Desi Fly Chicks at the Grammy's

Even though the award is probably one of the ones announced at an event held prior to the televised Grammy Awards, I am still excited to see both Anoushka Shankar's Rise and Asha Bhosle's You've Stolen My Heart- Songs From R D Burman's Bollywood up for one of the prestigious awards. It is just too bad they are up for the same one. Announced this past Thursday, it turns out both Bhosle, sister of the illustrious Lata Mangeshkar, and Shankar, whose half-sister Norah Jones is also up for a Grammy, have each been nominated in the category of "best contemporary world music album." While the Grammy category groups these albums together, I don't think the albums could be more different.

From what I have heard of these two records, both are great, just in very different ways. Shankar's Rise is an interesting effort: traditional Indian classical meets contemporary that is sometimes touched by electronic via the Midival Punditz's Gaurav Raina. Bhosle's You've Stolen My Heart , which was done with the Kronos Quartet, is pure filmy, but a nice musical reworking of classic Bollywood.

Also nominated in the same category are Amadou & Mariam for Dimanche A Bamako, Gilberto Gil for Eletracústico, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo & The Strings Of The English Chamber Orchestra for No Boundaries. The Grammy's air on CBS on Wednesday February 8. Let's hope for a mutinous outcome, after all, there is a two out of five chance.

Anyway, here is a link to a piece the Village Voice did last week on You've Stolen My Heart, and some other Bollywood music. I don't really like the article because I can't take it when critics who cover South Asian music always make food metaphors.

The music is an electric curry of sweeping overdubbed strings playing a blend of devotional music and action film motifs.

Can someone tell me what exactly an electric curry of sweeping overdubbed strings is?

posted by sajit @ 12:20 AM