The Ghosts of Nusrat: Dub Qawwali

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has a new CD out. While that may seem unlikely, given that he passed away ten years ago, it's true. Italian/British producer Gaudi took old master tapes from the early 1970s in the possession of Nusrat's original Pakistani record label (Rehmat Gramohpone), and reinterpreted them with Dub/Reggae beats. The sound is fresh, if not technically new -- a successful way to bring back the ghost of Nusrat in a recording studio. Dub Qawwali has recently been released on Six Degrees Records; Gaudi was also interviewed by NPR here.

Dub Qawwali is a collection of Nusrat songs that, for the most part, I hadn't heard before, though admittedly my Nusrat collection is hardly definitive. The production quality, for those who pay attention to such things, is flawless, and the sound is "warm" -- mainly because Gaudi used live musicians and vintage analog equipment to create a rich soundscape. It's most definitely not the cheesy Bally Sagoo remix approach, where you get the feeling that the whole thing was put together on a computer by a stoned teenager. Here is how the record label describes the approach:

The use of vintage analogue studio equipment and dub production techniques such as tape echoes, valve amps, Fender Rhodes, spring reverbs, Hammond organ and Moog, characterizes Gaudi's production style, however it is not without its share of 21st century intervention and wizardry… Individual tracks from the original 70's multi-track recordings often contained multiple parts together on them. These had to then be carefully cleaned up in order to make them usable in a way that would enable the composition of these new works. (This included much of the vocal parts which were mixed in the same track as the Harmonium and other instruments!) (link)

So, yeah, the CD sounds pretty good.

The one possible flaw, and it's debatable, might be that the songs on Dub Qawwali are almost too mellow. Nusrat, as videos like this might attest, was at times a frenetic, ecstatic performer, not a chilled out crooner. On the other hand, he did do some 'slow' records -- and there must be a time and place for mellow for everyone.

So it's not rapture, but a different kind of transport, the gentle vocal nurturing of a shared spiritual journey. And healing, and peace: here, Nusrat's voice acts as a kind of salve, easing the pain of existence... Nusrat's ghost.

Apropos of that, one song that Gaudi reworks on this CD, which I had heard before, is the classic ghazal "Jab Tere Dard":

Jab Tere Dard Mein Dil Dukhta Tha
Hum Tere Haq Mein Dua Karte Thay
Hum Bhee Chup Chaap Phira Karte The
Jab Teri Dhun Mein Jiya Karte The

(You can listen to the original, non remixed version here)

"Nawabdin Electrician," in The New Yorker

There's a very interesting short story in this week's New Yorker, by a new Pakistani writer named Daniyal Mueenuddin. It's about an electrician working on a large farm in rural Pakistan, more or less taking care of his business until something dramatic happens. I won't say much about the dramatic thing that happens to Nawabdin (read the story), but here's a teaser to give you a sense of the writing style:

The motorcycle increased his status, gave him weight, so that people began calling him Uncle and asking his opinion on world affairs, about which he knew absolutely nothing. He could now range farther, doing much wider business. Best of all, now he could spend every night with his wife, who early in the marriage had begged to live not in Nawab’s quarters in the village but with her family in Firoza, near the only girls’ school in the area. A long straight road ran from the canal headworks near Firoza all the way to the Indus, through the heart of the K. K. Harouni lands. The road ran on the bed of an old highway built when these lands lay within a princely state. Some hundred and fifty years ago, one of the princes had ridden that way, going to a wedding or a funeral in this remote district, felt hot, and ordered that rosewood trees be planted to shade the passersby. Within a few hours, he forgot that he had given the order, and in a few dozen years he in turn was forgotten, but these trees still stood, enormous now, some of them dead and looming without bark, white and leafless. (link)

In the story as a whole, I think Mueenuddin finds some very congenial ways to convey a poor electrician's point of view. He's got a good sense of comic details, but doesn't depend on them too much. I also liked the ambiguities at the end regarding Nawabdin's character. Any thoughts on this story?

Incidentally, Mueenuddin also has another story online, at the literary magazine Zoetrope. It's quite different from "Nawabdin Electrician"; I think it will be interesting to anyone who has been in a serious cross-cultural or interracial relationship. (I'm happy to discuss that story too.)

Working for the Pat Down: TSA Turban Policy

On their classic album London Calling, the old punk band The Clash had a song with some lyrics that always puzzled me:

What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a Jew?
'Cause they're working for the clampdown (link)

I get the gist of the song -- it's a critique of the trend of rising fascism amongst British youth in the 1970s -- but "turban"? Quoi?

Anyway, this past week I learned that Sikh travelers with turbans can expect not the clampdown, but the pat-down, as the TSA has changed its security policies yet again. The BBC has the details:

US Sikh organisations have expressed anger over changes allowing airport security staff to "pat down" turbans.

Until now turbans have been searched or removed only to resolve an unexplained alarm from an airport metal detector.

But now security will have greater discretion to inspect turbans so that they can be manually checked for objects such as non-metallic weapons.

However Sikh groups have responded to the new measures by describing them as outrageous and discriminatory. (link)

Personally, I'm not so much outraged as annoyed and worried. I'm annoyed because I'm not sure how this is a rational or necessary change: metal detectors work. You couldn't hide a gun, a knife, or explosives inside a turban without it being pretty obvious. (But the TSA has a long history of irrational policies -- like the restrictions on baby formula, which have caused problems for us several times.)

I'm also worried because I have a feeling the new policies may be deployed selectively and in a non-standardized way at different airports, and according to the whim of individual TSA agents, who may or may not understand what the Sikh turban represents. Some Sikhs will certainly be asked to remove turbans even if there's no positive indication of anything concealed. (I've found that agents at smaller airports, like Manchester NH or Durham NC, are much more strict about enforcing policy than are the agents at bigger airports. At Philly, where the security lines are quite long and the agents are harried, they don't bother to stop you even if you have fluids -- no baby formula or bottled water hassles...)

The Sikh Coalition has been on this, and I got an email from them earlier this week with more specifics:

* A guidance to all TSA screeners nationwide on how to implement the new headwear procedure specifically lists the turban (in addition to cowboy hats and straw hats) as an item that can be subjected to secondary screening. Sikh travelers should therefore expect that turbans will be the subject of secondary screening, regardless of whether a metal detector indicates a metallic object is in the turban.
* The purpose of the secondary screening is to detect non-metallic objects. Therefore from the TSA’s perspective, it is irrelevant whether a Sikh’s turban sets off the metal detector or not.
* If requested, a private area will be provided for a pat-down search of a turban.
* A private area must be offered if a secondary search / pat-down leads to a request that a turban be removed.
* Despite the fact that the TSA guidance lists turbans as an example of headwear that can be the subject of secondary screening, a TSA screener is not required to conduct secondary screening of a turban. The screener can use his or her discretion to determine whether he/she believes the turban could conceal a non-metallic threat item.

People who have friends or family who wear turbans may want to pass the word along, so everyone knows what to expect when they next head to the airport. It might help to know that you're due for secondary screening whether or not you set off the alarm. Finally, it might help to know that you have the right to request the additional screening be done in a private room.

Personally, I'm digging out my old Clash t-shirt the next time I fly.

"The Good Soldier" -- A Bad Novel

Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (1915) is considered a classic of sorts from the early modernist era. W.H. Auden thought Ford was a great novelist (he had particularly strong praise for Parade's End, which deals with World War I), and so did Graham Greene. From what I can tell, The Good Soldier, which is not a war novel, but a novel about adultery in the British aristocracy, is still widely taught in college classes on British modernism (see here, here, and here); it's also widely cited in the scholarly literature. But it shouldn't be -- this thing is a mess. (Or more politely, "perhaps it's time for a reassessment"?)

One of the oft-repeated chestnuts about The Good Soldier stems from Ford's early relationship as an editor and collaborator of Joseph Conrad. Ford, it is said, aims to use a version of Joseph Conrad's nested narrators with their various, idiosyncratic approaches to the "truth." But if Ford is aiming for a Conradian effect, it's poorly done, to the point of unrecognizability. The Good Soldier has only one narrator, and the multiple points of view that emerge in the text are never fully explained (in Conrad, by contrast, the different narrators are usually in dialogue with one, primary narrator). The narrator in Ford's novel at once knows implausibly much about what his friends and family were thinking at various moments, and far too little -- it seems unthinkable that he could be such a poor judge of character (more on that below). Moreover, instead of creating a sense of suspense for the reader, the unraveling of the story merely creates confusion, as the story slides back and forth chronologically without leading to new insights on why the characters do what they do in the end.

I won't do a detailed plot summary (see Sparknotes for a refresher), but suffice it to say the novel is about two couples, the Dowells and the Ashburnhams, and the narrator is one of the husbands, John Dowell. Florence Dowell has an affair with Edward Ashburnham that goes on for several years, which John Dowell fails to notice for most of that time. (He also fails to notice that his and his wife's flatmate in Paris is his wife's former lover. For two years.) Leonora Ashburnham, on the other hand, notices it right away -- in fact, Edward is a serial philanderer, who is constantly getting himself into trouble over his various entanglements with women of both high and low classes. Leonora hopes (more implausibility) that her husband will reform and come back to her, and Ford keeps insisting that she loves him despite everything. Florence commits suicide, not when she's discovered by her husband, but once she realizes that Edward has fallen in love with some new floozy. And Edward himself also eventually commits suicide, for reasons that never really make sense.

There are numerous things in the plot and characterization of The Good Soldier that defy logic, and there are some major flaws I haven't even mentioned, but what really bothers me about this book is the way it stacks the decks to make its own narrator unreflectively passive -- to the point where he might as well vanish altogether. What Ford really wants to do is celebrate Edward Ashburnham, whose treatment of women by both Edwardian and our own standards ought to make him a clear villain. It might be understandable if Ford had some kind of point to make about sexual addiction, or some kind of Freudian explanation for Ashburnham's behavior. But in fact, he doesn't -- there's strikingly little psychological reflection in this novel, especially if you consider that both Conrad and Woolf were contemporaries, and many of the writers and artists in Ford's circle were by 1915 smelling Freud. In effect, while the The Good Soldier is often read as an exposé of Victorian Aristocratic mores (with their inherent misogyny), it actually celebrates them by making Ashburnham's suicide the "true" tragedy in the story.

What The Good Soldier does have is moments of "brilliant" writing, paragraphs that clearly suggest Ford was, at least temporarily, in control of things after all. Take the following, which comes near the end of the story:

"I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way, so that it may be difficult for any one to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gust of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair--a long, sad affair--one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten, and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places, and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story, and that, after all, real stories are best told in the way that a person telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real."

(Incidentally, Google reveals that Theodore Dreiser quoted the same paragraph near the end of his hostile review of the novel, back in the day.)

When I read the above paragraph, I thought, "yes, rambling -- that's exactly what this damn novel is." At the start the above paragraph seems like a kind of apology; if it seems like I'm doing a bad job, well that's just part of the reality of talking about one's romantic history (or in this case, one's wife's lover's romantic history, since John Dowell has the libido of a bump on a log). While there may be some truth in the idea that memory is rarely truly linear, if this is how the novelist is explaining his method, it falls flat. The reader doesn't want the raw, uncooked reality, but art. It need not be a matter of a conventional beginning, middle, and end -- this is modernism, after all -- but would it be too much to ask for a sense of direction, or perhaps a point? It's entirely possible for a story to be carefully constructed (or crafted) and still "seem most real." Ford Madox Ford doesn't seem to have understood that.

* * *

One final bit of wrongness. This blogger has a quote from one of Ford's many critical essays:

To him, you will address your picture, your poem, your prose story, or your argument. You will seek to capture his interest; you will seek to hold his interest. You will do this by methods of surprise, of fatigue, by passages of sweetness in your language, by passages suggesting the sudden and brutal shock of suicide. You will give him passages of dullness, so that your bright effects may seem more bright; you will alternate, you will dwell for a long time upon an intimate point; you will seek to exasperate so that you may the better enchant. You will, in short, employ all the devices of the prostitute. If you are too proud for this you may be the better gentleman or the better lady, but you will be the worse artist....[T]he artist is, quite rightly, regarded with suspicion by people who desire to live in tranquil and ordered society.

While Ford perhaps starts out with some valid points about the necessity for contour, he goes wrong -- I think, fatally -- when he compares writing a novel to a sort of prostitution. That's just a really sad bit of very bad advice to give an aspiring writer. (Sorry, Peking Duck!)

Brief Review: Ishmael Beah, "A Long Way Gone"

I recently read Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone, after hearing a great deal about it earlier this spring. (Beah was interviewed all over the place, and the book was actually on sale at Starbucks at some point...)

This is one of those cases where the hype is actually on target.

The basics of the story will be familiar to many readers. Beah is a former child soldier, who was displaced from his home and separated from his parents near the beginning of the civil war in Sierra Leone. He was 12 at the time. For several months he, his brother, and a group of friends walked through the jungle fleeing the rebels that had destroyed his village. But as they encounter various kinds of violence along the way, Beah is periodically separated from the group; at certain points he walks through the jungle entirely alone, and forages for food to survive. Eventually, Beah is "recruited" into the Sierra Leonean army, which struggled to keep up with the the RUF rebels throughout the mid-1990s. Beah becomes a soldier who fights ruthlessly, all the while hopped up on speed and cocaine mixed with gunpowder ("brown brown").

What's remarkable about the story is the way in which Beah, who was later removed from the conflict by UNICEF, and eventually adopted by a woman in New York City, manages to preserve a sense of innocence in his account of the darkest chapters of his childhood experiences. Sometimes the naivete of his voice seems a little forced, but for the most part it is quite effective at conveying what is in essence a horrible paradox: Beah was a child who was trained to be a vicious killer.

A blogger has posted an excerpt from the passage where Beah describes his first experience in combat here.

But my favorite passages are actually not the gory, "thick of battle" scenes, but rather some of the quieter moments, as in the following account of the month Beah spent (again, at age 12 -- and this is also before he got involved in combat) walking through the jungle:

The most difficult part of being in the forest was the loneliness. It became unbearable each day. One thing about being lonesome is that you think too much, especially when there isn't much else you can do. I didn't like this and I tried to stop myself from thinking, but nothing seemed to work. I decided to just ignore every thought that came to my head, because it brought too much sadness. Apart from eating and drinking water and once every other day taking a bath, I spent most of my time fighting myself mentally in order to avoid thinking about what I had seen or wondering where my life was going, where my family and friends were. The more I resisted thinking, the longer the days became, and I felt as if my head was becoming heavier each passing day. I became restless and afraid and was afraid to sleep for fear that my suppressed thoughts would appear in my dreams.

As I searched the forest for more food and to find a way out, I feared coming in contact with wild animals like leopards, lions, and wild pigs. So I stayed closer to trees that I could easily mount to hid myself from these animals. I walked as fast as I could, but the more I walked, the more it seemed I was getting deeper into the thickness of the forest. The harder I tried to get out, the bigger and taller the trees became. This was a problem, because it got difficult to find a tree that was easy to climb and had suitable branches to sleep in.

Though Beah wrote these lines as an adult (he apparently started work on the book while studying at Oberlin College), to my eye he's quite good at capturing the way a child might experience life in complete isolation in the jungle. (Not that I've been there or done that!)

I think Beah should consider trying his hand at fiction for the next book.

Will the U.S. India Nuclear Deal Get Nuked?

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing the threat of a mutiny from the left parties in his coalition government over the recently-finalized -- but still not finally approved -- U.S.-India nuclear deal, also known as the "123 Agreement."

As he addressed Parliament today, some members of Left parties staged a walk-out, while others made so much noise that MPs who actually wanted to hear what was said had to use their translation headphones. On the right, the BJP has also been critical of the deal, though I tend to think it's more because of political opportunism than anything else: one gets the feeling they wish they'd pulled this off.

Thus far, the Congress Party hasn't seemed seriously concerned about a collapse of the government; no one is yet talking about votes of no-confidence, mid-term polls, or rejiggering the deal to make critics happy.

Are the Communists and others on the left bluffing when they say they will walk away from the Coalition government over this? I tend to think so, though I could be wrong. Indian politics -- with the combination of regional and caste parties in addition to the left/right axis -- is often so complicated, it makes the U.S. system seem laughably simple. Still the Times has a certain wry tone in its summary of where the opposition is coming from:

At one point in Mr, Singh’s speech, the Left parties, which provide crucial support to his Congress-led coalition government, walked out of the house. The Left has opposed the nuclear accord with the United States since it was announced, less over the specific provisions of the accord than over the general principle of closer ties to America.



“We do not share the optimism that India can become a great power with the help of the United States,” Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said on Saturday. (link)

(This is where I sniff in Prakash Karat's general direction.)

For those who have kind of let the whole U.S.-India nuclear deal slip past them in recent months, Siddharth Varadarajan has a good point-by-point summary of the agreement here. And the full text of the agreement, released by the U.S. State Department, is here.

Does Diversity Cause Us To Mistrust One Another?

Via Ruchira Paul and 3QD, an article in the Boston Globe about the work of Robert Putnam, a Harvard University political scientist. The Globe summarizes the gist of the article as follows:

It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

"The extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation's social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam's research predicts. (link)

What makes this all more interesting is the fact that Robert Putnam is not himself a conservative, but a progressive-minded scholar who supports diversity. He didn't expect these findings when he started this project, and has worked hard to make sure they are understood correctly -- though anti-immigrant conservatives have definitely been eating this up.

I want to speculate a little on how South Asian immigrants might fit into the 'diversity problem' Putnam's study raises, but before that it seems important to get into a little more detail about just what Putnam is saying. Please forgive the long quote:

The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.

Putnam knew he had provocative findings on his hands. He worried about coming under some of the same liberal attacks that greeted Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark 1965 report on the social costs associated with the breakdown of the black family. There is always the risk of being pilloried as the bearer of "an inconvenient truth," says Putnam.

After releasing the initial results in 2001, Putnam says he spent time "kicking the tires really hard" to be sure the study had it right. Putnam realized, for instance, that more diverse communities tended to be larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents -- all factors that could depress social capital independent of any impact ethnic diversity might have.

"People would say, 'I bet you forgot about X,'" Putnam says of the string of suggestions from colleagues. "There were 20 or 30 X's."

But even after statistically taking them all into account, the connection remained strong: Higher diversity meant lower social capital. In his findings, Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to "distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." (link)

Wow -- that's a long list of problems associated with living in diverse communities! Personally, I've never felt the difference Putnam's study finds, but for the most part I've mainly lived in relatively diverse places. I've lived in glum diverse places (Malden, MA; Bethlehem, PA) -- where no one would give me the time of day or even stop and say 'hi' -- and somewhat happier diverse places (Potomac, MD; Parsippany, NJ; New Haven, CT; Durham, NC; and my current town of Conshohocken, PA). Most places I've lived, though, I've felt that most people do "hunker down" and spend their evenings in front of the TV. I've never lived in the vibrant downtown of a big city (sigh), nor have I ever lived in a place that was really ethnically homogeneous -- so perhaps I've only seen one side of this.

People interested in seeing more detail -- and hearing it directly from Putnam, might want to check out the article in question here. For the most part it should be readable for non-academics (it helps if you know what he means by "social capital"), though Putnam does get into some statistical analysis that goes over my head.

The other big questions are 1) why could this be happening, 2) what can be done about it, and 3) is it a permanent problem, or merely a temporary phenomenon associated with recent immigration, which will dissipate over time?

One can easily speculate that the answer to (1) has to do with the natural mistrust produced when people have different ethnic and racial backgrounds, different cultural values, speak different languages, and so on. The answers to (2) and (3) are harder.

Again, thinking speculatively here, I'm not sure that anything can be actively done about (2), but I do feel quite confident on (3) that the mistrust and the lower "social capital" Putnam sees in more diverse communities is likely to dissipate over time -- as immigrants acculturate and/or assimilate. Here, one's experience as a second-gen desi comes into play. And the high levels of interracial dating and marrying out of one's ethnic group seen among second and third generation Asian immigrants suggests that blending is already well under way.

Putnam himself agrees with that prognosis, and in his article, quotes Barack Obama to that effect. Obama has called for:

. . . an America where race is understood in the same way that the ethnic diversity of the white population is understood. People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the (whole) culture and makes it richer and more interesting. But it's not something that determines people's life chances and there is no sense of superiority or inferiority. . . . [I]f we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then . . . all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger. (link)

Obama is in effect calling for "race" to start acting more like immigrant "ethnicity" -- for it to be malleable, and open to the possibility of its own diminishing value as an element of division. Are South Asians a "race" or an "ethnicity"? Though I'm proud of my Indian heritage and proud of being both an Indian American and a practicing Sikh, I tend to agree with Obama on the value of thinking of oneself as part of "something larger," and of not allowing one's ethnic background to determine one's "life chances."

Review: New CD from Falu

People interested in Asian Underground music have probably already heard of Falu, a singer who first appeared on Karsh Kale's Realize back in 2001. Since then she's been featured on a number of other people's CDs, but today she releases her own, self-titled CD. Rather than going for more in the way electronic beats, here Falu works with a live rock/desi fusion band, doing a mix of English and Hindi/Urdu songs.

It's a strong first effort. Falu has trained in Hindustani classical music with Ustad Sultan Khan, and there are several nice Hindi/Urdu tracks on the CD. The strongest is certainly her version of "O Lal Meri" (aka, "Dama Dam Mast Qalandar"); here the music is traditional, and Falu gets to really show off her Qawwali chops. I found Falu's version of Asha Bhosle's "Dum Maro Dum" less exciting, perhaps because I'm too attached to the original -- and to Asha Bhosle's voice (still, Falu's rock/fusion band seems to be having a good time rocking out a bit here). Also good are "Rabba" and "Poojan." Ustad Sultan Khan himself shows up playing Sarangi on two tracks, and he joins in the vocals to "Copper Can."

Thus far, I've been somewhat less excited by the English language songs on the CD, though there are some notable exceptions. The lyrics to "Without You" are a mix of English and Urdu, and it's intriguing to hear Falu do Qawwali-esque vocal trills on the English as well as the Urdu parts of the song. "Hey Baby" is entirely in English (albeit with a desi musical touch), though from listening to the lyrics it occurred to me that Falu is replicating in a secular, English, rock idiom the themes that are also prevalent Qawwali music: longing, desire, and the inaccessibility of the beloved. The difference, of course, is that in Urdu the longing is for God, while in English the longing is for a lover. (Note: you can listen to "Hey Baby" on Falu's Myspace page)

You can get this CD at Falu's website; it's also available on Itunes and at Amazon. Readers in the New York area might want to hit the CD release party at Canal Room tomorrow (more details here). I won't be able to go; perhaps Falu and her band will come to Philly sometime...

[Disclosure: the folks at Press Here music sent me a review copy of this CD.]

'King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan'

Also out in the U.S. this week: Anupama Chopra's King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. As the title suggests, King of Bollywood is a full-length book meant for a general readership, looking back at the life and career of Shah Rukh Khan -- aka, the "Badshah". Chopra traces the various changes in the Bombay film industry in the 1990s, and argues that Shah Rukh is in many ways the face of the new, Yuppified, transnational Bollywood. I know that some readers may be a bit sick of Shah Rukh, though I would argue that Amitabh Bachchan has been far more over-exposed in the past few years (Shah Rukh has been only doing about one movie a year). The question Chopra is interested in isn't "is Shah Rukh Khan a great actor," it's "how and why has Shah Rukh been such a success in the Bombay film industry given his outsider status?"

Derived nearly entirely from face-to-face interviews, there's a lot of factual material about Shah Rukh Khan in Chopra's book that I didn't know -- and I suspect that all but the most diehard fans won't know most of it either.

For instance, I found Chopra's account of Shah Rukh's early acting career particularly interesting. This is the period before 1988, when he landed a major part in the TV serial Fauji -- and became a star almost overnight. After graduating from college, Shah Rukh started work on a Master's in Economics, but his real energy was spent working on his acting with a high-brow theater group in Delhi called the Theater Action Group. This drama company was based at the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College, and was led by a British hippie named Barry John. For nearly three years, Shah Rukh played smaller parts in serious, avant-garde plays, while other actors got top billing. Shah Rukh was also somewhat overlooked in Arundhati Roy'sexperimental film, In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones (1988); he tried out for the protagonist role, but was only cast as an extra.

To me all this was surprising because I've always thought of Shah Rukh as a "fun" actor; I'm having a hard time picturing him doing -- or at least trying to do -- all all this highbrow theater work.

One of the strengths of King of Bollywood is the way Chopra casually slips in paragraphs of analysis as she tells the story of Shah Rukh's ascent. Though this is a book aimed at a popular audience, she manages to make many of the points an academic film historian might make -- with a much lighter touch. For instance, take the following paragraph:

A few years later, Shah Rukh would tell journalists that as an actor he had only five expressions but he was a success because his rivals had only two. From the time he started performing professinoally, Shah Rukh's acting was as much about charisma as craft. 'Shah Rukh may not have been the best actor of his period,' Sanjoy Roy said, 'but even then he was a star.' The debate about Shah Rukh's skills started during his TAG days -- when a performance when acutely over the top, his friends joked that Shah Rukh 'had broken the roof.' It continued long after he became a globally recognized actor. If Amitabh Bachchan was defined by a mercurial intensity, Shah Rukh's keynote was innate buoyancy. An energetic determination tinted every role he played.

Here, I like the way Chopra delicately acknowledges that Shah Rukh is, as she puts it, "more charisma than craft" -- that is to say, he's no Lawrence Olivier. But he nevertheless brings something uniquely appealing to the table, a "happy" quality that has carried him from one superhit to the next. At his peak in the mid-90s, Shah Rukh was never sexy (like the relentlessly shirtless Salman Khan); if anything, he was charming. (More recently, I've felt that he's been riding a bit on the fumes of his earlier success, though it looks like he's about to turn the page in his career, and actually act his age in the upcoming Chak De India.)

Another interesting chapter in Shah Rukh's career happened just after he started getting roles in big Hindi films. In 1992-3, Shah Rukh did a sexually explicit scene in an adaptation of Madame Bovary, called Maya Memsaab. The filmi magazines were all over it -- an anonymous article in Cine Blitz even went so far as to suggest that Shah Rukh and actress Deepa Sahi (both of whom were married at the time to other people) were having actual, unsimulated sex in the scene. Shah Rukh was, needless to say, mortified -- he picked a fight with a reporter at the magazine, which went on for months. Since that time, he's never even done a kissing scene in any of his films. To me, this is interesting because it suggests that censorship in Bollywood derives not just from the censor board and the presumed conservatism of the masses, it's also in a sense the media that covers the industry that polices it.

Anupama Chopra also addresses the rather tedious rumor that Shah Rukh Khan is gay. This is something I've heard many straight Indian men repeat, as if it were a known fact -- though as far as I know there's no shred of evidence whatsoever to support it. Shah Rukh isn't even particularly 'femme', in my view, though it's certainly the case that he's willing to be less 'manly' than either of the other two Khans. But there's more than one way of being a heterosexual man, isn't there?

Chopra does acknowledge that there's a special relationship between Shah Rukh and director Karan Johar, but her characterization of it is worth quoting:

This enduring professional and personal proximity led to rumors that Shah Rukh and Karan were lovers, to which Shah Rukh replied with his typical wit, 'So how did I have two children? Heavy petting?' In fact, Karan was closer to Gauri. Karan treated Shah Rukh with a near-fanatical reverence, but Gauri was his mate. Karan helped her navigate the treacherous shifting loyalties in Bollywood and adjust to her newfound status of superstar wife. 'It was easy for me because Karan was there,' she said. 'I didn't miss Shah Rukh at all. With Karan, time just passed.'

Chopra seems to be implying (indirectly, of course) that Karan is in effect Gauri's gay best friend -- and that they both worship Shah Rukh. According to her account at least, Shah Rukh has always had eyes only for his wife, Gauri, whom he married after overcoming her parents objections, as well as her own reticence. He fought to get her, and he's been a fiercely possessive husband and father ever since.

There's more interesting stuff in this book -- including interesting chapters about Shah Rukh's family background (his grandfather was a freedom-fighter), as well as his career after his mid-90s peak era (KKHH, DDLJ), including resounding flops like Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani. But I'll leave off, and let readers get the book...

*=*
People may know Anupama Chopra from her various articles in the New York Times and other papers. For one thing, she's director Vidhu Vinod Chopra's wife. Chopra has also written two earlier books on Bollywood-related themes, including a full-length study of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and another on Sholay. But King of Bollywood is different, in that it's getting released on a major commercial press; the DDLJ book was on a British academic press, while the Sholay book was on Penguin India.

UPDATE: Check out a great, group interview with Anupama Chopra at Filmiholic. Thanks also to Filmiholic for arranging for me to get an advance copy of the book.

M.I.A. Talks Smack, and a Brief Review of 'Kala'

I recently read an interview with MIA at Pitchfork Media. The part that seemed most interesting had to do with the role producer Diplo has played in her music. According to M.I.A., the influence of Diplo has been seriously overplayed by the media, for reasons that might have to do with gender and race:

M.I.A.: Yesterday I read like five magazines in the airplane-- it was a nine hour flight-- and three out of five magazines said "Diplo: the mastermind behind M.I.A.'s politics!" And I was wondering, does that stem from [Pitchfork]? Because I find it really bonkers.

Pitchfork: Well, it's hard to say where it originated. We certainly have made reference to Diplo playing a part on your records, but it seems like everyone plays that up.

M.I.A.: If you read the credits, he sent me a loop for "Bucky Done Gun", and I made a song in London, and it became "Bucky Done Gun". But that was the only song he was actually involved in on Arular. So the whole time I've had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female or that people from undeveloped countries can't have ideas of their own unless it's backed up by someone who's blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it's cool, the second time it's cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it's an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that's something important, you know.(link)

Go, Maya. As she goes forward, she puts more emphasis on the gender question, and less on the whether "people from underdeveloped countries" can have "ideas of their own":

M.I.A.: [...] And if I can't get credit because I'm a female and everything's going to boil down to 'everything has to be shot out of a man,' then I much rather it go to Switch, who did actually give me the time and actually listened to what I was saying and actually came to India and Trinidad and all these places, and actually spent time on me and actually cared about what I was doing, and actually cared about the situation I was in with not being able to get into the country and not having access to things or, you know, being able to direct this album in a totally innovative direction. (link)

Unfortunately, perhaps, most of the interviewer's questions are about the various men she collaborated with on her new album 'Kala', whether it's Diplo, Switch, or Timbaland. (Well, at least there's nothing in here about cleavage...)

I think she's making a valid point about how women musicians are often represented in the alternative/indie rock world. I can remember people saying similar things about Bjork's relationships with some of her male producers, several years ago -- not really giving Bjork credit for her own brilliant and idiosyncratic musical vision. Bjork, like M.I.A., is clearly a force of nature...

On the other hand, M.I.A. did date Diplo at some point (I don't know exactly when), so does her desire to deemphasize his influence have to do with that? I'm just asking...

* * *

Through a DJ friend, I managed to get my hands on an advance copy of M.I.A.'s new album, Kala. It's already been released in the U.K.; the U.S. release date is August 27. This is a brief review (we reserve the right to do a more detailed take later).

Some of the best tracks are already in circulation: "Bird Flu" and "Boys." I don't care for "Jimmy," which heavily samples an old Bollywood film song (from Disco Dancer), though I gather that other folks like it. To me it just sounds a bit clumsy. (Check out a sample from "Jimmy" at Ultrabrown)

My favorite of the other tracks on the record has to be the collaboration with Timbaland, "Come Around." Other cool tracks are "20 Dollar" and "World Town." All three have hypnotic beats, and a slightly more laid back lyrical delivery from M.I.A.

Overall, people who liked the manic energy and off-kilter beats of Arular will probably be into Kala. The sound is slightly different -- it's certainly no retread of her earlier work. The beats here are generally less electronic and more noisy and organic; the maximalist palette seems well-suited to M.I.A.'s over the top personality.

Admittedly, some of the louder tracks on Kala do grate a bit on the ears, but then I suppose that's what an IPod playlist is for, hm?

A Good Critique of Obama's Speech

A couple of days ago I did a brief blog post about Obama's speech on terrorism over at Sepia Mutiny. The speech has since been widely criticized, but the best takedown of Obama's misguided approach to Pakistan must be Sepoy's, at Chapati Mystery. It's a long post, but this part is especially good:

One should remind Barack Obama, and the US Congress which just passed such a conditional bill, that Pakistan is, in clear and evident fact, fighting a war in Waziristan - with scores of military casualties seemingly every day. One can also remind him that since the Lal Masjid stand off - July 3rd - there have been a dozen suicide bombings across Pakistan killing over 200 civilians - almost keeping pace with Baghdad. One can further remind him that Pakistan has indeed allowed US military strikes on its sovereign territory, even with questionable intelligence. On November 10, 2006, US missiles hit a madrasa in Bajaur aimed at killing the elusive No. 2 of Al Qaeda but managed mainly to kill children. They must all be casualties of Pakistan’s soft focus in the war on terrorism.

To be crystal clear, Obama suggests that a country that is a sovereign nation and ally, that has full nuclear capability, has the ability to carry out nuclear attacks, has the ability to give nuclear technologies to the card-carrying-member-of-the-Axis-of-Evil-next-door Iran, has an unpopular dictator supported and maintained by the United States, has deployed 100,000 troops across its North Western borders, has suffered thousands of casualties - army and civilians - carrying out the Global War on Terror, has seen its cities and deserts flood with the detritus from the forgotten war going on in Afghanistan, but has nonetheless maintained complete compliance by killing and capturing many key members of the Al Qaeda ... should be invaded. (link)

I think the salient critique of Sepoy's argument here might be that while all this may be true, there is a legitimate concern that elements in Pakistan's military and intelligence organizations may be playing a double game specifically with regards to Al Qaeda.

Still, I'm in agreement with Sepoy by and large. My earlier enthusiasm for Obama is starting to fade...

"All About H. Hatterr" Coming in October.

The NYRB Classics imprint has a blog called "A Different Stripe," which keeps track of where its authors are showing up in the media.

Recently, Sara, the blogger there, announced that NYRB's new edition of G.V. Desani's classic novel, All About H. Hatterr, finally has a release date -- October 23. The novel has been out of print in the U.S. since about 1986, so this is very good news. I used the NYRB Classics version of Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August in a class last year, and it worked out nicely. Hopefully I can teach the weird and remarkable Hatterr sometime in 2008. (My students won't know what hit them.)

Incidentally, I did a blog post about Hatterr here.

(I even ended up writing the formal article on Desani I was hinting at in that earlier post. It's currently under "revise and resubmit" with a British journal, which means -- fingers crossed -- it might actually be coming out sometime soon. Admittedly, I still have a lot of work to do on it before I can resubmit it.)

Dolphins can generalize

In the middle of a review of a new book on the origins of human language in the San Francisco Chronicle, one finds the following, rather remarkable, paragraph:

Kanzi, the amazing bonobo, can use a keyboard to signal what she wants. And that's not all. Through her computer, Kanzi can "participate in four-way conversations," can "converse about objects, intentions and actions" and has even "acquired a theory of mind." Dolphins can't do all this, but they can "generalize," while elephants can "impart their wisdom" to the young. And then there is Hoover the seal, who can vocalize the following sequence of words: "Hey, hey, you, get outta there!" The scary thing is that Hoover and his like might be producing more meaningful, less admonitory sentences soon, at least according to Harvard biologist Tecumseh Fitch. "Maybe we just need to expose seals to human speech, and the right social context, and they'll be able to learn some speech." (link)

Everyone has little pieces of language. Humans, supposedly, have the whole thing.

Ingmar Bergman -- clip from "Wild Strawberries"

As has been widely reported, the Swedish art film director Ingmar Bergman recently passed away.

From Bergman's Wild Strawberries, a psychoanalytically supercharged dream sequence:



Everything means something.

Back from Hiatus -- Ram Guha in The Nation

[Let's start small, shall we? And ease back into things...]

From Ramachandra Guha's piece in the Nation on the Maoists in Chattisgarh:

The first thing I found I knew already from travelogues: that the landscape of Bastar is gorgeous. The winding roads we drove and walked on went up and down. Hills loomed in the distance. The vegetation was very lush: wild mango, jackfruit, sal and teak, among other indigenous species. The forest was broken up with patches of grassland. Even in late May the terrain was very green. The bird life was as rich and as native as the vegetation--warblers and wagtails on the ground, the brainfever bird and the Indian cuckoo calling overhead. (link)

This sort of surprised me -- I didn't expect to see details about the forest and bird life as part of an in-depth piece on Naxalites. (I was also surprised, I guess, because I myself wouldn't know the names of these birds if I saw or heard them while driving through the jungle.)

It's a good piece overall, though I didn't see a great deal in it that I hadn't already read elsewhere.