Via Nirali, check out Shaair and Func. Shaair (think “Shayr”) is a desi girl who grew up in the DC area; Func is a Goan from Mumbai who grew up listening to Metallica. What you get when you mix the two is something that sounds like this:
She reminds me a little of Nikka Costa… what do you think? The best part of the profile at Nirali for me were these paragraphs:
And so began a relationship—”We fell in love with each other’s person first,” stresses Dogra—based on the mutual desire to make accessible music, free of the pressure to impose a contrived “Indian” sound (think twangy sitar solos and misplaced tabla beats). “Before I met Randolph, producers would be like, ‘Write a line in Hindi’,” says Dogra. “I can’t even speak Hindi! I’d listen to it and think it was so insincere.”
Give their debut CD a listen, and it’s obvious that Shaa’ir and Func are staying true to their mission of keeping themes universal. “We want to pave a better way for the next generation of not just Indian kids, but kids the world over who want to put out an idea. They can do it without having that ‘Who are you?’ pressure on themselves,” explains Correia. It’s increasingly apparent that the two are committed to their goal as they sing about everything from illegal-alien ancestry to the downsides of long-distance love. (link)
A video with higher production value than the one above is “Oops”. Lots of eye candy, but I’m not feeling the song as much as “Hit,” which I linked to above. Another one to check out is “Government,” a spoken word poem over music.
