Since moving to India I’ve been educating myself about the film industry here, and particularly the music which is an essential part of any movie. This tune is one of my favourites so far, even though I’ve never actually seen the movie Noorie yet. (It’s set in Kashmir btw – looks great on the clip, eh?) The playback singer is Lata Mangeshkar, who along with her sister Asha Bhosle, must have sung 90% of all the tracks that ever came […]
(Sajda, from My Name is Khan. By Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Shankar Mahadevan and Richi Sharma) I posted recently about watching Shahrukh Khan at the cinema, and I’ve also been watching a couple of his films at home. I rented Om Shanti Om through iTunes — how very 21st century — on the strength of the tune Jag Soona Soona Lage, which I like a lot, and which features Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, a nephew of the late, great Ustad […]
Today is Independence Day in India, celebrating the anniversary of freedom from the British. So here’s the national anthem, sung by the most famous sisters in the country, superstar playback singers Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. The national anthem is quite notable, in that it’s a hymn, rather than jingoistic propaganda about winning wars or oppressing long-time enemies. It was written by Bengali poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore, and is sung in “heavily Sanskritized” Bengali, which I’m still trying to […]
