Three months ago, I met some friends of friends for drinks in a dimly-lit Times Square hotel lounge. The group included Nusrat Durrani, who runs MTV World and is now launching MTV Desi. Like the Bombay Dreams team, Durrani bemoaned his casting issues. Everyone and her mom had auditioned for VJ, but nobody looked ‘authentically’ desi American, whatever that is.
Until I met Durrani, my only image of a rocker past his 30s was of the dyed-haired, aging rockers showing off studded belts and butt-cracks at the gym or in the West Village. You want to throw an arm around their shoulders and say, ‘The ’60s, the ’70s and the ’80s are over, man. Let it go.’
Durrani is nothing like that. He’s the most punk fortysomething I’ve ever met. He’s got a wife and kid(s) and a spacious Brooklyn loft, but he still dresses like a rock star. In person he’s a shorter, desi version of Mick Jagger: the lips, the shaggy hair, the dog collar around his wrist.
But I still feel bad for the guy. Charismatic though he may be, we all know MTV has a terribly difficult time creating buzz ;) So I was greatly relieved to hear that the NYT covered Durrani’s VJ auditions (thanks, Arun and Sachin).
Mr. Durrani said that he worried that Ms. Taufiq was too much of an Indian-American stereotype (beautiful overachiever) and that Mr. Usman would be straitjacketed in a V.J. role. Ms. Desai had no experience in front of a camera but she was cute, hip and sassy, and this captivated, as she put it, the Man… [NYT]
No shit — look at how these three are dressed. R&B singer Reshma is vamped to the max, MTV India-style. Comedian Azhar Usman is kitted out for the burbs. But video editor Niharika Desai’s look has Brooklyn artist all over it. Her site’s called Post-Punk Kitchen (hot PoPu, come ‘n get it!), for chrissake:
Niharika graduated from the University of Pennsylania… Some of her editing credits include… Alanis Morrissette Live! and SHARKS! (a series pilot on female Poker champs). [Post-Punk Kitchen]
Her female rival, Reshma, has a day job y’all might be familiar with. Ah yes, HP, the paragon of parking cushily. A college friend chose HP as his day job because they don’t make you work more than 8 hour days. He built and sold night job, a tech startup, for gobs of money, so who looks silly now?
Ms. Taufiq summed herself up: R&B artist who is bilingual in English and Hindi… and, well, chemical engineer now working in software development at Hewlett-Packard. [NYT]
What’s MTV Desi gonna play in America? You guessed it — the Brits.
He’s been a strong supporter of the Desi Underground shows and reviewed bands such as Cornershop, Badmarsh, Shri, Fundamental and Joie when they performed in the US… and Nitin Sawhney… [Rediff]Mr. Durrani, who seemed to be charmed by Ms. Desai’s irreverence, said simply: “I want to put you completely at ease. This isn’t corporate America. And M.I.A. is so central… M.I.A. is MTV Desi…” [NYT]
Sepia M.I.A.tiny indeed. Karmacy gets a nice mention:
When Karmacy introduced a new music video at the Key Club on Sunset Boulevard in May, MTV Desi was there to record it. “Blood Brothers” is percussively rapped in English and Gujarati, with synthesized sitar and flute. In three acts, it tells the story of the conflict between two Indian brothers when one emigrates to the United States to seek fame and fortune. “How do I move on, bhai (brother)?” the chorus goes, then repeats the question in Gujarati. “Cuz no matter where I go/ My soul is in the same place.” [NYT]
Durrani is launching two other channels for hyphens:
… first, MTV Desi, which will go on the air in late July; then MTV Chi, for Chinese-Americans, by the end of the year; and MTV K for Korean-Americans next year. The channels will not be merely tweaked reproductions of MTV India, MTV China or MTV Korea, three of MTV’s 42 channels abroad. Rather, they will, like their target audiences, be hybrids, blending here and there and grappling with identity issues, mostly in English. [NYT]
By the way, the world wouldn’t come to an end if the NYT told us the movie’s real name:
… Ms. Taufiq was shown a Bollywood music video, an extravagant number from “Happiness and Tears,” a huge hit film in 2001. [NYT]
That’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Damn, I hate translating these ginned-up phoren titles :)
Durrani has an interesting story himself. As a marketing manager for Honda in Dubai, he grew obsessed with MTV. He dropped out, came to the U.S. with his wife and became a student all over again. He eventually landed an internship at MTV and spent nearly a decade working his way up:
It was more exacting for his wife who enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology to learn the technical aspects of designing. “From a luxurious life we moved to a student’s life in one of the worst winters here in 1995,” he recalls. “It was a learning experience and it got us back to earth. It was funny how our friends’ circle suddenly dwindled!”…… he had also got married to Afshan, a fashion designer who also happens to be his second cousin. “It was very strange. When we were kids our parents often joked that once these two grow up, let’s get them married. Though she grew up in Kashmir and I was in Lucknow, we met each year during the vacations,” he continues. “But it’s not like an arranged marriage. We fell in love with each other and my parents were only too happy for us.” [Rediff]
That’s right — the rocker judging desi American authenticity grew up in India :)
Here’s the MTV desi site. Watch Karmacy’s new video. Listen to a different Nusrat’s ‘Kinna Sona’ (‘How Beautiful’).
Update: Oh, this is too good:
So the giant luddoo of hype is gathering momentum and flying towards us the masses with increasing speed and size. It’s growing ever-bigger and menacing in its huge orange carbohydrated sugary overwhelming hypedness, gripped by the invisible fingers of some auntie-cum-cultural-enforcer in the sky, heading right towards the unwilling open mouths of freaked-out north american desis whose mothers are pinching their nostrils shut…. What on earth am I talking about? Why, MTV Desi, of course!
Of Karmacy (or Lenny Kravitz?)
… can I say how much I love broody men of color with nose rings?…
But I’m tired of the mopey Eeyore faction:
Someone on the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective list pointed out today that India-phile timing is really creepy given ‘the war on terror’; it fits into a liberal agenda of multi-culti guilt and appropriation…How does liberal america apologize and feel good about its actions and inactions through these multi-culti shows?
It’s just an ad-supported TV channel, people, it’s not the Messiah.
