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India - News
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News Updates - 7 May
2001 What's Shakin'? Bhangra. Big Time. - Washington Post Bollywood gives Hollywood a run for its melodrama - ABC News When East meets East - Japan Times Face the music - TIME magazine Paan: To refresh the palate - New York Times Tea Totally - Washington Post Clubbers get hip to the hookah - Houston Press
NEW YORK - A while back, Jerard Duncan was filling his car at a Brooklyn gas station when he heard what sounded like a strange kind of hip-hop. The percussion was unfamiliar, and the rapping was not in English. He asked the Indian kids in the next car what this music was, and they told him: bhangra. So last week, the 28-year-old investment banker went to S.O.B.'s, a Manhattan nightclub that hosts regular "Basement Bhangra" nights. There, to his surprise, were hundreds of young South Asians - people from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka - throwing down. "This is bhangra music," he said as he gestured in the direction of the nearest undulating bodies. "I don't know anything about it. I guess you could say it's like Indian hip-hop." Actually, bhangra is not like Indian hip-hop. It's a centuries-old style of Punjabi folk music, characterized by a distinctive drumbeat, that's been updated with drum machines, live percussion and other modern instrumentation. "Bhangra is dance music, and it's produced very much like dance music," says deejay Rekha, who has presented monthly "Basement Bhangra" parties at S.O.B.'s for four years. "It's very fixed in terms of beats per minute, and it's got 4/4, 'four-on-the-floor' timing. That's why people really respond to it well." Indeed they do, and not just at S.O.B.'s. The music's popularity snowballed during the '80s and '90s, and now bhangra scenes can be found in most cities in the United Kingdom and in major American cities. A South Asian student group at George Washington University hosts annual "Bhangra Blowout" intercollegiate dance competitions, held in recent years at Constitution Hall. Last year Rekha performed a bhangra set in Washington at the Smithsonian's invitation. "Basically," she says, "you'll find bhangra wherever there's a South Asian community." Bhangra lyrics are almost always in Punjabi, and their subject matter varies. Some tracks revere an idealized Punjabi homeland, others praise women's myriad charms. Bhangra began in rural Punjabi areas as a folk music and dance celebrating the harvest (its name is derived from the word bhang, which means hemp, a dominant crop in Punjab). It eventually moved into the region's towns and cities, and when thousands of Punjabis immigrated to England following World War II, they brought bhangra with them. Bhangra bands performing at the immigrants' weddings and parties began incorporating Western instruments like guitars and bass. During the '70s, the musicians started mixing traditional bhangra with contemporary music styles, and it wasn't long before bhangra records were plundering up-to-date genres: the rhythm tracks and singsong vocal style of reggae dancehall and the beats, bass lines and scratching of hip-hop.
One "Basement Bhangra" regular, Sarina Jain, the American-born daughter of two Hindis, regularly joins the throng. Jain is so big on bhangra that she is marketing her own "Masala Bhangra" exercise video. "My goal is to be the Indian Jane Fonda, and that's something I never could have pursued in India," she says. "In the U.S., something like this is possible. Everyone's always looking for something new culturally." Elizabeth Candela, 25, a graphic designer who lives in the West Village, learned about bhangra from South Asian friends at Wesleyan College. "I went to one bhangra party and that was it - I loved it," she says. In the past year Candela has noticed an increasing number of non-Indians at the monthly event, and she thinks the same thing that draws her attracts them: the bhangra beat. "It's traditional music, but it's unpredictable," she says. "It's unfamiliar, obviously. And because it's so young, people are so enthusiastic about it. It's the greatest community here. Everyone wants to dance." If music sales from ethnic markets were tracked the same way as sales at major British chain stores, bhangra songs would probably make the British pop charts regularly. But even the genre's biggest hits are unlikely to show up on Billboard's Hot 100 anytime soon. "Bhangra is very much in its infancy still," says Raaga Music's Gopalan. "It's still largely underground, but I think it will slowly but steadily break. It will be interesting to see in what form it will evolve. I think we're going to see this generation start fusing in English lyrics, thereby making it more accessible." Says Rekha "What we're doing is showing people that there's complexity in our community. That we participate in New York City the way other people do. We go out, we have drinks, we dance a little. We're a part of this society just like everyone else."
If Bombay's $750 million-a-year movie industry is lagging behind its Los Angeles counterpart in business organization, it invariably manages to outstrip Hollywood in drama and sheer make-believe. They are both colossal dream-spinning enterprises, churning out entertainment, glitz and glamour. Like Hollywood, Bollywood - as the Bombay entertainment industry is known - is a commercially driven enterprise with several spin-off industries catering to a global market. But for the most part, no Hollywood film can match a Bollywood film in terms of emotional pitch and variety. In terms of sheer output, if not in revenues, film-making in India is a boggling enterprise. In 1999 alone, the country produced 800 films, 412 of which were exported, generating a revenue of $104 million while employing 2.5 million people. Unlike the U.S., India has several language film industries, the leading being the Bombay-based Hindi film industry that alone produced 230 films in 2000, a bad film year by all accounts, as the unraveling links between organized crime and Bollywood sent the industry into a panic. Hollywood, by contrast, averages about 200 theatrical releases per year, grossing about $7 billion in domestic sales and $6.4 billion in overseas sales. Evil,
for Evil’s Sake Plays on tradition: When East meets East 13 May 2001, The Japan Times The musics of India and Japan have a closer relationship to each other than either has to Western music. This at least is the theory of shakuhachi player Timothy M. Hoffman, who has divided his time between Japan and India for years in an effort to build a bridge between the two musical traditions. As Hoffman sees it, both Japanese and Indian music have been inspired by and developed primarily in relation to the voice in spoken poetry or song. The musical instruments aspire to the flexible capabilities of the voice in intonation and ornamentation of melody, using such elements as microtonal intervals, tone-quality modulation, glides and shakes. Hoffman is staging an upcoming concert demonstrating this theory. The program will include Indian and Japanese poetic texts set to Indian raga melodies and tala rhythms; classical Indian music on shakuhachi and tabla; Indo-Japanese music on koto and shakuhachi with tabla; and Japanese folk tunes on shinobue and tabla. Besides Hoffman, performers will be Kul Bhushan Bhargava on tabla, Mitsuko Nakabayashi on koto, Rie Nakabayashi on shinobue and percussion, and Sakiko Aruga on tamboura and swarmandal. Face The Music - Hollywood at last awakes and sings14 May 2001, TIME magazine, yichardorliss Time was when American movies couldn't stop singing. In the '30s, perhaps a third of all films were, in some way, musicals. In the fantasy language of film, it was the most natural thing for a fella and a gal to burst into song. Just about everybody sang. Even the assault of rock 'n' roll, which divided pop music into kid stuff and easy listening, didn't put an end to musicals. But the form soon atrophied. The last traditional live-action musical to be a box-office smash was Grease, in 1978. Since then, only animated features like Beauty and the Beast have put fannies in the seats and songs on the Top 40. And lately, even the cartoons are doing without a lot of new songs. Today the notion of people opening their mouths to sing their hearts out is as anachronistic as speaking in iambic pentameter. If anyone can bring pizazz to this decrepit genre, it's Baz Luhrmann--the mad Aussie who, in his 1996 Romeo + Juliet made Shakespeare play like a psychedelic rap video. Moulin Rouge isn't just a retro wallow. It's a head-on collision of the romantic and the grotesque, the songs of MGM and MTV. Dwarves in spangled costumes dance to Rhythm of the Night; a sultry chorus line coos, "Moulin Rouge-ez avec moi ce soir?" and performs a tantric cancan. Like The Producers, this is a backstage musical with a delirious production number. Here it's an all-out, far-out tribute to India's Bollywood musicals - a kind of Springtime for Hindu - with enough eye candy to give the viewer diabetes.
THIS is how you eat paan in India: You and your sweetheart go to a favorite restaurant and feed each other delicious food till you are so full you can barely stand. You saunter down the promenade, lulled by the moonlit waves, tropical breeze and twinkling stars. You happen upon a paan wallah, or betel vendor, ringing his bell as he pushes his truck. "Sada or meetha?" he asks — plain or sweet? "Meetha," you reply. He smooths a tender betel leaf. With lightning dexterity, his hands fly over the containers crowding his truck. A little roasted fennel seed, some cloves, cardamom, betel nuts, tobacco paste, coconut flakes and rose paste are all stuffed into the betel leaf, which he folds into a triangle and nails together with a clove. Without a word, you pop it in and chew. The sweet juices burst in your mouth with a tantalizing mix of flavors and textures — the refreshing cardamom, peppery betel leaf, biting cloves, tangy fennel and sweet rose paste. The experience is as seductive as a stolen kiss, as relaxing as an after-dinner cigar. You keep chewing to release the juices; after about 10 minutes, all that remains is the leafy core. You search for the nearest garbage can and spit. If you were the king of Siam, you would have a gold-plated spittoon nearby for this very purpose. (The Smithsonian now owns King Chulalongkorn's gold-plated betel set, circa 1876.) I slowly go down the steps, clutching my Hindi DVD. Maybe I'll watch it, or maybe I'll go to the movies. I chew on the possibilities. With a paan in my mouth, they seem endless.
Teas with small leaves, i.e., young growth, are considered the most desirable; ideally, only the top two or three leaves are picked at a time, more like pinching. Not much about afternoon tea is actually English except the time of day. The teas are Chinese, Japanese, Indian or African (or herb garden). Tea has been known in China (and India?) for perhaps 2,500 years - 5,000 years, according to one legend -- and a national staple for at least 2,000. It was originally referred to as "ch'a," from which the Japanese "cha" and the Indian "chai" derive (and maybe even the Scots "char"); and only became "t'ei" later when the British set up shop in Fujian, where that was the local term. Alternative or international tea menus, mostly Japanese (especially at cherry blossom time) but also "Asian" or "Indian" teas, are increasingly common. Beginning this summer, the new Ritz-Carlton Washington in the West End plans to offer not only its classic afternoon tea but three international menus: a Japanese green tea with sushi, "fruit sushi" and sweet rice cakes; a Chinese tea of Darjeeling, dim sum, spring rolls, sesame seed cookies and sweets; and an Indian chai menu with fritters.
Long, long, looooooong before college kids convened in dorm rooms to toke on a bong made out of an empty paper-towel roll, duct tape and a straw, there was the hookah. The hookah (also known as a narghile, a water pipe, a hubbly bubbly) is a tool of tobacco consumption dating back to the 17th century. Conceived in India and perfected in Ottoman Turkey, its significance soon spread all through the Middle East. When Syrian-born Ayman Jerrah immigrated to the United States in the early '90s, he sought to bring some of that culture to these shores. Mission accomplished. The Hookah Bar restaurant and smokeshop is one of the many places where hip kids congregate when they can't get into Hustle Town (6333 Richmond) or T-Town 2000 (6400 Richmond) down the block. On any random weekend night, the place can be swamped with young folks hanging around, hitting the pipe -- but in a pleasant, legal way, of course. |
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