to the film, and I hope you guys have as good a time listening to the album as I did.

And if anyone digs up any info on any of the new singers, do let us know in the comments below.

Listen here / Purchase here on iTunes

And my excuse is entirely unoriginal, but ultimately true. It’s… erm.. work. I know! How could I possibly neglect my duties towards musical goodness while doing something so blasé as a job, right? Well – to be honest, my work actually got really interesting. I might tell you about it sometime, but let’s just say I got to indulge in a lot of geeky fun (read: data analysis). In my other life, I have degrees in business and finance, and I work in the financial industry. So, numbers + analysis = fun in my twisted world.

Okay, okay, getting back to music, here’s my ‘mea-culpa’ gift to y’all. Technically, it is courtesy of this very nice online retailer called Amazon, but since it’s free and I’m bringing it to you, please consider it my gift.

It’s a sampling of Turkish Hits (not Nits – eww – as you might think from looking at the cover. Those doggone graphic artists), for FREEEEE. The songs sound great, and if one of you knows how to pronounce the question marks, I’ll be eternally grateful. Download for free here.

PS – If you come by the site, you’ll notice a Twitter Feed on the right panel. That’s the new Music This! Twitter Feed - the primary purpose of which is to aggregate all the free, legal music out there. Go here for a complete list of websites and feeds that you can check out and subscribe to in your RSS reader. Or, just follow my Twitter Feed (@musicthis).

Toodles!

Update: The question marks become actual letters once you download and add them to your iTunes. I still don’t know how to pronounce them.

MeraMood.com has now added social networking features and made it possible to filter songs by actors and movies. Ability to filter by lyricists is, wisely, gone. The latest movies are now available for playback. MeraMood debuted an iPhone-compatible website a while back that, I must say, works impressively well. They’ve also added the ability to view videos as mentioned in one of the comments on the previous post. The site now takes feedback via a link on the top right, and has buttons for rating songs (thumbs up or down) and reporting songs that are not playing or are in the wrong category.

Since wishing aloud seems to work, I’d now like the ability to filter by jazz and classical-based songs, and by the film director. Perhaps filmi khandaans too? And while they’re at it, world peace.

While you wait for that to happen, I definitely recommend you check out the website for some sweet Hindi-film goodness.

You might have heard me express my dismay at the violent movements that the choreographer, apparently a man named Bosco, put chhote Nawab through for the filming of the song ‘Twist’ from Love Aaj Kal. Well. It turns out Bosco and Imtiaz Ali may have bitten off more than they could chew. Still, they made a valiant effort, and so did Pataudi. The best part of the video starts at 03:24.

More ‘Making-of’ videos from the film are on Eros’ Youtube Channel here, here and here. Must say, Saif looks bilkul dashing as a Sardar. His bhangda-paa-ing, in the promotional video for ‘Aahun Aahun’ is worth a mention. Before you say anything about one particular step in the video – in Saif’s defense, the roti-belan step (you’ll see) would make the best of the dancers look ridiculous.

Quote of the week? Saif, sipping coffee in a dimly lit green-room, thinks about his day trying to Twist. “I wish I’d rehearsed it.” Pause. Puzzled expression. “I did rehearse it…”

Overall Album:

Picks: For the enjoyable qawwali+Gujarati+item number vibe, Mareeze Mohabbat. And, Kal Nau Baje for the beautiful singing, the cute lyrics and the stunning Khuda-Jaane style picturization. Is that the same beach as Khuda Jaane?

Music Director: Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy

Lyricist: Javed Akhtar

Listen here

This is a disappointing trend. I get that Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy need a good payday now and then, but I really wish they would stop doing music for action / slapstick comedy films. It doesn’t give them an opportunity to make music that can leap off the screen and remain as a legacy on its own. Rahman has been managing this quite well for a long time – people have long since forgotten the stories of the films, the box-office flops, the actors of the day that set the box-office on fire, but people still discuss the music he created. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy? I am not hearing the magic of a Taare Zameen Par or Rock On or going farther back, Armaan, Dil Chahta Hai, Mission Kashmir, Rockford, even Dus? Why create music for films like Ek Aur Ek Gyarah, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, Heyy Baby, 13B/Yavarum Nalam or Sikander? Sigh.

The songs in this film are good enough, and should work for the comedy/drama canvas populated by Arshad Warsi, Akshaye Khanna and Amrita Rao. The promos of the film made me suspect it is a remake of Prakash Raj’s Tamil film Vellithirai (“Silver Screen”). I wasn’t too far off. Wikipedia claims that Short Kut is a remake of Malayalam film Udayananu Tharam, which in turn is inspired in part by a Hollywood film, Bowfinger. Apparently, Vellithirai is also a remake of Malayalam film Udayananu Tharam. So… you may rest assured that the script is good since so many wish to make and remake it. The execution on the other hand…

The music features two ‘dance number’ songs, two corresponding remixes, one qawwali and one slow song.

Patli Gali follows a mildly hip-hop beat but with Mumbaiyya street lyrics – the end product sounding remarkably like Break Free, the title song of Krazzy 4 (music by the Rajesh Roshan) or Jhoom Barabar Jhoom in style.

Mareeze Mohabbat, interestingly, sounds like a combination of an item number (sultry female voice et al), a qawwali and a hip-hop number, but the dhol and the occasional Gujarati embellishments round it off to give it a pretty good effect. Stylistically, it’s similar to Baawre from Luck By Chance, although considerably slower. The sultry voice deserves mention here – and has a sultry face to boot. The name behind the voice would be that of Nikita Nigam, the sister of one very famous Niigaam saahab. Though, given her voice, I do wish her the best not getting typecasted like Sunidhi Chauhan. The Gujarati lines are courtesy of Kirti Sargathia, presumably the brother of Karsan Sargathia who was credited for a few songs in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

The remixes for these two songs, unfortunately, muffle the hearty dhols and tablas and take away substantially from the main appeal of the songs.

Upping the frenzied pace of the album is Kyon Hota Hai Dil Deewana with Shreya Ghoshal and Javed Ali. The style is similar to Tum Se Milke Dil Ka Hai Jo Haal from Main Hoon Na, with declarations of love and quickening of heart beats discussed over fast, qawwali-style clapping and percussion.

The one slow song, Kal Nau Baje is a nice respite from the other songs and features the illustrious bhai of Nikita Nigam after what seems like an eternity. Sonu Nigam and Alka Yagnik do the whole lovey-dovey, throat-y thing and create a winning song that, despite my contrary opinions in the first paragraph, might achieve some permanence.

Listen/purchase here on iTunes.

Overall Album:

Picks: For the charming country riff, Chor Bazaari. Good effort for a fresh remix of the Nagin anthem on Twist (Remix). Mohit Chauhan for belting out a real smooth Dooriyan, and any time Raahat Fateh Ali Khan so much as appears in the liner notes, it’s a yes yes yes. This time around, for the jovial, Punjabi-flavored Aaj Din Chadheya.

Music Director: Pritam

Lyricist: Irshad Kamil

Listen here

Barring Mohit Chauhan and Raahat Fateh Ali Khan, this album sounds like a Bombay Vikings album. No idea why? Well, to the uninitiated, Neeraj Shridhar is the lead vocalist of Bombay Vikings, the Swedish-Indian group responsible for highly enjoyable Hinglish remixes of several songs. Neeraj Shridhar has since made a successful foray into Hindi film singing – although I don’t think he has been given songs that take him beyond (refer to Tera Mera Pyar feat. Falguni Pathak) the usual party numbers directed his way. This is one such album.

The song Aahun Aahun starts off promisingly enough – there is a traditional voice singing ‘Kadi te hassi bol ve’ with some good beats similar to the kind that Vishal-Dadlani like to use, with some odd clucking sounds thrown in for effect. Hey.. it sounds like a well done remix so far. Then Neeraj Shridhar sings a bit. Still not bad. Then the Aahun Aahuns start. Thirteen. Gritting teeth. C’mon, Irshad Kamil, three is okay, six is excessive, but thirteen in a row is you not coming up with something smarter for a sardar-y Saif to mouth.

Twist is another number that reminds me of Vishal-Shekhar’s Ab To Forever from Ta Ra Rum Pum. The song borrows the Nagin riff (the whole sapera bit), overlays beats, and gets Neeraj Shridhar singing the words We Twist, We Twist, again in a row, 16 times. I’ll let you come to your conclusions, but in the first listen this repetition annoyed me considerably, coming so soon after Aahun Aahun. However, the lively take of the Nagin riff sounds fresh and you get into it. This is one case where I prefer the Remix to the original.

Allow me one dismayed question to the choreographer – why are you making Saif do such intensive dancing? He can’t dance! No. Don’t make him do it, please. Don’t make royals sweat! Put him in tight surf-wear t-shirts, jeans and a swagger and we’re good.

Next up, Chor Bazaari – a charming song, with a happy guitar riff that sounds like some country song I have heard but can’t put a finger on. The beats are swinging, Neeraj Shridhar and Sunidhi Chauhan are back for the party, the lyrics are fun and so is the picturization. Now that I think of it, the song actually has the exact beats as a Garba song (teen taali, specifically, slightly faster than usual). Cool.

Thoda Thoda Pyar is your typical shaadi-gaana song, about a girl’s uncertainty regarding her future husband. With the pronounced Punjabi stylings, the song sounds like a pinch of giddha-style boliyan combined with the style of Sajanji Ghar Aaye (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) or Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai (Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai).

Main Kya Hoon by K.K. is similar in content, style and rhythm to Udne Do from the film Taxi No. 9-2-11 – fast-paced, electronica and meant for anguished gazing at the wall.

Mohit Chauhan brings the track Dooriyan to a place of lilting melody, the kind that Kuch Khaas (also by him) achieved in Fashion. His style of singing is perhaps the more modern version of a Ghazal and I hope he gets more songs like this. Raahat Fateh Ali Khan on the other hand, manages to shed his usual Sufi sound for a more earthy Punjabi number, Aaj Din Chadheya.

I’ll leave you with this thought – as much as Irshad Kamil’s repetitive lyrics get on your nerves after a few listens, imagine how good they’ll sound with Deepika Padukone flashing you her.. dimples in the swingin’ songs. One thing the girl can do well is pose, and like Om Shanti Om and Bachna Ae Haseeno, I’m convinced the songs with her will be a treat to watch.

Bring it on, Imtiaz.

For some song-inspiration-related infamy, check out itwofs.com (June 28th entry).

Listen/purchase here (iTunes link).

Overall Album: 

Picks: For a light, breezy effect in the same vein as Life in a Metro, Hai Junoon, Mere Sang and Tune Jo Na Kaha. For fans of haunting instrumentals, try Sam’s Theme.

Music Director: Pritam (but you knew that, once I mentioned Life in a Metro)

Lyricist: Sandeep Srivastava, Junaid Wasi

Listen here

I’ve apparently been under a rock, transfixed by other world events, and didn’t notice that the flow of Hindi music albums has started again. The first music album I happened to catch was New York. But then, atypically, I saw the movie first before listening to the album on its own. So, in all honesty, I might be seeing John Abraham and Neil Nitin Mukesh cavorting (with Katrina, silly!) when I listen to the songs. Here’s a music review.

This album has three breezy songs, one Sufi-ish track, two remixes and two instrumental themes. If you mixed the three breezy songs on this album into a playlist containing Life In A Metro songs, you won’t be able to tell the difference. I suppose that deserves a lower rating, but the breezy songs are good because of a) K.K. b) Sunidhi Chauhan and c) Mohit Chauhan (yes, Masakali). Sam’s Theme gains power because of the specific scene it is in, but the tune is pretty good too. I didn’t care much for Pankaj Awasthi’s Sufi-ish rendition of Aye Saaye Mere. Junaid Wasi composes New York Theme which plays to the topic of the film, sounds sinister, and has a prominently rock take.

Worth mentioning, of course, is the fact that Hai Junoon (Youtube link) is an inspiration from Indonesian band Samson’s track titled Neluri Lelaki (Youtube link), as reported by itwofs.com. Go to itwofs’s main page or the one dedicated to Pritam’s lifts (scroll down to #49) to get the full scoop on that. The original and Pritam’s version are both good.

The two remixes are a waste of space.

Listen and buy here on Amazon.

A Jimi Hendrix version that leaves me speechless. Whitney Houston belting it out like no one else. Dixie Chicks with those harmonies. Some very brave men and women singing for the country they serve – beautiful and simple, like mom’s daal.

Yahoo News talks about how other countries celebrate their Independence. EatPes makes a unique fireworks video that’s a must see. So are a lot of other videos on his site. NatGeo has a one hour special on how major fireworks displays are organized – I especially enjoyed this bit about the anatomy of a firework and the computer chips that can now be used to time the firing.

For numbers aficionados, the U.S. Census bureau has some fun facts (with a typo, there’s a ‘B’ where there should be an ‘M’ – you’ll see), so does CNN (a short video and an article). The lesson to be learned it seems is that close to $1 billion is goin’ up in brilliant colors and smoke tonight!

Have a good weekend.

Couple of videos in tribute to musical legends who have passed on recently.

RIP. The world of music will miss you.

Shankar Mahadevan singing, composing – very cool

Shankar Mahadevan singing, composing, improvising with the likes of Zakir Hussain, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Taufiq Qureshi, Sivamani and others – priceless! Read on. Scroll all the way down for just the links.

Remember Shakti

Most Indian folks I have met, that happen to be into Indian fusion, have had the requisite reverence in their eyes when mentioning Shakti, the landmark fusion band from the 70s featuring Zakir Hussain, John McLaughlin, L. Shankar, Vikku Vinayakram. Years later, the inimitable Zakir Hussain decided to do a reboot and organized a concert titled ‘Remember Shakti’ and invited, who else, Pt. Shivkumar Sharma, Shankar Mahadevan, mandolin player U. Shrinivas and Vikku Vinayakram’s son V. Selvaganesh, also a ghatam player. Needless to say, the same reverence can be had for their albums as well, although the tracks are less a fusion of genres than of artists from various genres. Here’s a sample. For other album titles, check out the Wikipedia page – the piece below is from the album Saturday Night in Bombay.

Giriraj Sudha, Saturday Night in Bombay by Remember Shakti.

To catch the concert live, check out this video hosted on Google Videos. Shankar’s rendition of Giriraj Sudha seems to be more in tune (yes, he occasionally loses a note or two when performing live, but I firmly believe he makes up for it by putting himself out there and experimenting with a variety of languages and genres)

Silk World Music Group

Now, I had an interesting moment discovering that Shankar played as part of a collection of artists called Silk World Music Group.

I was dining at an upscale-ish Indian restaurant once – the kind that combines 1940s British decor with odd kitschy artifacts like large brass elephants, selectively strewn Buddha statues and uncomfortable wooden benches with cushions stuck to the top. The restaurant has since closed, but I digress. Over dinner, I was having a heated discussion with my friends about something, and heard a fusion-y santoor piece play over the speakers. By this time, I was already into Rahul Sharma’s various fusion albums, and thought it sounded like him, so I accosted the receptionist and ferreted out the name of the CD. That CD was ’Passage to India: Fusion India’.  Now, this is what the cover of the album looks like.

Ignore the stereotypical images for a moment. Mentally flip the CD over and imagine scanning the playlist, seeing Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma and other famous names, and finally Silk World Music Group, not knowing why they get to sit with the cool people. Then imagine popping the CD in and getting to the track by Silk World Music Group. A beautiful alaap begins, and you freeze in your tracks (metaphorically). Shankar Mahadevan! Frenzied googling follows, with subsequent discovery that Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy, Shivamani, Louis Banks, Karl Peters are all part of Silk World Music Group.

In addition to including their tracks on the Fusion India albums, Silk World Music Group also released an album titled ‘Pure Silk‘, containing longer, live versions of the aforementioned tracks and one additional track – an excellent 14 minute Jugalbandi (Duet) featuring Satish Vyas on santoor and Vijay Ghate on tabla in addition to the usual gang. Here is the Jugalbandi track for your enjoyment. Go over to Amazon.com (Vol 1, Vol 2) to listen to more previews.

Jugalbandi (Duet), Pure Silk by Mynta

Meanwhile, as I was discovering these bands, Shankar was out there sneaking around in another musical collaboration, this time with Swedish musicians. The name of this band is Mynta.

Question.. Where does Shankar find the time and energy to do three fusion bands, a full-time singing career, a full-time composing career, a full-time Indian Idol judging career and be a parent and husband, and I can’t find any to do my laundry and wash my car?

Mynta

Mynta is a Swedish-Indian fusion band (in their words, ‘Swedish Ice and Indian Spice’ ) featuring Fazal Qureshi and several Swedish and North-American musicians as regulars and Shankar Mahadevan as a collaborator on the more recent albums. Among the Swedish regulars are Max Ahman playing the acoustic guitar, Christian Paulin on the electric bass and Sebastian Printz-Werner on percussion. The sole American, Dallas Smith, plays the flute, soprano, clarinet and indian flute. Cuban violin player Santiago Jimenez rounds out the strings.

Mynta plays, for the most part, Indian Classical Fusion, despite the claims of Swedish / Nordic influence. Part of the reason may be that the Swedish musicians love Indian music almost as much as the Indian musicians do, but more likely, the sounds of tabla or Indian alaap tend to overpower all other instruments and sounds and make it difficult to categorize as anything but Indian fusion. That said, the string and woodwind solos, whenever they come about, are truly impressive and add to the album.

Mynta’s music is occasionally characterized as jazz, but I think they call it jazz as a fall-back word since Indian Classical Instrumental Western Fusion or any variation thereof is a mouthful. This guy seems to have taken deep offense at Mynta’s latest offering Meetings In India being categorized as jazz, but I don’t fault him. I once heard a live performance of Latin jazz by this guy, and thought it sounded like a, what does he call it, polyrhythmic cacophony. And someone gave that musician a Grammy, no less. Kidding aside, Mynta explores several genres, mixing and matching them at will and consequently incurring the jazz label.

Links

Quite unfathomably, Mynta’s discography is not entirely available online in one place – not iTunes, eMusic or Amazon. Of the twelve albums released by Mynta, two albums are available on iTunes USA (opens in iTunes), an additional album if you look at iTunes Sweden (restricted to Swedish buyers, of course), the same two on eMusic and a comparatively earth-shattering five albums on Amazon Downloads. But, fear not – if you would like to tentatively dip your toes in the pool or have principles against buying music like some friends of mine, feel free to go over to Mynta’s website, and click on ‘Music’. You will find a link for streaming radio featuring an excellent sampling of Mynta’s music, several free tracks from their latest album Meeting In India and links to .ram files for a few other featured albums. Here’s one of the tracks in the album ‘First Summers’.

Rapatal, First Summers by Mynta

All the bands and albums I’ve mentioned in this post, in one place:

• The original, Shakti (link)
• The new, Remember Shakti (link) | Album – Saturday Night in Bombay (link)
• Silk World Music Group, with S-E-L, Louis Banks, Sivamani (link) | Album – Passage to India: Fusion India, Pure Silk (use the link above)
• Mynta, with Fazal Qureshi and Swedish+American musicians (link) | Album – First Summer, Hot Days, Hot Madras, Teabreak, Nandu’s Dance etc and more (link)
• My earlier post on excellent sites where you can discover fusion music

1. Indienjazz.De (link) – This comprehensive German website lists discographies for most of the contemporary classical and film musicians who also have thriving careers in fusion. If the language stumps you, try this link by way of Google Translate. The page titled MusikerInnen links to individual pages for each artist, cross referenced to the albums in which they have performed. Nice!

2. Lutins.org (link) – This website goes a lot deeper in the Classical Fusion music catalog and covers a lot more ground beyond just the mainstream artists. There are a ton of artists that I expect I will sift through over time. Compared to IndienJazz.de, Lutins.org has a much larger database, therefore quite understandably, the CD listing information is not as thorough.

3. One World Trading Group (link) – The purpose of this website seems to be both editorial content and sales, and they sell an odd assortment of things (kites, flutes, music CDs and dance DVDs). Quirkiness apart, the website has an excellent, very well-edited selection of Fusion, Trance, Yoga, Folk, Classical and several more genres. Here are page 1 and page 2 of their Fusion music recommendations. Definitely check out the home page for some nice goodies, like sneak peek videos and .m3u playlists.

4. IndiaBeat.in (link) – Formed as a distribution label in 2006, IndiaBeat is a source for artist bios, editorial picks, interviews and a few articles, but most uniquely, they signed up with Live365 to form a Indo-Jazz fusion station broadcast live over the internet.

5. eMusic.com (link) – Quite unwittingly, eMusic has become my source for discovering obscure albums by Indian classical musicians, both in the traditional classic genre and the fusion genre. New York-based indie label The Orchard has partnered up with several Indian indie labels like SaReGaMa, Music Today and Navras Records that routinely release albums by Indian classical musicians, making an enviable collection of top-notch music available to those of us interested in Indian fusion.

Go forth and discover! And leave a comment if you find something I might like.

Okay – there are some strings attached. You need to be on Facebook (who isn’t?), have iTunes installed on your computer, and um, have an Apple account. I think you need to be in the United States as well. You also need to join the Apple Students Group on Facebook, publicly announcing to your near and dear friends that you have joined the leagues of Apple fanboys and fangirls all over the world, inviting the immediate ire of each and every.. err… oh wait, you can race back to your profile, find the notification and hit ‘Remove’. It’s all good!

If you’ve got all that down pat, head on over to this link, request a redeem code and download a fresh, juicy, organic, gluten-free set of 20 World Music songs from exotic places like Somalia, Brazil, Mexico, a little country called India.

Here’s a cheat-sheet of what you’ll find in the download, and some of my favorites from the set.

Lal Meri - Lal Meri by Lal Meri (not Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, but a female singer)
Sebero - Mali Koura by Issa Bagayogo
Journey – 3 Cities by Bombay Dub Orchestra
Dounia – Tchamantché by Rokia Traoré
Nunca Mais - After the Carnaval by Zuco 103
Maintenant – Extraordinary Rendition by Rupa and The April Fishes
Rio - Rio by Aterciopelados
Kalise - Alegranza by El Guincho
La Luz del Ritmo - La Luz del Ritmo by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Woman of the Well – Hear Globally by A Cumbancha Collection
Alocatel – Soy Sauce by Mexican Institute of Sound
Sufi Bhakti – Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide Guitar by Debashish Bhattacharya
La Vida Tombola - La Vida Tombola EP by Manu Chao
Wavin’ Flag – Troubadour by K’naan
La Canoa – La Canoa by Susana Baca
Pa’ Bailar – Mar Dulce by Bajofondo

My Picks -

I bought Rokia Traoré‘s album titled Tchamantché soon after NPR showcased the artist here. Dounia happens to be one of the tracks I really liked from the album. Transposed in this setting, it is actually a pretty good representative of all the other songs in the selection, so feel free to give it a listen on the NPR link, before starting the download. The song that totally got me swayin’ though, was Wavin’ Flag by K’naan. Wikipedia tells me he is of the Bob Marley + rapper + hip-hop + all-round American musician genre. I agree. The song has a reggae vibe, but the tune is catchy like pop, so it sounds to me like a reggae anthem song. I promise it’ll have you tapping your feet. Maintenant by Rupa & The April Fishes, entirely in French, is another track that stood out. It mostly has a Latin rhythm, but with a comic edge to it which makes for an engaging listen.

You knew this was going to happen. Now we’ll have to fight with the rest of the US population for tickets to Rahman’s concerts.

In related hilarity,

Rahman’s website has a PR story about iTunes created a ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ room containing audio, video, celebrity playlists, podcasts and audiobooks related to the film. Follow the link, and notice Vikas Swarup’s novel has now gotten a forced re-branding. It’s original title is now in parentheses, displaced unceremoniously by Slumdog Millionaire (iTunes link).

I say this with loving sarcasm, but isn’t it time the publishers force Swarup to jot down the screenplay word-for-word and release it as the original Slumdog Millionaire book?

The site’s called Meramood.com, and it makes good headway in allowing users to cobble together Hindi music playlists based on ‘moods’ – tags, essentially, such as the 70s, 80s, 90s, romantic, party and a couple of others. The interface provides for the fastest playlist-mixing experience I’ve had so far, even better than Pandora or Playlist.com. Select the moods from the dropdowns, or pick singers, lyricists and music composers, click ‘Mix It’ on the box to the right, and it starts playing immediately. 

The simplicity of the process is a big plus, but I can see that users might eventually wear thin of not being able to save/publish their awesome playlists or announce them through one of the social networking features (digg, tweet, post on facebook, publish). The site still has a long way to go from its launch in April 2009, but judging by the number of songs played going from over 2,000 to over 5,000 in a span of one week, I’d say they’re doing something right.

I might ask for a few additional moods like bhangra, qawwali/mujra and classical, and a few other tagging categories like by actor(s), film director just to make the filtering experience more unique to the listener.

Check it out, and put down your thoughts/ideas/suggestions here. How do you think it can be developed going forward?

UPDATE (Aug 2009): New features on MeraMood

Both Aa Dekhen Zara and Kal Kissne Dekha featuring star-sons Neil Nitin Mukesh and Jackky (?) Bhagnani belong firmly in the Bollywood Filmi Music category – there are party songs, formulaic romantic songs that use your garden-variety typical Urdu words to sound romantic (jannat, bandagi, mohabbat, that sort of thing), a couple of item numbers with opportunity for jhatka-matkas and even a Sufi-ish song thrown in for effect.

Before I proceed, let me just say that I am a shameless fan of formulaic party numbers – I bow to the power of percussion, and am perfectly content to tune out the inane lyrics and wordplay, even the melody on occasion and blast it loud and proud, especially when I’m driving on a road trip.

Aa Dekhen Zara

Music Director(s) – Gourov Dasgupta, Pritam Chakraborty
Lyricist(s) – Sheershak Anand, Irshad Kamil, Syed Gulrez, Prashant Pandey
Listen here

From that perspective, the title song Aa Dekhen Zara is a clear winner. The song manages to throw in some bharatanatyam action (not Urdu, see update below) along with the percussion, and although I haven’t seen the video, I truly hope they bust out with some pseudo-traditional moves just to honor the music. Of course, the fact that our tall, pale hero has actually sung the song manages to impress me even more. Clearly some (some) of that vocal heritage has come through for Neil Nitin Mukesh, as with some electronic assistance, he manages to sound like Vishal (of Vishal-Shekhar fame).

The other song worth a mention in this album is Gazab, with Sunidhi Chauhan and Shaan doing their very best ‘gajab-bhaiyyo-rama’ deal in between conventional Hindi lyrics and a swingy Latin rhythm. If not for the shock of hearing gaon-style lyrics in between all the percussion, this song may not have been catchy but the lyrics (as such) redeem the song.

UPDATE: I noticed that this post was getting hits from folks searching for ‘Urdu words in Aa Dekhen Zara‘ – just for clarification, the “Theem Theem Tarikita.. ” sequence is a series of verbal notations used in Indian classical music + dance forms in place of beats from a percussion instrument. Specifically, they are called ‘tabla bols’ (literal translation – “tabla-sayings”) and each verbal notation has a corresponding action on the tabla associated with it. Ustad Zakir Hussain might be able to explain it a tad better than I can – here’s a demonstration on YouTube. The four-part Tabla-Taal demo is a great watch, although it is in Hindi and seems to have been shot decades ago.

Kal Kissne Dekha

Music Director – Sajid Wajid
Lyricist – Sameer
Listen here

I am convinced I have heard the title song Kal Kissne Dekha somewhere before. Aside from the déjà vu feeling, Shaan does a good job and is helped along by some desi-rapping, sufficient percussion and some manner of brass instrument. Don’t go for the remix – someone thought to add a weird buzzing sound for effect, and it ends up sounding like a very big swarm of angry bees.

I haven’t yet made up my mind on Soniye Billori – percussion, Punjabi lyrics, English lyrics, Hindi lyrics, Pop, little Arabic riffs and Sonu Nigam all fight for attention. Ultimately, you can bop your head to it, so I guess it passes.

Tere Bina Lagta Nahin Jiya sung by Wajid, really sounds like an Atif Aslam song. If you aren’t too picky about that sort of thing, this song could easily stand in for some of the others Atif’s sung, albeit, Wajid is actually in tune.  Songs like Aasman Jhuk Gaya and Aalam Guzarne Ko sound a little dated, like Kumar Sanu might’ve done a version of it back in the 90s.

Lounge mixes with Western Classical, Rock, Bhangra, Rajasthani folk and another song is launched on to the wedding processions music scene. Tauba Tera Jalwa, Tauba Tera Pyar. Tera Emosanal Atyachaar

Overall Album

Picks: Everything really, but definitely Hikknaal and Mahi Mennu to add to Jab We Met’s Mauja Hi Mauja and Nagada; Paayaliya for Hindustani Classical fusion done well, Yahi Meri Zindagi and Dil Mein Jaagi for happy romantic ballads, and Duniya and Nayan Tarse for some good hard-rock-fusion along the lines of Rock On’s Zehreelay.

Music Director: Amit Trivedi

Lyricist: Amitabh Bhattacharya, Shellee, Shruti Pathak, Mani

Listen here

I have a confession to make. When the music for Dev D launched last month, there was a lot of hype, many critics climbing over each other to declare the music a hit. I heard a couple of songs on a website, fast-forwarded to the middle (this is my usual acid-test) and found all kinds of discordant notes vying for attention with voices I hadn’t heard before, and I promptly fled with no plans to look back.

And then, a friend of mine recently asked me what I thought of the album. I try to be conscientious about recommendations, and I didn’t want to relay my feelings about this album without confirming them first. So, I got the songs, put them on my mp3 player, and went to work.

Sometime during the day, the songs started playing.

I was probably on the second song when I realized that the email I was writing was still hanging mid-sentence. I had stopped working, and started paying attention to the music. At which point, I realized this album needed another good listen.

And you know how this one ends. One good listen end to end, and I was completely sold. So here’s my review of Dev D.

On one of my web-search sprees soon after I finished listening to the entire album, I discovered this interview of the composer, Amit Trivedi, on Rediff. Something he says about his strategy in composing the pieces stuck with me, and I thought it really captured the various parts of the album well. Here’s the quote,

Devdas is called Dev D. His character is psychedelic so there are hard-rock songs. We have a lot of Punjabi and Awadhi songs for Paro. Chandramukhi is Chanda, a London-returned woman, so her songs have a western classical flavour.

Dev D’s Songs

Rock-based, heavy percussion, loud instrumentation

Emosanal Atyachaar, the crown prince of the album and the song that will be launched on hundreds of unsuspecting baraatis, is a curious mix of pedestrian Hinglish lyrics, loud trumpets and drums and features a fascinating rendition by Bony Chakravarthy, the singer also partly responsible for Delhi-6′s Kaala Bandar. This song has to be the funniest ‘sad’ song I have heard – the lyrics are very much along the lines of the typical ‘tum bewafa ho, sangdil ho’ et al, but the Hinglish achieves the opposite effect, instead drawing a humorous response. The Brass Band and the Rock version are sufficiently different from each other, with the Brass Band sounding more comical, and the Rock version going sufficiently into hard-rock, metal screaming to make it sound more serious.

Duniya has the composer himself stepping to the microphone, and features percussion combined with harmonium-like keyboarding. The lyrics ruminate about the world, and the percussion is fast, but the instrumentation in the background actually makes the song sound a lot like Indie pop/rock songs used in background scores for edgy art films here in the Western world.

Electronic guitar-like background sounds and slow percussion make Saali Khushi the kind of rock-ballad that underscores moments of anguish, confusion and deep thinking nicely. Amit Trivedi sings again, adding to the feel of the song. With Aankh Micholi, Amit Trivedi tries a slightly different, more urgent tack on the rock-ballad – the song maintains a low base for the most part, occasionally veering to the higher notes. Nayan Tarse has Amit doing another iteration of the anguished hard-rock ballad, with sufficient percussion on the higher notes to achieve head-banging for those that are so inclined.

Chanda’s Songs

Fusion songs with a Western classical, airy feel

With the background she’s been given I would expect Chanda’s Western-classical inspired songs to be dark, tempestuous, or at the very least, bitter. Interestingly, and perhaps on purpose, all the Western-classical songs in the album have the happiest, most hopeful sound to them.

Yahi Meri Zindagi, by Aditi Singh Sharma, is one such song. A pleasant classical introduction in piano, with Aditi’s soft, breathy singing and lyrics that liberally feature sun and light metaphors give this song an airy, positive feel seemingly free of cynicism and worries.

Having seen Rahman return to his Western Classical roots with Yuvvraaj, I have to say that I like Amit Trivedi’s western fusion attempt much better. There may be the added incentive that I don’t have to hear Salman’s annoying voice in Amit Trivedi’s songs, but the Western Classical sound seems more integrated in this album, while they stand out disparate and begging attention in Yuvvraaj.

Dil Mein Jaagi, by Mani, is another western-classical-inspired song, with optimistic lyrics (dreams, blue skies, clouds, bees, flowers, colors, life, spring) and even an opera-like interlude on occasion. The accompaniment is mostly on piano with percussion employed to build up to a high note.

Ek Hulchul Si, performed by Joi Barua, occasionally sounds like rock as a result of significant guitar strumming and percussion on the high notes, but I would venture that this song sounds to me like a fusion of 80s – 90s American Pop, some indie-electronic and some rock. I listen to the song, and a video of men in skinny jeans and open shirts, wearing funny boleros and walking around on the beach keeps replaying in my head.

A couple of instrumental Themes for Dev and Chanda also channel a western classical sound.

Paro’s Songs

Rajasthani folk tunes, Bhangra-themed songs

Dhol Yaara Dhol has Kshitij and Shilpa Rao (one of my favorites after their ‘Tose Naina Lage’ from Anwar) singing about a girl’s thoughts, wishes and experiences, replete with sarangi, ‘gaon’-style lyrics (mohe, ranjhana, preet, banwari…) and Kshitij punctuating the song with ‘Dhol yaara dhol’ every now and then.

The pair is back again for Ranjhana, a quiet, introspective song stripped bare of all percussion – just Shilpa Rao, sarangi and mellow piano with Kshitij occasionally piping in with a ‘Dhola re’.

Paayaliya, by Shruti Pathak, stands in to represent the Hindustani Classical element. I think I hear the sitar for the most part, some muffled shehnai and an occasional “My God” mixed into the proceedings. There are moments of Western Classical as well. The tune is refreshing, Shruti Pathak sings it well and the fusion overall is beautifully done.

Labh Janjua, everyone’s Bhangra favorite after Nagada, sings not one, but three Punjabi songs for this album. Mahi Mennu can most easily be described as Bhangra-pop. Labh Janjua declares, almost entirely in Punjabi, ‘Mahi menu nahi karna pyaar’, and there is percussion and the use of traditional Punjabi string-instruments for accompaniment. The percussion abates every now and then, so I expect this may not become too popular as a dance song. The Sad version of Mahi Mennu is mostly a quiet, slower version of the original with more ornamentation in the singing. Hikknaal begins with much the same harmonium-like sound (like Duniya), but the mixing of traditional Bhangra beats, percussion and a constant pace make this song more likely a candidate for dancing/clubbing.

Listen to the songs here on BollywoodHungama.com or buy from the iTunes Store.

The process is pretty straightforward. After installation, I opened up the software and a bare-bones window popped up. I drag-and-dropped the files I wanted analyzed into the blank window, and it started the analysis immediately.

The only bug that I saw was when I drag-and-dropped the music files, some of the songs had the year of release in the BPM column, even though when I looked up the file on iTunes, the BPM column was blank.

And the problem is, once MixMeister sees information in the BPM column, it skips that song and goes on to analyze the next song with a blank BPM field. This is easily fixed though – go to File > Rescan Files, and you are essentially fooling the application into thinking that you don’t like the BPM it assigned, therefore it should plow through all the songs again, even if the BPM field has numbers in them.

Going back to the process, once everything was scanned, I followed the directions on this page (copied for your edification below).

If you add BPM information to an mp3 file that was already in the iTunes library, to get those values to show in iTunes do the following: select/highlight all the songs in the album and choose Get Info; don’t make any changes; select OK. The BPM is now updated in iTunes.

Worked perfectly for me, and I didn’t have to shell out a dime!

Maintained valiantly by a blogger named Karthik, the website ItwoFS (link) has been chronicling since 2001 all manner of inspiration that Indian composers (yes, Rahman is one of them too) have helped themselves to.

Here are some highlights,

- Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy not being on that list. And judging from Karthik’s relief (Trivia, #32) on hearing Ehsaan confirm that they had nothing to do with Heyy Baby’s ‘inspired’ background music for one of its trailers, I’m hoping it stays that way.

- Vishal Shekhar taking pride in not being on that list (Coincidences, #14)

- Pritam getting hammered repeatedly, his track record for reusing his own songs being particularly funny (Trivia, #33, #52)

- Some cases of reverse plagiarism, with Indian composers inspiring foreign artists, notably Black Eyed Peas (Trivia)

- Sadly, finding out that ‘Tumse Milke’ is a lift (RD Burman).

Go ahead, give it a whirl and see if your favorite songs happen to be on this website.

Here’s the iTunes-ized, black silhouette version of Bachna Ae Haseeno’s title track, replete with jhatkas, matkas and someone wearing Ranbir’s goofy hat.

Before the unintentionally funny crisis struck, I had just found a follow-up to a favorite fusion album released by Rahul Sharma and Richard Clayderman. The original, titled Confluence was a good collection of santoor-piano fusion pieces, although a lot of them were inspired from folk tunes or were basic cover versions of Hindi film classics like Dekha Ek Khwab and Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan. Here’s a couple of snippets.

Confluence, Dekha Ek Khwab

Confluence, Together

This album’s take on old classic tunes is pleasant, in a oh-hey-i-know-that-song way, instead of sounding like elevator music. The santoor and piano do not achieve, nor do they ever attempt, a fusion at the level of a jugalbandhi. Rahul Sharma and Richard Clayderman work as two instruments in a band, taking turns or yielding limelight for specific riffs.

The follow-up album, not surprisingly titled Confluence II, however, takes a tangential approach to covering folk songs or Hindi films. The musicians explore broad themes like Dance of the Sufis or a darker, more lounge/electronica Dance Avec la Vie (Dance With Life). There is more use of percussion, which seems to lessen the impact of the confluence between piano and santoor and introduces a third leg to the proceedings.

Confluence II, Dance of the Sufis

Confluence II, Dance Avec la Vie

Confluence II reminded me more of Rahul Sharma’s mainstream Indo-pop release Maya where he attempted a much darker sound overall, and adopted a look in his music video that pandered to the classical-music-via-sexy-Indian-mysticism masses.

Looking at Rahul Sharma’s overall discography, I can understand that he has moved gradually from happy Kashmiri santoor tunes that the audiences are used to, to darker, heavier, lounge-meets-world fusion pieces, and in that spectrum, Confluence II fits in. But, just between Confluence and Confluence II, there is a wide rift in sound and feel, and if you were looking at Sharma+Clayderman as one band, and Confluence II as their sophomoric album, you might understandably be surprised at the bait-and-switch.

Amazon.com MP3 download links: Confluence, and Confluence II

But I digress. The photoshopping effort was worth it! I can create Vista error icons like nobody’s business. I should too, given my Mac/Apple-philia. Maybe I should try a stylized BSOD next. Music blogging will be back soon…

Awwwwh – nice picture. Here’s the link.

Some of my favorites from the article:

One of the world’s most prolific and celebrated cinematic composers and top-selling recording artists, Rahman has scored more than 110 films, starting with Roja (1993), which was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 best movie soundtracks. He is an equally avid student of cutting edge music and technology, and he uses both to turn out scores and songs that seamlessly combine classical Indian and Western sounds with modern vocal and instrumental styles.

The interviewer asks Rahman several questions about his process while composing music. I don’t think I have read any other article where Rahman lays it out quite so clearly.

I mostly don’t write to specifically defined cues. I just watch the film a couple of times, stop watching it, then write something that comes to my mind from the film. This way, when I try to sync the music, the results are that much more wholesome.

Here’s another one.

When I’m doing a song or any improvisation, most of the time I have a live input on it, with headphones on, and the performers in the booth. And I have a MIDI keyboard running simultaneously. So if I’m doing something that is partly Indian classical, I keep prompting the singer or the performer on the mike, and then keep playing it. After twenty minutes of that we sit down and edit the portions I like. Sometimes I work like that, but sometimes I do like the standard thing. You know, you have an idea and then you start playing more instruments, more Logic instruments.

Normally what happens is I have a rhythm, and it’s probably a loop. Then I do my vocals, and once I have a structure in place, I record with the singers and write lyrics. When I have the vocal recording, I then work in reverse for the music. We record live rhythms sometimes, and then start programming, and everything is complete. Then of course all the editing is done, and we go through the mastering. That’s pretty much it.

This response, which is a blatant plug for Apple’s music mixing software Logic, intrigued me.

I’ve looked at other programs but never cared to try them because the timing in Logic is the best. Friends used to ask, how do you get that timing? Most of them switched because of it. Songs are mostly about grooves, so when they hear something tight and nice, they want it, too.

Who… are these friends? As an active unpaid evangelizer and spokesperson for Apple, I would certainly love to know who else has been influenced into adopting the Apple lifestyle. And I assume Rahman’s friends are other famous people we know? Shankar, maybe? Tamil film industry composers?

[All credits to Apple, Rahman, interviewer Joe Cellini, photographer Sarangan and whoever else collaborated on this piece.]

Then NPR features Willie Nelson’s collaborative effort with the country band Asleep At The Wheel on his latest album, Willie and the Wheel featuring several western jazz classics, one of them being a track called Bring it On Down To My House. Ignore the bad visuals in the video below.

Then, one of the blogs I follow, Uber Desi, shows their appreciation of the latest desi contender on American Idol, Anoop “NoopDogg” Desai. Anoop is credited as singing Willie Nelson’s song, Always On My Mind. (Technically, it isn’t Willie Nelson’s song, as a few hundred artists have covered it)

Which, totally takes me back to the first time I heard that song, by the favorite Canadian import of mall-music directors, love-sick teenage girls and women over 35 (I am not sure I fit into either, but I do admit to having a few giddy moments of fandom), Michael Bublé. Here’s him singing Always On My Mind… [.. fading away into those gorgeous eyes... sigh...]

Favorite Tracks

Album: Kinsmen

They place a piece named Ganesha towards the end of the interview. I have included the snippet below.

Mahanthappa describes this piece as a blues piece based on a 21-beat (3×7) pattern, and with the “simultaneity of eastern and western, Indian and jazz happening at the same time”. Mahanthappa plays what he describes as a blues riff, while Gopalnath plays a more traditional raaga-based piece. I think I can identify what Gopalnath is playing as ‘Maha Ganapatim’ or a variation thereof, but I may be wrong. It is a strong confluence that works well, and while individually the tunes are well enough, the tracks add to each other.

Other tracks I like from various previews heard on the net are Kalyani (iTunes link), Convergence (Kinsmen) and Snake! (Click on the NPR Article Link to listen to full versions of both songs) as all three have a strong Karnatik flavor and a faster bebop-like style that I prefer over smooth jazz. Snake! begins with a nice Karnatik riff, but gets pretty intense as the track moves along, and I thought it evoked the feelings of a frenzied snake-dance really well. Not for the faint-hearted, and certainly not for your date evening.

Album: Apti

They feature the title track from his other album, Apti where he works with Pakistani guitarist Rez Abbasi, and tabla-player Dan Weiss (nice job!), at the beginning of the NPR interview mentioned in part 1 of this post. Snippet of the track titled Apti below.

I thought this track was a brilliant bebop-themed fusion of saxophone with tabla. Hearing the previews on iTunes, I liked this album overall better than Kinsmen as one, the tabla adds another layer of fusion, two, there are fewer smooth jazz tracks and three, the Delhi-ish theme evokes a kind of Indian Ocean + Jazz feel. Other tracks that stood out for me were Palika Market (iTunes link) and IIT (iTunes Link), the latter being the track he refers to while talking about beat variation in the interview (see part 1).

In summarizing both albums, I would say that I appreciate Mahanthappa’s talent in being able to understand Karnatik classical, and in being able to find the right way to meld his style of music with the new style he has learned. Overall, I still think, he favors either a bebop sound or a smooth jazz sound, and nothing in between. Bebop is most definitely an acquired taste, and isn’t meant for passive listening, so his music’s ability to win over traditional Karnatik classical fans might be a hit or miss. As a jazz fan, I totally appreciate what he’s done and look forward to hearing more.

Links:

NPR’s Fresh Air Interview link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101644613

Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Home Page: http://rudreshm.com/

As a fan of jazz in all forms, this fits very neatly with a kid-in-a-candy-store situation for me. [Grinning broadly]. Okay, here goes. I am transcribing and including snippets from NPR’s interviews for the benefit of this post, but please understand that all rights belong to NPR and Rudresh, and please listen to the original interview linked in the post.

Rudresh Mahanthappa

Courtesy: rudreshm.com

I first found out about Mahanthappa through a friend whose friend had stumbled on the artist’s MySpace page. Being that I distrust MySpace, I didn’t pay any heed. And then, NPR’s All Things Considered featured Mahanthappa in a 8 minute interview, which I heard completely and liked, but not loved. His work reminded me of bebop to a large extent, and the interview featured a couple of smooth jazz tracks, a couple of bebop-style jazz tracks and one track that prominently featured a collaboration with Kadri Gopalnath.

Then I heard this interview on NPR’s Fresh Air (click on the first 33-minute link).

I think Mahanthappa’s style of playing mirrors bebop very closely, although Mahanthappa himself may not call it strictly bebop. Wikipedia defines bebop as,

… a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody (link)

And bebop is different from the kind of soothing, romantic music liberally tagged as ‘jazz’ in India. The bebop style of jazz is fast, staccato, surfs the scale faster and may not sound melodic to someone used to hearing, say, Rahman or Karnatik classical. As a result, this kind of music often tends to be rejected by Indian listeners (I have known a few) as cacophonous, illogical, too erratic, or not melodic and so on, all of which are true and false at the same time. There is a very definite logic and talent involved in each of these notes, and there is a melody. However, we usually identify melody as the slower, readily-palatable kind. And by that definition, it is not completely melodic.

What did impress me most in the interview is Mahanthappa’s ability to translate Karnatik music shorthand into something that Western audiences can relate to. This understanding of Karnatik and Western music reveals the map-view that Mahanthappa has, essentially of the various lanes he can traverse with a saxophone in both realms of music, and that is the real find. [Side note: I found that Mahanthappa teaches at NYU a university in NY. That accounts for his ability to explain.]

Here are some excerpts from the interview with some simple-yet-effective explanations for several Karnatik music terms.

[On Raagas]

My approach for a long time with Indian music, you know when I first started listening, was more melodically oriented and I was always fascinated with this idea of ‘raagas’ which are… in the West they are often simply.. simplistically called ‘modes’ but they are much more complicated than that. They are much more complicated than the western perception of scales because they often have an ascending form that’s different from the descending form and notes sometimes will come out of order.

[On beat variation]

Mahanthappa: …You know, I have this very kind of ‘math-ey’ sort of background.

NPR’s Fresh Air: Did you say mathey? (laughs)

Mahanthappa: Mathey, yes, yes. (laughs). And, I think this idea of permutation is something that I have always gravitated towards. Here you have five notes, how many different ways can you order those five notes, both in sequence or rhythmically or however and create these kind of cells that sound almost like a pin-ball bouncing back and forth between bumpers and ricocheting a different way every time.

There is a little off-topic conversation about IIT, which is interesting as well, then they go back to discussing beat variations.

[Continuing on beat variation]

Mahanthappa: … because this song is actually quite math-oriented but in a very traditional South Indian way. Now you have to understand in Indian music one doesn’t talk about measures like we do in Western music, we don’t talk about 4/4, 3/4, we don’t talk about these traditional song forms, that jazz standards are based on, where its 32 bars, divided into 4, 8-bar sections. In Indian music, one speaks more about beat cycles and number of beats. (…)

So, there are two things happening at once there (in the song titled “IIT”). You can hear the overall pulse of the 8 bars of 4/4, but on top of that, you have this, again it’s kind of a traditional rhythmic super-imposition of grouping where we are going to go 6-5-4-3-2-3-4-5, and if I did my math right, that should add up to 32. So, the kind of auditory illusion is something that’s, there’s the big grouping of 6, and the groupings are shrinking and expanding again.

[On Gamakas]

Mahanthappa: The other main musical issue is that in Indian music you have this very… complex system of ornamentation that again in the West it’s kind of glossed over by being referred to as micro-tonal, or quarter-tones, and it’s much more complex than that. It involves being able to kind of slide between notes, and this ornamentation is.. like you won’t play a note directly on it, you might play just a little bit above and a little bit below, and it is like this very decorative ornamentation of just an individual note and there might be a hundred ways to ornament one note. (…) So, obviously this kind of ornamentation which we call ‘gamaka’, is much more conducive to singing or playing violin or playing an instrument where you can actually slide, and the way the saxophone is constructed it’s what we call a fixed-hole instrument. There is arguably… traditionally, the way the saxophone is played, there is no real way to slide between notes in a way that’s clean. So what was amazing about Kadri initially is that he really figured out how to do that on the saxophone, and it wasn’t a gimmick that he was just playing South Indian music on the saxophone. It was that he is playing Karnatik music at a very high level and it just so happens, he is playing the saxophone.

[On Alaap]

[They play the beginning of a piece by Kadri Gopalnath]  … What we heard there, structurally, that’s called the alaap which is an opening solo that’s out of time, you know there was no pulse there, we didn’t hear any drums, and it’s usually something that happens at the beginning of the concert but not necessarily, it can happen anywhere in a concert but it does usually happen at the beginning and then maybe another time and it’s a way of introducing the raga. It’s a way of introducing the melodic content of what’s going to come once … like an actual song or composition it’s going to come in later. And it’s kind of a way of introducing each note of the raga to the audience. It’s a really interesting idea, I think, conceptually, something that we don’t hear in the West. It’s almost like, I’m going to make musical friends with the audience before this concert continues. It’s a really nice idea and it’s something I like to do as a jazz musician as well in my own concerts and in my own albums.

There is more discussion of Kadri Gopalnath’s history with music (his father was a temple nadaswaram player) and his pioneering work in playing Karnatik classical on the saxophone. Mahanthappa also explains the concept of musical lineage, and how Kadri Gopalnath did not have the comfort of following in one, which makes his journey so far that much more remarkable.

Part 2 of this post with audio snippets, and links to my favorite tracks here.

NPR’s Fresh Air Interview link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101644613

Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Home Page: http://rudreshm.com/

A quickly cobbled together Automator function (below) attached the album name before the track name in all the files.

Then a drag and drop brought it into iTunes. Batch-selecting all the tracks and changing their artist, album and genre brought it another step closer. Alternatively, you could use another Automator Workflow to get the job done.

Now, I had several tracks called ‘Track 1′, ‘Track 2′ with all the other artist, album tags in place, in iTunes. This AppleScript pulled the filename into the ID3 Name field. And this AppleScript removed the album name that got copied along with the track name, ironing everything out just right. Thank you, Doug!

Windows folks, do not despair (too much). I used to be one of you not too long ago. For batch renaming, a lot of the basic renaming and appending can be done outside of iTunes by using VBA through Excel. Here’s a post on iLounge that suggests one of several paths (scroll down to the final post in the thread). There is no way around the multiple steps involved with deleting and re-importing songs because iTunes Windows does not track the source file despite renaming, which it does in Mac. To put it differently, if you rename a .mp3 file in Windows, iTunes will not know where it went, and you will need to point iTunes manually to the renamed file.

There is some buzz about the latest iTunes update to version 8.1, which features faster syncing, a re-thought iTunes DJ, easier access to high-quality CD importing, better looking visualizations (very mesmerizing, I can vouch), and better accessibility. iTunes Plus (the DRM-free, mp3 versions) is standard and you can now purchase HD-versions of videos and season passes.

Here’s a couple of early comments on the software from Wired, Gizmodo and my favorite one-stop shop for all things iPod, iLounge (here, here).

iLounge editors discovered that one of the features touted in the press-release accompanying the launch, the ability of Genius Sidebar to smartly guess other videos (movies and TV shows) you might love based on the ones you own, seems not to have been included in the software, and mention of it has been taken off of the Apple website.

And finally, here‘s the smart, detailed, covers-every-possible-thing-you-could-do-with-iTunes8.1 article that I was expecting from iLounge.

The launch of the radically smaller iPod Shuffle doesn’t make waves in my lake much because I have enough music gadgets, and don’t really need another music player the length of a hairpin (hmm.. possibilities). iTunes updates, especially related to performance and faster syncing, will always get my attention.

In my experience so far, I can attest to my iPhone syncing quicker than before, and to the nicer-looking visualizations. But then again, I don’t use visualizations too much because I don’t listen to music on my laptop that much, and even if I were listening to music, I multi-task so that the visualization is pointless. It still looks pretty though, and I’m all for art.

What I would wish for is for iTunes to be able to rename the media source files based on the tags (a long-ago software called Musicmatch Jukebox had this built in, albeit in the paid version). I have had to, once or twice in my history of owning iPods, import songs from the iPod back into my computer, and since I went with a free open-source software, it usually just went in and grabbed all the songs from the various sub-directories inside the iPod instead of carefully renaming them by tags. So, I have a few neglected files on my laptop that have names like ZYXF.mp3, YIDM.mp3 and so on. I have not enough patience to sit, research and rename them all myself, so maybe iTunes could do this?

Another problem I haven’t yet found a solution for is a built-in BPM analyzer (that would be beats-per-minute for the rest of you). This probably would be akin to someone putting a Bentley on their birthday wish-list, but hey, I am honestly curious to analyze my emotional response to specific BPM ranges, to see if there’s a certain BPM range that I really enjoy for slow songs, and a certain other range for faster songs. This way I could even group together songs from different artists, genres and not miss a beat (ha). There is a crude way of analyzing and auto-tagging iTunes songs with their BPM (that is also free) currently – a Mac Dashboard widget where you click a button along with the song playing in the background. Not the pinnacle of automation, but there it is.

Who knows – maybe we’ll get to my wishlist by iTunes version 12 or 13.