One of the difficulties in being a non-Christian in a predominantly Christian country is the relentless onslaught of Christmas jingles you hear around this time of the year. The latest culprit in my mindspace is the JCPenney’s ad featuring Bing Crosby’s voice and Fatboy Slim’s beats, which makes for a ridiculously catchy breakbeat version of “Here Comes Santa Claus” (via Tamasha). Earlier, we talked about “Songs for the Sleepless”; this is more like “songs for the hyper-caffeinated.”
The “original” video to the Fatboy Slim song is here, but it’s so bad I actually prefer this Youtube-ified anime remake.
Speaking of Youtube and Fatboy Slim, I was reading a Jon Pareles article about the phenomenon over the weekend, and thinking about the possible desi connections. The paragraph that stood out to me was this one:
In the process, another thing users generate is back talk. Surfing YouTube can be a survey of individual reactions to pop culture: movie and television characters transplanted out of their original plots or synched to improbable songs, pop hits revamped as comedy or attached to new, unauthorized imagery. (Try searching for Justin Timberlake on YouTube to see all the variations, loving and snide, on his single “Sexyback.”) (link)
While Youtube has millions of teenagers doing dance karaoke with varying levels of skill, as far as I can tell the current younger generation of desis hasn’t really taken advantage of it as much as one might expect. Part of the problem, of course, is that there aren’t really very many iconic desi figures to “personalize” (or travesty) to begin with.
Probably the biggest mainstream western pop hit by any desi artist, ever, was Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha.” Though it’s now been nearly a decade since it came out, the song even holds up today, though admittedly the upbeat Fatboy Slim version of it is superior to the original mix of the song. Just as one would expect with any pop song, there are quite a number of personalized karaoke versions of “Brimful of Asha” up at Youtube. My “favorites”:
- Two guys dressed as waiters. Imaginative dancing, energy, and a clear concept.
- A caucasian family having quality time with the camcorder. The kids are cute, though the whole thing’s a little self-indulgent.
- A pop punk band attempts a cover. Not half bad, though he gets the lyrics wrong.
- Brimful of Dogs. Professional mash-up of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and “Brimful of Asha.”
- Generic suburban white kids. “We were bored, so we made this video”
- Starts slow, gets better. Your basic, “I was sitting at my cube, now watch me go crazy” video.
What strikes me about these and the others I’ve seen is the fact that they’re basically all white kids (and some parents), and as far as I can tell there’s no awareness of the significance of the song, its subject (i.e., Asha Bhosle), or the idea of second generation nostalgia for classic Hindi film music. (Here is a nice old blog post on the song lyrics at Kuro5hin)
All of which is really too bad, because in a way, the song itself, “Brimful of Asha,” is a rock n roll version of exactly the kind of thing Jon Pareles is talking about, albeit in a different medium: it’s an individual reaction to a pop phenomenon, which itself became a pop phenomenon. “She’s the one that keeps the dream alive,/ From the morning, past the evening, till the end of the light.” It was filmi music that kept the dream alive for lots of people during the rough times back in the 1970s, and this catchy guitar pop song — which is not even remotely filmi — is an idiosyncratic attempt to celebrate it.
So here’s what we need: really good Youtube video versions of desi pop artifacts that suggest that the people doing nutty things in front of a camera actually understand the music they’re having fun with. (Perhaps it’s out there already — readers, do enlighten.)
