Literary Safari

Originally published at Sepia Mutiny on February 1, 2009 .

We’ve heard bout Bollywood Obama and I’ve written about the Japanese town of Obama’s boppy theme song “Obama is beautiful world.” Now, a couple of young musicians in Surat, Gujarat—Chirag Thakker, Jayesh Gandhi and Anita Sharma—have welcomed Obama into their hearts with this catchy song that praises our new president.

We have dedicated this song to Obama and uploaded it on Youtube, so that the world could see our attempts to honor him. His down-to-earth personality, faith in Lord Ganesha and great respect for Mahatma Gandhi made us feel that he is very close to us,” said Chirag, adding that they have used names of Lord Ganesha and Gandhi in the song. [full story]

The song has elements of a bhajan, or devotional song, but also features the djembe, which the artists chose to include in honor of Obama’s African heritage (even though the djembe is West African, not Kenyan!). The video is granted, a bit amateur, but it also has subtitles (so that Obama can understand it) and was shot in various parts of Surat, including the banks of the Tapi river and the city’s municipal gardens. Overall, the three artists devoted three months to it from start to finish.

I was going to wrap up this entry, but then found this Punjabi poem by California based poet and singer Pashaura Singh Dhillon. I was moved. But then again, I get weepy pretty easily these days.

Whether or not you’ve personally had your fill of odes to Obama , I can’t help but remain fascinated by the worldwide responses to the idea of his leadership. The way I look at it, for a long time, I felt like people were looking around and saying, “I don’t see a world leader I feel good about” and now, there’s a spirit of optimism and a person who represents possibility that is inspiring art, music, and perhaps, even, action. That’s a good thing, even if it isn’t clear right now whether he’ll live up to all his promises.

My original post first appeared at Sepia Mutiny, from where it was also picked up by Salon.com’s blog on globalization, “How the World Works.”

Meet Giju John, 33. Born: Thiruvananthapuram, India. Lives: Silicon Valley. Employer: Intel. He’s an electical engineer who’s got his groove on.

Fascinated by the salsa dancers at night clubs in downtown San Jose, he started taking classes several nights a week. He was so good that his instructors, members of SalsaMania, a Bay Area dance group, invited him to join their professional team and compete in the US, Europe, and Mexico. This was back in 2001.

Today, John has a successful solo Hindi/salsa career. By way of the San Jose Mercury News:

John loved making microchips tick, but he loved his dancing, too. He remembered the Indian dance steps he learned as a boy. He noodled around, adding them to salsa steps and coming up with his own Hindi/salsa genre. He’s left Salsamania for a solo career. Yes, a Hindi/salsa solo career. Why not? John was in Silicon Valley – a place with a prominent Latino population and tens of thousands of Indians and Indo-Americans. He produced a CD, “Rang Rangeeli Yeh Duniya,” … It is a CD of Hindi language songs set to the pulse of salsa, cha-cha and rap. He shot a music video. He launched a start-up, Beyond Dreamz, to produce his music. And he continued to focus on the reliability of the next generation of Intel chips.

In February, John spent five weeks traveling through India offering Hindi/salsa dance workshops and promoting the genre and himself. But he didn’t take vacation.“During the day I’d go around and do my salsa workshops,” he says, “at night I’d log onto my network.” He says his bosses are very understanding. [full story]

Giju John is back in India right now, on a three month sabbatical. He’s giving his salsa career his all, shooting music videos, performing, and attending … the 3rd annual India International Salsa Congress in Bangalore from the 14th to the 20th of August. Who knew Salsa was so big in India?!

Next up, maybe we’ll spot Giju in a Bollywood flick set on the streets of San Jose?! I think we’ve definitely got a Hindi movie there. In the meantime, here’s a salsa music video from his first album.

I didn’t grow up watching a lot of “in” Disney movies like Bambi. Instead, on weekends, my aunt who my sister and I were staying with in Pune, would rent oldies like the 1963 Cliff Richard movie “Summer Holiday.” After lunch, we would draw the curtains, turn on the fan, and sit down together to watch musicals set in worlds that looked nothing like ours.

Even now, when I pack my suitcases to go on a vacation–as I am doing right now–I can’t help but hum this tune. I’ll try my best to be off-line for the next ten days, so in the meantime, enjoy this flashback, vintage oldie. Totally cheesy, I know …

When I was in India in January, I ended up hanging out at Mumbai airport for about 4 hours while waiting for a domestic flight. In one corner of the terminal was a group of twenty-something year-olds – mostly boys and two girls or so — all dressed in jeans and tee-shirts, all with longish flippy hair. One of them was carrying a guitar and they were all sitting in a circle, close together, humming, strumming, and singing English songs that sounded like a cross between David Byrne and Bon Jovi. I tried to park myself near them and kept trying to figure out their story. I never did—it was the middle of the night and I was an unabashed victim of jetlag—but in my mind, I’d made up a story about them — they were college buddies traveling together (probably to Goa); maybe they were even a band, getting amped to sit on the beach around a campfire singing their songs after a full-moon rave at Anjuna Beach. …

I was reminded of this scene when I read Akshay Ahuja’s feature essay on the Indian subculture of heavy metal in the April issue of Guernica, a print and online magazine of art and politics. In “Death Metal and the Indian Identity”, writer Akshay Ahuja is asked to carry a guitar to India for his father’s colleague’s son. The guitar is to be delivered to Pradyam, who is part of “a semi-pro death metal band” called Cremated Souls (now defunct).

A simple guitar delivery leads Akshay Ahuja into the vibrant subculture of heavy metal in India, as he becomes friends with Pradyam and his band members, many of whom work at call centers.

There are several sections in the piece where the author makes small observations about the little differences and nuances between India and America, cultural and otherwise. These gave me pause, not only because some of them rang true, but also because I enjoyed the way they were being articulated in a very specific context.

For example:

A few days later Pradyum came to my parents’ house on a black Royal Enfield motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket. He was strong and well-built. I found out later that until a few years ago, he had been serious about track and field before a scooter accident had crushed his leg. Pradyum would drop me off several times after this, but this was the only time he came inside. He was always afraid that he smelled like cigarettes (he smoked constantly) and that this would offend my parents. Once in the house, he complimented my mother on her beautiful home—and such a nice garden! This immense politeness was strangely incongruous. Looking just like James Dean, he had all the American gestures of rebelliousness, but without the appropriate American attitude. (more…)

To mark Women’s History Month, I’ve been featuring works by desi women poets in a “Poetry Friday” series at Sepia Mutiny all month long. Here’s the last of four installments (1, 2, and 3.)

Songs are poetry, and singer-songwriter Rupa Marya has been on my radar for the past couple of weeks, ever since I found out about her world music band Rupa and the April Fishes (think the Indigo Girls meets traces of Natalie Merchant meets “classic French chanson, Argentinean tango, Gypsy swing, American folk, Latin cumbias, and even hints of Indian ragas”). [It turns out that Abhi wrote about them last year. link]

The group’s debut album “Extraordinary Rendition” has been picked up by Cumbancha, a record label founded by the head of music research and product development at Putomayo World Music, Jacob Edgar. It releases on May 1, and Rupa and her gang are in the middle of a North American tour that includes NYC and the Montreal Jazz Festival.

A musician, songwriter, and (yes!) physician, the American-born daughter of Indian immigrants spent part of her childhood in France. Many of the songs on the band’s new album are in French. From an article in the SF Chronicle:

The years between the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the 2004 presidential election changed her outlook on life and prompted [Marya] to alter her sound completely, by writing in French.“What happens if you communicate … in a way that people who don’t speak that language can understand what you’re saying?” Marya says. “Especially when the world was becoming much more afraid of differences. That’s when everything sort of took off into another place.

Her song Une Américaine à Paris, I think, conveys some of her post 9/11 reflections. The lyrics (reprinted with permission of Rupa and the April Fishes) follow, both in the original French and in Rupa’s English translation.

(more…)

Once in a while, a perfect Sunday comes along. Yesterday was one such. After a lazy Sunday morning spent drinking home-made cappucino, I got to work, organizing all my books on a reachable bookshelf. I abandoned the alphabetical ordering system and came up with my own organization system with contemporary fiction, non-fiction, self-help, children’s books, picture books, India books, and writing books taking the cake for the largest categories.

I could really have stared at my bookshelf all day – that’s how thrilled I was – but thankfully it was good weather outside, so K. and I headed out after lunch to St. John the Divine for the first of what I hope will be regular doses of their free Sunday Recital Series.

On tap was “Django a Go-Go,” a tribute to the great acoustic Gypsy guitar genius Django Reinhardt by French guitarist Stephane Wrembel … Wrembel was accompanied by Ian Rapien on saxophone, Ari Folman Cohen on bass and Mike Wells on guitar. Sitting in The Crossing of what could be the world’s largest neo gothic cathedral (if it were ever finished), listening to Minor Swing and other original Django compositions … ah this is just what weekends are made for!

Afterwards, I took my NYT to the Cathedral garden (home of the Peace fountain) and read all my favorite sections while soaking in the sun. When I’d had my fill of sunshine, I began my walk home and stumbled upon many postcards advertising Meditate NYC, a free day of meditation, movement and performance in the annex of St. John the Divine. Of course, I couldn’t walk by without going in for a brief meditation session.

I was glad I did because now I’m definitely planning to check out one of the open houses around town this week:

Meditate NYC’s afternoon of meditation will be followed by a week of free Open Houses, October 22 – 29, at dozens of meditation groups and dharma centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City. With instruction by teachers from a range of Buddhist schools, MeditateNYC is an accessible way to find out what various approaches to meditation involve and what the benefits are.

So, I will hopefully be meditating this week, and not to steal Colbert’s line … so can you!

I’m getting addicted to my daily dose of Very Short List, a free, daily e-mail that points to excellent new (and sometimes vintage) entertainment and media that haven’t been hyped to within an inch of their lives.”

Each recommendation comes with this Venn Diagram that connects you to links related to the pick of the day. And, the email has one or two highlighted lines which makes for very easy and quick perusal of the text. I really like that.

Today’s VSL dose features a fun marketing tie-up to the upcoming release of Bob Dylan’s triple-CD greatest-hits release, Dylan.

One of the most memorable scenes from the 1967 D.A. Pennebaker film Dont Look Back is when a young, baby-faced Bob Dylan looks at the camera holding a stack of large cue cards. As his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” plays, Dylan drops the cards, each with handwritten lyrics scrawled across them, perfectly in time. …

Thanks to the extremely crafty folks promoting Dylan’s latest, you can create your own message on ten of the cue cards. When your recipient opens the e-mail and clicks on the link, the famous video clip is reborn with your personalized message, and with fairly staggering realism.

Of course, I had to create my own … and I’m sure you’ll want to as as well.