MUSIC: WSJ on Indie Hindi, Desi Dance and other new hybrids
Saturday's Wall Street Journal "Pursuits" section has an article on "Music's New Mating Ritual" by John Jurgensen (free for now, behind pay wall soon). It looks at genres that are getting fused these days, resulting in crypically named hybrids. Here's the opening paras:
Indie Hindi, socaton, skurban. You may feel like you need a dictionary the next time you go shopping for music.
The music world is getting thick with hybrids, or cryptically named blends of established styles. Indie Hindi, for example, is traditional Indian vocals tinged with edgy American-style rock. Socaton is dance music that has elements of rap, calypso and reggae. The number of genres is up more than 40% over the past four years, by one measure -- Gracenote, which maintains the music-classification system used by major sites like Yahoo and iTunes, now recognizes more than 1,800 genres. It recently added "hyphy," a jittery form of hip-hop from the San Francisco area.
It goes on to talk about Anoushka Shankar (that's Ravi Shankar's daughter and Norah Jones's half-sister) and her collaboration with superstar DJ Karsh Kale.
A new album from this sitar player and DJ Karsh Kale has Indian and electronic influences, a blend called "desi dance."
The album, "Breathing Underwater," drops Aug. 28. The article also talks about another desi genre.
Meanwhile, Falguni Shah, a classically trained Indian vocalist who records under the name Falu, uses the term "indie Hindi" to describe her New York band's sound. (Her producer coined the term.)
[WSJ.com is offering its visitors a sample of Falu's "Dum Maro Dum."]
Learn more about (and hear samples of) Falu's music here and the Shankar-Kale album here.
Post your comments below.
Falu's music is fabulous!
Americans should listen to it!
It has depth and the words, which non-Indians or even US-Indian youngsters(!) could understand!
I will introduce it to Americans, who listen to same melodies(!) or Rap music with no variations whatsoever all the time.
Although I appreciate classical Hindi music, Falu's sample music, which appears on Website is appealing!
Falu's voice is a result of years of 'Riyaz', I suppose!
I am sure this album would be a hit with appropriate publicity.I hope this promotes classical Hindi music.
Posted by: Laxmi | August 19, 2007 at 10:49 AM
Falu's music is fabulous!
Americans should listen to it!
It has depth and the words, which non-Indians or even US-Indian youngsters(!) could understand!
I will introduce it to Americans, who listen to same melodies(!) or Rap music with no variations whatsoever all the time.
Although I appreciate classical Hindi music, Falu's sample music, which appears on Website is appealing!
Falu's voice is a result of years of 'Riyaz', I suppose!
I am sure this album would be a hit with appropriate publicity.I hope this promotes classical Hindi music.
Posted by: Laxmi | August 19, 2007 at 10:50 AM
Never heard Falguni Shah (although I think a lot of second generation desi artists in the US are rather bad! I won't name names here:D) but there's a growing involvement even in India when it comes to desi dance and what used to be simply labelled as Asian Massive. Maybe it's the NRI's moving home, or the artists themselves tapping into viral networking and marketing practices (the Midival Punditz and Jalebee Cartel are hugely active on Facebook, for instance) as well as venues giving them a chance to perform live -- but it's finally finding acceptance in the motherland. I found this recently: http://www.indianelectronica.com/ They have an annual festival in London, NYC, New Delhi and Mumbai.
On a totally random note: several songs from the Bollywood film "Partner" were among the top 10 most downloaded songs on iTunes. I'll check the figures and post.
Posted by: chhavi | August 21, 2007 at 01:18 AM
I would highly suggest the Thievery Corporation album, "Versions" to anyone that enjoyed the Shankar/Kale album.
Posted by: Timothy | August 29, 2007 at 01:16 PM