Friday, December 31, 2004

More sufi rock ?

I was surfing channels a few minutes ago, and i caught a video on Indian MTV with the fairly startling image of a turbaned sikh male singer, dressed all in white, acoustic guitar in hand, in the midst of the crowds on indian streets. Turns out he is Rabbi Shergill and the song is "Bulla Ke Jana Main Kaun"["Bulla I don't know who i am"?.. my punjabi is a little rusty ;)]. And the song is the usual warm, fuzzy sufi stuff about humanity and God (which always works on me). If this chat site is correct, the words are by Pir Bulleh Shah (familiar to me from 'Bulleya' on Junoon's Parvaaz). I found an interesting article in Tehelka (of all places!) in which Minty Tejpal (brother of, more famous, Tarun) talks of how Rabbi had trouble getting a record deal and the Tehelka folks were among his first supporters. I'm looking forward to adding his CD to my collection of sufi rock/pop (currently 3 Junoon CDs strong).

Speaking of Junoon, Salman Ahmad in a Fresh Air interview from many years ago said an interesting thing about fusing 'western' and 'eastern' music. He said that the difference between Junoon beats and regular rock beats is that their beats were 'side-to-side', while regular rock beats were 'up-and-down'. In most rock concerts you'll find people moving their heads up and down, but the syncopation(?) in 'eastern' beats makes listeners move their heads from side to side. I thought that was an interesting way to put it.

UPDATE : Link to Phat-Phish Records and their page on Rabbi.

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