Indian non-classical music

[Tom Storer]

The Indian classical music thread is being hijacked by Sheila Chandra discussions and the like! Imagine my snobbish disdain. So I thought I'd open this thread for business.

[Vince Kargatis]

Curious, are there significant strands of Indian music outside of classical, film music, and insipid pop? Are there Indian indie rock, -your genre here- bands, for example? I mean, probably there are, but is there a recorded presence?

[Tanager]

Tom, you snob.

Vince, there is a large segment of Indo-techno, some of it excellent (Talvin Singh), much of it the same generic dance fluff popular the world over. A lot of the artists making this are London-based. There is a lot of Bhangra pop coming out these days, which is based on an indigenous Punjabi folk music form (Bhangra, usually a relatively uptempo percussion-driven dance, from what I know).

I gave a couple of recs in the ICM thread before Tom booted us, but I'll reiterate:

Talvin Singh's OK
Mystic Groove from various artists, including Singh (albeit under a different name).

While most pop in India is filmie-driven, there is, as I noted above, an increasing amount of pop coming out which is meant to stand on its own, although YMMV may vary as to quality/appeal.

If you're curious about Indo-rock, then you should check out Asian Dub Foundation - quite a broad range of influences, and the level of success can be a bit uneven, but I think they're pretty damned good for the most part. Definitely worth exploring.

[Vince Kargatis]

Actually, I know about Singh and ADF, but I wasn't really counting ex-pats in my question - I was more interested in whether there were home-grown participation in other genres.

[Tanager]

Vince, I'm pretty sure there is, but I haven't heard that much of it. Mrs. Tanager gets palpably angry when they play most "modern" (most, but not all) Indian pop on the radio/tv. (Mrs. Tanager is a native of Delhi.)

[Brian Olewnick]

Hey, that first Chandra disc isn't that poppy! New-agey, maybe, and there are a couple of English-sounding folk songs, but...

Anyway, I know even less about Indian popular music than I do about its classical tradition. What little Bollywood product I've heard, I've thought was great fun although I'd admit that reaction is probably simply due to what I (and most Westerners, I'd wager) perceive as its sheer overthetopness. Besides, that's all I need, another huge subgenre to investigate.

Now, Indonesian pop music, that's a different story....

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
Now, Indonesian pop music, that's a different story....

Dangdut!

Tanager, wasn't the heyday of bhangra as club music like 15 years ago?

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
What little Bollywood product I've heard, I've thought was great fun although I'd admit that reaction is probably simply due to what I (and most Westerners, I'd wager) perceive as its sheer overthetopness. Besides, that's all I need, another huge subgenre to investigate.

Lest people think otherwise, there is a great deal of genuinely good filmie pop, especially older stuff by Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Jagjit Singh, et al. Some of these (Latajii, for example) have also recorded some relatively putrid saccharine pop of more recent vintage, but that's true of almost any singer working in Bollywood.

Some better recent artists include Adnan Sami (currently quite big, apparently) and Sukhwinder Singh (who did most of the very excellent Monsoon Wedding soundtrack).

One movie I thought excellent and which had some really good music as well was Dil Chahta Hai. It might be worth seeking out if you're curious about recent Bollywood pop. And Lagaan also had some pretty good music, too.

[Joe Milazzo]

If you want a really good history of Indian filmi music (pre-Bollywood), with its mix of "high" and "low", "East" and "West" styles, check out the three volumes of GOLDEN VOICES FROM THE SILVER SCREEN on the Globestyle label:

[bostontricky]

Somewhere along the way I managed a side trip in the "Indo-Jazz" Joe Harriott and John Mayer recorded in the mid 60s. I believe all three of their Indo-Jazz albums they recorded together are available on CD. Mayer has continued down this road with additional recordings over the last decade.

There is a silly compilation out there called "Bombay Jazz Palace" out there, and even sillier, Bill 'Ravi' Harris released a bunch of James Brown covers on "Funky Sitar Man".

[Pete C]

I'm very fond of the album John Handy did with Ali Akbar Khan, "Karuna Supreme." Handy studied with Ali Akbar, and he manages to keep a jazz sound while also sounding natrural within a heavily Indian context. I'm less thrilled by the followup album, Rainbow, which adds L. Subramaniam--now that 3 traditions are mixed (Hindustani, Carnatic & jazz), it sounds more watered down and hokey to me. The two albums have been rereleased by MPS on CD as "Two Originals."

I also find most of the Shakti albums to be pretty successful amalgams of the traditions.

A lot of other encounters between Indian and jazz musicians have been much less successful. Stephane Grappelli & Subramaniam did a pretty silly album.

[bostontricky]

Pete - I've heard both the John Handy albums you mention but didn't get all that much out of them. Rainbow was definitely hokey - Subranamiam has also recorded a couple of tracks with Maynard Ferguson which has got to be a red flag of some sort.

I do have Paul Plimley and Trichy Sankaran's "Ivory Ganesh Meets Doctor Drums" which IIRC moves a little to the avant side of things. Further along in that direction. Rajesh Mehta is interested in Carnatic music and has recorded an album with Sankaran and Rohan de Saram. Mehta plays some sort of hybrid-bass trumpet, with a length of plastic tubing running off the first valve to a pocket trumpet. I am totally unqualified to speak about his work, anyone else help out here.

Odds and ends here include Pat Martino's "Baiyina (The Clear Evidence)", Tony Scott's "Music for Yoga Meditation", Paul Horn's "In India & Kashmir" and a U. Srivinas and Michael Brook recording on Peter Gabriel's Realworld label titled "Dream".

[Brian Olewnick]

bt, I have Mehta's debut (?) album on hatology, solo trumpet. While I thought it was intriguing, in the end it struck me as too much about technique (what odd things I can do with the trumpet) and too little about musical conception. But there was enough there to keep me interested in his further explorations. I'd be curious to hear anyone in collaboration with de Saram.

[link to the disc in question,along with the liner notes by Peter Niklas Wilson at: www.truemuze.de/0002_booklet%20text.html ]

[Jazzooo]

This is like watching the traditionalists get all bent up because someone is using a Fender Rhodes in 1965!

Tom, I suppose you dn't have much use for Making Music, by Zakir Hussain with John McGlaughlan, Jan Garbarek and Hariprasid Chaurasia? One of my favorite lovemaking albums.