Monday, December 20 2010
Dharohar Project, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons: EP
A British musician sings a line, an Indian picks up the line and shoots it off into a Sufi-esque corkscrew.
Monday, September 20 2010
‘Dreaming in Hindi’: Total Immersion, or Panicked Submersion?
Even at 45, Rich must defend her reputation. As she filters it through what would have been her acquired Hindi: “I have not been bringing men up to my room. I have not been throwing condoms onto people’s roofs.”
Sunday, September 12 2010
Ravi Shankar: Nine Decades Vol. 1 1967-1968
An act of classical intricacy performed with athletic rigor.
Monday, August 16 2010
Paban Das Baul: Music of the Honey Gatherers
Noises occur and vibrate so that the implications of the sounds and the gradations of silence around them have a significance of their own.
Monday, May 31 2010
Bharat Karki & Party: International Music
A blithe mixture of Indian music and psychedelic funk recorded in Calcutta during the late 1970s.
Tuesday, April 27 2010
Tribeca Film Festival 2010: Road, Movie
Instead of plying song and dance like a traditional Bollywood film, Road, Movie beguiles a real life cinema audience with hair tonic. Yet when the movie is finally over, we're left with snake oil.
Tuesday, February 23 2010
Red Baraat: Chaal Baby
Mainly instrumental tunes, at least two of which might be familiar even to listeners who have only a brief acquaintance with Indian music
Friday, February 19 2010
Power and Contestation: India since 1989 by Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam
Nigam and Menon remind us of the rich history non violent protest has had in subaltern India, and that the recourse to violence is a measure of desperation rather than entitlement.
Friday, November 13 2009
Monsoon Wedding (The Criterion Collection)
A family drama, as mosaic of modern, globalizing India, as a love story that sneaks up on you, and as a discourse on post-modernity and tradition.
