SAJAforum

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.

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CHINA: The "Beijing Brown" Connection

[Adding a China category to SAJAforum to occasionally track items about the country that, along with the U.S., has the most influence on South Asia as a whole.]

SepiaMutiny has an interesting post about Indian culture in China, building on this short PTI report, "Bharatanatyam Gaining Popularity in China."

After Bollywood films, classical Indian dance has caught the imagination of the Chinese, with a young woman actively promoting Bharatnatyam among her compatriots, especially the tiny-tots.

For 33-year-old Jin Shan Shan, a Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus, it has always been a passion to become an exponent of Bharatnatyam. She has established a school for Bharatnatyam here. [PTI photo of Jin and her daughter, Jessie.]

Among the 90+ comments, this one caught my eye:

TV: Kashif Memon Makes It To Another Round of "America's Got Talent"

You may not know it, but there's a variation of the Sanjaya situation going on right now on U.S. TV. For all you South Asians who cringed as Sanjaya Malakar made it through the various rounds of "American Idol" on Fox (some of us, including my 4-year-old twins, liked seeing Sanjaya do his thing), it's cringing time again.

This time, it's not a singer of Indian descent, it's a dancer of Pakistani origin. Kashif Memon, who works at a sandwich shop and nurtures dreams of being a Bollywood star, is making waves on NBC's summer show, "America's Got Talent."

He had made it through two rounds already and last night performed in the semi-finals (he was in the top 10). We won't know if he made it into the top 5 via the results of the at-home voting till next Tuesday, July 24 (8 pm on East and West Coasts and 7 pm Central). But judging from the in-studio reaction, he struck a nerve. According to the show's site, here's what the judges had to say:

Kashif was hoping his performance could bring him closer to following his dreams of being a Bollywood star. The audience danced to his performance. Piers thought he had no talent to be on the show, Sharon thinks that he was amazing, and David thought he had charisma.

[David, by the way, is David Hasselhoff, who is famous for "Knight Rider," "Baywatch" and jokes about his own poor-quality singing's popularity in Germany.]

What Memon lacks in talent (he makes Sanjaya look like Tony Bennett), he makes up for in sincereity. But when mainstream Americans watch him, are they laughing with him or at him?

Over at Solitude And a Cup of Tea the blog, there's a "surefire way" to increase viewership, what she calls "television talent competition success formula #273" -

Bring in a South Asian contestant who lacks talent and confidence. Keep him/her on the show until the competition is close to the end. Then dump him/her unceremoniously.

Take a look at his latest performance below. You can see his popular YouTube clips from previous rounds (along with blogosphere reactions) here. See Pakistani reactions to him at Pakistaniat. And, of course, there's KashifMemon.com.
 

Post your comments below.

EARLIER ON SAJAFORUM.org:

• See all SAJAforum mentions of Sanjaya Malakar
• TV: "America's Got Talent," But Does Kashif Memon?