SquawkRadio

I’ve been having a love affair with all things Indian for a while now. Whenever my husband and I are home alone for the evening, we get carry out from India Palace, a local Indian restaurant that has the best masala sauce in town. I’ve been loving Indian movies and sampling Indian literature. I’ve been shopping on eBay UK for just the right sari. But more than anything else Indian I’ve enjoyed, I absolutely adore bhangra music.

The thing is, I haven’t been collecting bhangra CDs, since they’re kinda hard to find in Kentucky. Instead, I’ve been downloading songs from iTunes. Thanks to the nifty “Just for You” feature on the iTunes web site, every time I download bhangra, I get more bhangra recommendations. So I’ve got a playlist that boasts a couple dozen different artists. For this reason, today’s music blog is going to be about a genre instead of a specific artist.

There’s no way I can describe the sound better than this passage from Wikipedia, so I defer to that site:

“Bhangra is a fusion of music, singing and the beat of the dhol drum, a single stringed instrument called the iktar (ektara), the tumbi and an instrument reminiscent of an enlarged pair of tongs called chimta. The accompanying songs are small couplets written in the Punjabi language called bolis. They relate to harvest celebration, love, patriotism or current social issues. Today the word bhangra is more associated with the style of dance pop music derived from the above mentioned musical accompaniment. The dhol’s smaller cousin, the dholaki, is sometimes used instead of or in addition to the dhol. Additional percussion, including tabla, is frequently used in bhangra.”

Got that? Good. I’ll just add that the music is exotic, powerful, pulsing and hypnotic. Once I start listening to it, I really don’t want to stop.

If I WAS going to do a specific bhangra artist, it would be the band B21, which I’m reasonably certain appeared as the wedding band in “Bend It Like Beckham.” I DID go to great lengths to find their CD “Long Overdue” after seeing that film, finally locating it from a nice Indian student on eBay.UK (who was frankly surprised to find someone from Kentucky buying bhangra *G*). Their name comes from the postal code for Birmingham, which is evidently regarded as the home for UK bhangra. The second most frequently downloaded artist on my playlist is Sapna Awasthi, a folk artist who, I was delighted to discover upon googling her, is known for her “raunchy songs.” Who knew? Other artists I’d recommend checking out are Bally Sagoo, Bina Mistry,Hansraj Hans, Panjabi MC, Sukwinder Singh and Udit Narayan. I have them all on my playlist, and they’re all wonderful.

I know Bhangra isn’t for everyone--my son and niece laugh hysterically at me whenever I play it while they’re around. Although my husband indulges me when I put the music on, I get the feeling he’s not all that keen on it.  But I love it. It transports me to a part of the world I’ve never even visited, and makes me feel right at home. So c’mon, everybody! The lamb curry and naan--and the bhangra--is on me!