If you have come to Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits looking for one of my older blogs (Washerman’s Dog, Harmonium Music, C90 Lounge etc.) welcome!
Those blogs are now ‘dead’ in the sense that I will no longer post there. I will be posting what I used to post on those blogs, here from now on. That means you will find music (all regions, all styles, including South Asia)and more here.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like what you find here. I’m still populating this site so keep checking in. There should be stuff posted almost every day.
In the 1960s and ’70s, India wasn’t a place to buy the latest Western pop music. In the few shops that sold LPs, you might find some Mantovani, the odd Herb Alpert and the TJB, quite a bit of Ventures and always, India’s very own Englebert Humperdink.
The Beatles was rare, as was Deep Purple and The Doors. But amazingly, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters was readily available and quite popular. Indeed, so precious was Western vinyl in those ancient days that I once made a handy sum selling some old Elvis and Beatles LPs to the management of Allahabad’s coolest dining venue, El Chico. I knew nothing about the music and cared even less. I was a 13 year old cashing in. But the two middle-aged men didn’t even bargain when I offered them the records. They handed over the 25 or 30 rupees I thought they might be worth. An early example of what is now called a “win-win” situation.
But somehow, some way, we young people, did develop an ear for rock ‘n roll, or what we thought qualified as such. I, much later, learned that there were indeed ultra-hip clubs in Delhi, Calcutta and Bombay where not just rock ‘n roll was bashed out by Indian bands, but also some very cool jazz, I was too young at the time to get to such clubs.
Instead, my early learning began during the intervals at Rialto or Picture Palace cinemas in Mussoorie. As the lights came up and the hawkers entered the hall like storm troopers, a scratchy recording of Cliff Richards or the Beatles would fill the room. It would blast over and over, for the next 20 minutes, while ticket holders relieved themselves, sipped a Fanta or puckered their faces to the taste of mango papad dipped in chili salt.
In eateries like The Tavern (on the Mall) and Kwalitys you could also hear the odd rock song. How our teenage hearts thrilled! It made us American kids feel like we were somehow connecting with the “homeland” even though we had only the vaguest idea of what the States, Australia or England were really like.
Here are five of the most famous Western rock ‘n roll songs that nurtured and inspired an entire generation of Indian (and American expat) boys and girls.
For what seemed years, this was the song that blasted out of the Rialto cinema in Mussoorie during intermission. We went every Saturday to see a show and soon knew this song by heart. Sir Cliff, of course, like Mr Humperdink, was another native son and thus had pride of place in any rock and roll rotation.
An absolute icon of a song. This suave Santana anthem penetrated the consciousness of India’s urban, West-looking youth, like nothing else. It was almost guaranteed to be heard in every darkened restaurant, bar and coffee shop from Srinagar to Srirangapatnam.
Someone eventually had a quiet word with the projectionist at the Rialto. Congratulations was ditched for The Ballad of John and Yoko. This was then played for the next three years straight. We loved it! “Christ! You know it ain’t easy.” Boy! Lennon was singing for us!
Like Black Magic Woman, CCR’s first big hit Born on the Bayou touched something in the Indian spirit. It’s heavy, bluesy riff seemed to connect with nothing that Bollywood was producing. Perhaps that is why it caught on. So influential was this song that an Indian garage band called the X’lents made a cover of it.
The Ventures were pretty well known in India in the ’60s and ’70s. If you couldn’t identify their name you knew the sound. Their album covers were bright and as the ’70s broke, covered with very beautiful babes in interesting poses. This crisp little number was as big a hit in Hyderabad as it was in Honolulu.
of a quote I had posted to my wall when I was a working man.
The code of tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. But NGOs often try strategies with dead horses including the following:
o Buying a stronger whip
o Changing riders
o Charging a lower price for the ride
o Saying things like, “This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse.”
o Appointing a committee to study the horse
o Declaring the horse is faster, better, cheaper dead
o Harnessing several dead horses together for better speed.
Country music is all about beer (crying in it; drinking too much of it), Mama cryin’ and Daddy prayin’, adultery, trains and murdering your girlfriend. And lately, pick-up trucks.
Rodney Crowell’s album Close Ties (2017) is a country record that is about none of that. Or if it is, it is taking those things and skinning them alive. It is the testament of a fully matured man. A man who has pulled off the road to a lookout to behold a not always scenic landscape.
Crowell grew up poor in East Houston, moved to Nashville in the early 70s where he wrote a slew of hits for others, released a few albums, produced several more for his then wife Rosanne Cash and by the end of the ‘80s was one of the faces of the so-called ‘neo-traditionalist’ country set. Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Townes van Zandt and Steve Earle were peers and friends.
In 2017, Crowell was sixty-seven years old. In those years he’d
been lied on, spied on, cried on, tried on, taken for a ride you bet Fracked, cracked, smacked jack, what you see is what you get I’ve been spit at, hit at, quit at, shit at, shouldn’t hurt a bit at, what I’m trying to get at
and had somehow transformed all that into a record that reveals adults inhabiting adult relationships more confusing, messy and meaningful than anything their younger selves thought possible.
He sings about taking too much and giving not much. Taking love for granted. And about the sort of love that disappears but never really dies.
With faith beyond religion, we search the great unknown Free fall into darkness, someplace we’ve never gone I’m tied to ya I’m tied to ya
I know a guy, someone I’m just getting to know a bit better, who finds himself kneeling on the bloodied battlefield of Love. To one side stands the woman he married but pushed away. To the other is the woman he loved beyond imagination who has pushed him away. He tells me he can’t imagine being squeezed for another drop but can’t stop wishing for their hands to massage, pummel and prod him. Especially those corners of him that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Maybe ever.
The first time I saw her she threw me that smile
Pure angel of mercy east Texas style
A poet in gingham, an assassin in jeans
The most near perfect woman I’d ever seen
She was hardly routine
He’s trying to find signs of who he is in the things he’s done.
Life without [her] Troubles me in ways hard to express As she withdrew I grew distant and judgmental A self-sure bastard and a stubborn bitch Locked in a deadly game of chess The upside of my status a cut above the rest
His marriage was a constant battle. His love affair an unexpected oasis.
The last time I saw her was close to the end I cried like a baby for the shape I was in No lipstick or powder to soften the tone The most worthy opponent I’ve ever known Was already gone
That second to last line describes both women, he says.
And then Crowell cruelly, or perhaps mercifully, reminds us
It ain’t over yet You can mark my word I don’t care what you think you heard We’re still learning how to fly It ain’t over yet
And what isn’t over yet? Our love? Our prideful ways? Our cluelessness? Our life? All of the above. And more.
These are songs that only a man who has marched his demons up the hill and back down again could write. And sing. Crowell, the singer is every equal to the songwriter. He has an uncanny talent of delivering cutting self-criticism as well as the bitter tears of the jilted without self-pity or indulgence or pleading. This comes, you’d think, from that place every pilgrim hopes to reach, where the storms of life neither seduce nor reduce you. That place where parental approval, manly accomplishment and perfect love are finally stripped naked.
But I don’t care anymore about the fortune and the fame I was better off before I tried to make myself a name
Close Ties is really a break-up album. A man breaking-up with the masks he has worn, the roles he’s played, the sins he’s denied committing. A man whose world is so shaken and crumbly he sees ghosts everywhere.
I don’t care anymore who does what and why
I was better off before when I was just another guy
I see why my friend keeps listening to it. Because Crowell is expert at bringing to life the oldest of all break-ups—love.
When you walked out on me, it tore my heart in half
And I hid behind a laugh
As I became a slave to shame I cursed your name
God Damn you, rot in Hell
Can you forgive me Annabelle
He is full of regret and clarity. But there is precious little calm here and not much confidence he won’t keep offending. This record is a tale of how many ways a brokenheart feels horrible.
Right about now it gets quiet around here, what with nightfall in the wings The floorboards creak and faucets leak, but it’s the emptiness that sings
The wind grows chill and then lies still Forty miles from nowhere At the bottom of the world
Yet, in the end, full of hope.
I won’t deny that I believe these things you say are true I’ve seen the way you gauge each distant star As long as I can be myself and still be there with you I’ll go anywhere you ask me, near or far I’m tied to ya I’m tied to ya
What a rush at the airport. A huge group of Raiwindi[1]s was heading to Lahore from Karachi. It was a jumbo.
Wally met me in the drizzle at the airport and took me straight to the border. He’s pretty bummed out with the developments in the States. Berkeley has fucked him over the BULPIP directorship; hiring someone else and informing him that he was not even in the running for this year’s directorship. Wally takes these things very hard but I know I would too.
Got across to Amritsar in an Ambassador[2] which stopped every half kilometer or so due to ‘blockage’ in the fuel pump. An ansty Aussie shared the front seat with me. He was wired—shouting at the drunks, pissed off with having to pay Rs. 20 for the taxi and going on and on about missing concerts and plays back in London. Not the kind of travelling companion I want. We parted at the Railway Station.
I was greeted by 2 friends–rickshaw walas—from my last trip to Amritsar. Made a new one—a hustler who first told me there was no way I’d get a berth on the Amritsar-Howrah Mail tonight. He left and then came back after a brief interval. He suggested if I paid a little ‘chai pani’[3] I’d definitely get one. So, I paid Rs. 20 for the ticket clerk and Rs. 40 to my new friend for the luxury of a sleeper berth. A good deal. Rs. 220 for a 1879km journey.
I asked my rickshaw friends if he was a ‘gent’. Not the English term but a shortening of the word ‘agent’, used in these parts to refer to touts and fixers. “Yes”, they replied, “but an honest one. He’ll do what he says he will.” And he did.
I had asked if there were any bombings on the rails[4] these days.
They looked at me disappointingly. “This is written at the time of our birth. There is no changing it. Bombs or no bombs, when your number is up, it’s up.”
One of the rickshaw walas then broke into a parable.
“There once was a man. A mad camel got to chasing him and to escape the man jumped into a well. The camel sat outside the well and said to himself, ‘He’s got to come out one day and when he does I’ll bite him’. He settled down to wait. After a couple of days a poisonous snake slithered by and bit the camel. In an instant the camel was dead.
“The man in the well finally crawled up to have a look. He saw the camel lying bloated in the sun, rotting away. He triumphantly strode forward and gave the camel a mighty kick. His leg sunk deep into the rotting belly of the camel. The man’s leg got infected and he died.
“So, you see,” said the rickshaw wala, “even when we take precautions, Fate tricks us.”
With such encouragement I set off for Calcutta.
19 January 1990
A long journey across northern India. Lucknow, Pratapgarh, Benaras, Patna. People flow in and out of the aisles as if choreographed. It’s stuffy on the top tier but I sleep a lot. I’m surprised at the spareness of the big stations. It’s hard to find even a packet of Marie biscuits. The thought crosses my mind that maybe the great lurch into the 21st century that India Today so proudly heralds has been at the expense of the further impoverishment of most Indians.
I share a smoke with a masala magnate from Calcutta. He’s actually Punjabi but his family moved to Calcutta from Lahore over a century ago. He never goes back to Punjab.
“I like Calcutta because it’s the cheapest and safest place in India. You have no riots, no ghadbad.[5] The loadshedding is tolerable-nothing like in Benaras. The prices of everything is cheap—living, food, transport.”
He’s a real Calcutta booster. At one point to tells me, “Yes, the police are corrupt but at least a Bengali will do what he’s bribed to do. You give him some money and your work is done. It’s the honesty I like.”
He speaks in a soft voice. He begins to tell me about how he used to drink like a ‘mad man’. Always drunk. Always looking for a drink. He was, as he puts it, “at the last stage”. He then sought the help of a guru, whose name is drowned out by the clacking of the rails as we whoosh by a dark Bihari village. He pulls out an amulet with a hand tinted image of his guru. “Whatever he says, has to happen,” he quietly says. He places the image back under his shirt and against his chest. He begins relating more miraculous acts of his guru to a couple sitting next to him.
I climb up again to the 3rd tier and fall asleep.
20 January 1990
Calcutta is the city of superlatives. There is no end to the seeming premier-ness of the place. Most dirty city, most crowded. Most posters per pillar, most taxis per person. Most specialised bazaars. I saw one this morning which catered entirely to shoppers interested in balloons and rubber bands. Most cruel means of public transportation (hand-pulled rickshaws). Most diverse inhabitants, most rundown colonial buildings. Most cultured city: International Film Festivals, Classical music programs, Beatlemania stage show. Most touts. It’s hard to find anything new to say or any new superlative to add to Calcutta’s already superlative list of stellar ‘mosts and bests’.
I have found a room in the Paragon Hotel, one of these new tourist hostels which are the same no matter where you go nowadays. The Ringo Guest House just off Connaught Place is no different than the Paragon Hotel just off Chowringhee.
Tourists—Germans, Dutch, Japanese, Australians and a few frightened Americans—writing in small script in their journals, talking to each other about their similar discoveries and eating out at the same restaurants.
I walk up Sudder Street. I remember coming here, to the Red Shield Guest House[6],with my family every other year enroute to a deserted beach in southern Orissa/Odisha—Gopalpur-on-Sea.
I’m afraid to go Gopalpur these days. Afraid to find sparsely dressed Germans scowling at me as they strut around like they discovered the place.
In those days (late 60s) we seemed to be the only white faces in Calcutta. Sudder Street was quiet; New Market cool and refreshing; the Globe Theatre ran movies like The Bible. Now it shows Young Doctors in Love and New Market is crawling with sad Muslim touts begging you to buy or sell something. Hotels proliferate. Tourists swarm.
These tourists are backpackers. Young folks from the 1st world bumming around the 3rd. In Benaras they learn sitar, in Dharmsala they take a course in Buddhist meditation. In Jaisalmer they ride camels into the desert and here in Calcutta they volunteer for a week or so at Mother Teresa’s. They then catch a train to Puri or Gaya.
I admire (in a way) their altruism for washing and feeding the dying. I wish I could do the same. But something rubs me the wrong way. There is a feeling of inevitability to their righteousness. Mother Teresa is another stop along the way—like the journey of the cross in Jerusalem—full of good material to write home about. Mother Teresa is now another tourist franchise, another neat thing to do.
Calcutta is a pleasure to visit again despite the restless 1st Worlders who hang on like frightened knights of the tourist round table. The locals don’t seem to give a damn about your origins here.
Calcutta by Nate Rabe
22 January 1990
Spent a thrilling few hours wandering among colonial tombstones in the Park Street Cemetery (opened 1760). The image that comes to mind is a ghost ship shipwrecked on an isolated reef, forgotten and dark. Like all cemeteries it has an immediate calming effect. Jumbled and disorderly tombstones and mausoleums crumble in silent gloom among trees and hundreds of potted plants. Some of the paths are under repair but other outlying areas are as untouched as they were a hundred years ago.
I’m instantly aware this place is an entire city. Stately and expansive. Towering citadels with Corinthian columns, baths and porticos keep watch over a host of long-dead nabobs and Company servants far from home. Each tomb is grander than the next. Spires rise 6, 8, 10 feet above the soil in honor of a young civil surgeon downed by ‘fever’ or an indigo planter consumed by the pox. The most ordinary of India’s first British colonizers have erected over their bones and spirits structures few Presidents can boast.
The Raj was young when Park Street opened. The Battle of Plassey was only three years won. Young men with no social standing back home, here had a chance to be rajahs off the plentitude of Bengal. These young men had never dreamed of the fortunes to be made in Bengal; Bengal had no way to stop them. Park Street memorialises the sense of destiny and ostentation of the early Raj. The world was waiting to be plucked from the mohur trees. Fortunes were huge and readily won for those who showed their ruthless ambition. For them this was a larger-than-life world. I suppose a bereaved father felt it perfectly natural to raise a small Roman temple in honour of his nine-month old infant son, dead by flux. The cemetery, like the period, like the characters buried here is an overstatement. The epitaphs are sentimental and overegged. There was never a disliked, cruel or greedy person buried here.
Of course, not everyone buried here is insignificant. William Jones, the great Orientalist icon who was the first to propose the idea of a shared kinship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, lies under a 15-foot obelisk. Charles Dickens’ second son has been lovingly moved here by students from Jadavpur University. Richmond Thackeray, father of William Makepeace Thackeray, a senior servant of the Company, lies here, as does the wife of William Hickey, India’s first prominent English journalist.
Teachers of Hindoostanee at Fort William College, traders and fair maidens, Park Street Cemetery is, more than any other place in India, a memorial to the Raj. Here one can taste the self-aggrandisement, the self-importance and most of all, the self-pity which characterises British India. You only need to close your eyes to hear them speak again. Little do they realise that their ostentatious moments of death are long forgotten and ignored.
23 January 1990
Residential mural in Bhubaneshwar by Nate Rabe
Today I arrived in a cemetery of a different sort. The great ancient temple city of Bhubaneshwar. An initial quickie around the city has left me awed with the grandeur of India—truly the Wonder That Was. I’m none too impressed however by the greedy mahantas and pundits who follow me with visitor books filled with the names of foreigners who have come before me and donated Rs. 100 or 150. They are like blood suckers who will not detach themselves from you until you fork over some cash. Muttered curses follow me when I hand over a fist of Rs. 2 notes or a tenner. “You should give at least Rs. 50,” one calls out as I walk away.
24 January 1990
Had a sleepless night. The bed in the Janpath Hotel was infested with bedbugs and the room abuzz with mosquitos. I was so tired and on the verge of the final descent into sleep only to be woken by a damn katmal gnawing at some remote part of my body. The room was distinctly shitty. A weak but persistent stench wafted across the room. No windows, only some cement grating at the top of the wall which allowed easy access for the mosquitos.
I flung my few large pieces of cloth on the floor and turned on the fan. I caught a cold and my neck ached but I must have fallen asleep between 2 and 3.
I blearily wandered off toward the Lingaraja complex which was still as impressive as it was yesterday evening. The priest left me alone to take some photos. I met two young pandas[7] who were only interested in chatting, not in extracting money from me. One was Kuna and the other Bichchi. Kuna kept classifying women into a personal scale of ‘sexual’. “Western lady very sexual”, or “Japanese lady most sexual”. He was full of obscure English aphorisms. “Every book has a cover every woman a lover”, was his favorite but others addressed less sexual subjects as well.
Bichchi was interested in telling me about politics. One of the Patnaik[8]s was in power. Another Patnaik was trying to squeeze him out now that he (the second Patnaik) had the leverage of the National Front government in Delhi. Bichchi was confident that his Patnaik (the second one) would be victorious in the end. The main complaint against the ruling Patnaik was that—as best as I could understand from Bichchi’s broken Hindi—he liked to consort with little boys. If not that he drank or smoked something that wasn’t good.
Kuna immediately spoke up. “Is there only one tiger in the jungle? They all do these things. Have you ever seen only one tiger in the jungle?”
They tried to encourage me to drink some bhang[9]. Being already light-headed from a sleepless night I declined. They extolled the virtues of bhang but cursed heroin, charas [10]and alcohol. All these vices Bichchi attributed to the Pakistanis. He saw a nefarious attempt to destroy his country. Apparently, there are in Bhubaneshwar a growing number of drug addicts.
Kuna again offered his own interpretation. “It is good. We have 90 crore[11] people here in India. If a few kill themselves with heroin good. It will keep our population down.”
I took my leave after an hour under the shade of the Lingaraja, one of 125,000 temples said to be scattered around the city. This statistic came from Bichchi. I was tired and wanted to nap but didn’t want to do it in the Janpath Hotel. Over a beer at the Kenilworth Hotel, I resolved to head immediately to Puri in search of cleaner mattresses and an airy room.
25 January 1990
Puri strikes me as an overgrown seaside fishing village. Except for the fact that it is one of Hinduism’s four major dhams[12], there didn’t seem much to commend the place. The beach is here too, of course, but it has none of the isolated charm of Gopalpur or the lushness of Kovalum. The alleys are dark and damp and only Hindus are permitted to enter the ancient Jagganath[13] temple. For a photographer it is also frustrating. The temple is set at an awkward angle which makes it almost impossible to capture well. The square in front of the temple is in glaring light most the day so people huddle in the shadows under the tarped awnings. After walking around searching for some good light, I put my cameras away. From now on I’ll stick to the alleys where little icons and shrines add color to the landscape.
I talk with Mohammad Yusuf who is selling reptile scales for the cure of piles and general unwanted blood flow. He makes rings of these and advises his customers to wear them on their left hand so as when they perform their toilet, the rings’ magical effects will “make you 100% clean. You can spend Rs. 10,000 on a doctor but these rings will cure you completely.”
He is an Oriya[14] but like most Muslims in the north speaks quite good Urdu. When I told him I was living in Pakistan he quietly asked, “What’s the news? Is it good?” I find the Muslims I’ve run into –a lot—to be sad people, though I’m probably projecting. In Calcutta all the booksellers and tape hawkers on Free School Street are Muslims from Howrah. One told me with a bit of over enthusiasm that “Hindus are the best. I have more Hindu friends than Muslims. We have no problems here!”
Another, Salim, is a waiter at the Janpath Hotel in Bhubaneshwar. He was soft spoken and left me with a feeling tender. He claimed to make Rs 200 a month in the hotel of which $150 he remits to his family. He used to work in Calcutta in a factory that makes cooking utensils but for some reason came, as he put it, “into the hotel line.” He doesn’t like the work but is stuck. He saw two postcards I had bought from a sidewalk dealer on Sudder Street. One was of the Kaaba[15] the other was of Imam Hussain on his horse. Salim kissed them and pressed them against his forehead when I offered them to him.
The Muslims seem to be accepted and other than a slight hesitation before telling me their names, they seem content. They confess to cheering for Pakistan’s cricket team but have been quite uninterested in asking me about life in Pakistan. Only one, a cloth merchant in Bhubaneshwar, asked me if I preferred India or Pakistan.
Tomorrow, I take a day trip to Konarak. It’s Republic Day and will be overrun with tourists undoubtedly.
26 January 1990
I was accompanied to Konarak by a Gujarati, Dr. Parwar. A pleasant and gentle man who had pulled himself up to a position of considerable rank and authority in a government hospital. His father was a manual labourer in Pune, “so I have seen life from close up.” Through hard work he got his MBBS and MD from one of the best medical schools in India and has since added a triad of MA’s in subjects like Public Health, Venereal Diseases and Administration. He has been attending a conference in Calcutta on Public Health Administration and has come to Puri to kill some time.
He is deeply committed to serving the people of India as a doctor back in Ahmedabad. He has no desire for an overseas job or money. He proclaims more than once how proud he is of being Indian. This is not something I hear in Pakistan very often.
Konarak is impressive. The stone sculpture is beautiful and majestic. The monument is set out as a sun chariot with 24 giant wheels pulled by 7 rearing horses. Most of the original temple has been destroyed but the remaining bits inspire awe for their size and beauty. The original temple rose more than twice as high at the remaining remnant which rises 80 feet into the air.
Dr. Parwar and I climb to the top of the temple and gaze into a deep opening. A pedestal is at one edge where we overhear a guide explain, “This is the place where the image of the Surya (the Sun God) stood”. Inside his stone head and feet, apparently, was magnet which when a certain interaction of physics and metaphysics transpired “caused the God’s head and feet to move.”
The Indian government is preserving the temple. Dozens of lungi[16] clad workers scratch the eroded stone with water-soaked bamboo brushes. Here and there new plinths and slabs of granite have been fitted into the chariot spokes and walls. Up near the top they have placed two huge Buddha-like images, upon which, during the Eastern Ganga dynasty[17] which built the temple, the sun was said to have shone continuously. One at dawn, one at noon and one at dusk. The third image is yet to be restored.
Dr Parwar and I silently take in this magnificent piece of human-divine cooperation before boarding a bus back to Puri.
[1] Raiwind, a town near Lahore, famous as the headquarters of a major Islamic missionary organisation, Tablighi Jama’at
[2] Hindustan Ambassador. Iconic Indian manufactured sedan which for decades was about the only car available in most parts of India.
[3] Literally, ‘tea water’. Colloquially used to indicate a small gift/bribe.
[4] A Sikh movement for Khalistan as a separate country was raging in the 80s and early 90s. Often trains passing through Punjab were bombed as part of the terroristic tactics of militant Sikh groups. By 1990 things had calmed down quite a bit but my question was not entirely unjustified.
[5] Hindi/Urdu word meaning ‘chaos’; ‘confusion’; ‘disorganisation’. Colloquially, ‘hassle’.
[6] Part of the Salvation Army’s global charity empire. Cheaper rates for Christian missionaries right in the heart of Calcutta!
[7] Hindi word for priest or guide to a temple. Not the Chinese animal.
[8] A prominent political dynasty in the state of Orissa/Odisha.
[11] Hindi/Urdu for the numerical value of 10,000,000
[12] The four dham are the major Hindu pilgrimage destinations located at each cardinal point of the compass. Dwaraka (West), Puri (East), Badrinath (North) and Rameshwaram (South)
[13] From which we get the English word, juggernaut.
For the first several minutes he said nothing, just guiding his yellow and black Suzuki taxi through the clamorous traffic of midday Delhi. My daughter wanted me to ask him what his name was. “Jai Bhagwan,” he said. “An old-fashioned name.” His smile is half apologetic.
“You’ll be going to Jaipur? That’s a beautiful city. They call it the Pink City. Its a five hour drive from Delhi and Pushkar is another 2 or 2 and half hours further. You’ll stay in Pushkar for a few days? No? I see, just for a day. Ajmer is just half hour more away. What a place that is. Moinuddin Chisti…the Emperor of India! Will you be taking the train from Ajmer to Varanasi? No, from Agra. Ok. I see, your agent arranged it that way. Watch out for these agents. They’re in it for themselves, a lot of them.
This traffic is like this but not for too long. There’s a fly over up ahead and the road narrows so everything slows down to a crawl. But soon we’ll be moving again. Yes, that metro line was made for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. What a rip off! The organizers stole 80% of the investments. Only 20% was spent on the infrastructure. The main crook, Kapladi is in jail but what does it matter. It won’t change anything. The rich and our netas don’t give a shit. All the rules are for the poor, not one of them is for the rich. It never changes.
My people used to own the land around the airport. A long time ago the government came and forced us off the land and gave us Rs1.40 per square meter! A very low price. But they got what they wanted. You know Gandhi? They say he is the father of the nation. We say he’s the number one Thief. Don’t believe me? What did he ever do for us? Did he do anything to improve our lot? He and Nehru did everything for themselves and to make their own money and name. Gandhi, the old bastard, used to feed his goat grapes while the rest of the country starved.
The real hero of India was Subhas Chandra Bose. What a guy. You know what his slogan was? Give me your blood and I’ll give you freedom! He was a man of action. That’s why they killed him. You know Gandhi could have freed Bhagat Singh but he didn’t. He let him hang. All for his own glory.
Ambedkar? Yeah, he was a good man too. He wrote the Constitution. No one else could have done that. He was a great man actually. I have nothing bad to say about Ambedkar.
Right, we’re almost at your destination. Just 5-10 minutes more.”
In the late 80s European pop music seemed to be busting with African sounds. A second generation of immigrants, settled mainly in the UK, France and Belgium, shot to prominence thanks in part to record labels like Sterns, Barclay, Afro Rythmes and RealWorld. As well as a large population of young people and musicians hungry for music other than disco, schlager and rock.
Especially consequential was the emergence of a prosaic marketing gimmick for record stores and music journalists–‘World Music’. A new category for obscure (to Western fans) African and Asian artists, singing in non-English languages.
The music these artists performed and recorded stood out sharply from the pop music of the time (especially, the American variety) with heretofore unheard instruments, revamped rhythms and lyrics in Arabic, Yoruba, Bambara, Zulu, Swahili, Lingala and colonial creoles.
The creation of this immediately contentious category/genre not only gave these artists a legitimate place within European record stores but more importantly, a platform from which they could grow their audiences, make a bit of money and in some cases become internationally feted stars.
In fact, ‘world music’ proved to be a much-needed shot in the arm for a music industry struggling with oversaturation, commercialisation and a technological transition from vinyl to cassette tapes to CDs. African bands and artists took to these new media without hesitation, especially cassette tape, relishing in their inexpensive production costs and portability. Suddenly their music was available everywhere, at home in Africa but also in Manchester, Dusseldorf, Minneapolis and Copenhagen. Fans loved it. And in no small way, ‘world music’, dominated by African sounds and artists, rejuvenated the global music business of the time.
This wasn’t the first wave of African music in Europe. The performers’ fathers and uncles, who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s just as the political ‘winds of change’ blew across Africa, had been the first to introduce African music to Europeans: Congolese rumba, soul drenched crooners from Portuguese Africa, South African jazz, Ghanian highlife. These were the sounds of the dance halls, boîtes (night clubs) and musseques (shantytowns) of Johannesburg, Kinshasa and Luanda transplanted into the pubs and community halls of London, Brussels and Lisbon.
I’m not sure what sort of fan base this first wave of African music had beyond the immigrant communities themselves. Apart from South Africans Mariam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim who enjoyed relatively prominent reputations internationally, few Africans broke into the American cultural mainstream. But given the nature of post-colonial European societies, especially the large number of Africans moving to Europe in the 70s and 80s, Europeans seemed to be quite receptive to this music.
In the 1980s Paris became the centre of this new-fangled Euro-Afro pop music. Small recording studios such as Studio Caroline were magnets for bands and musicians from across Francophone Africa. Ace musicians like the singer Kanda Bongo Man whose first record, Iyole, announced the arrival of soukous on the world stage in 1981, lightning-fingered guitarist Diblo “Machine Gun” Dibala and Guinean singer Mory Kanté who along with a former mate from the Rail Band, Salif Keita (Mali), began making waves on a fast growing Afro-pop scene.
My first encounter with contemporary Afro-pop was in 1991. I was a junior staff member in the UN assistance program in northern Iraq. Living in tents against the side of a brushy hills a few klicks from the Iranian border, our evenings were monotonous. Beer, whiskey, cigarettes and music was about it. The nearest town, Sulaymaniyah, was 90 minutes away by road and in any case, offered no entertainment for European/American tastes.
Every so often we’d roast a wild boar and circle our 4x4s around the fire, open the doors, slip a cassette into the tape player and dance about until the wee hours. On one such occasion one of our Scandinavian colleagues slipped Akwaba Beach into the deck and cranked the volume.
People speak of those lightning strike moments. The Beatles at Shea Stadium. Elvis on the on Ed Sullivan Show. Dylan at Newport. A piece of music and moment in time that changes their lives forever.
The opening notes of Yé ké yé ké with its brazen blasts of brass, rapid fire vocalising and jerk-me-till-I’m-dead rhythms hit me like a bolt from on high. I had never heard anything like this. My entire body felt as if it were captured inside the music. The song sparked every dull, fuzzy and ho-hum part of my experience into a mass of shivering electricity. I hadn’t realised just how much I needed to hear this music. We played that tape over and over for months and the album has enjoyed a permanent seat on my musical security council ever since.
According to our Nordic DJ Yé ké yé ké was not some niche crate-digger’s discovery but a huge hit across Europe. Africa’s first million seller and a #1 hit on both continents. And no wonder.
Mory Kanté was born in Guinea but moved at a young age to Mali to learn the kora and further his family griottraditions. His big break came when he joined the Rail Band where he teamed up with Salif Keita and Djelimady Tounkara as part of the classic lineup of one of Africa’s iconic musical groups. When Keita left, Kanté stepped into the lead singer role before pursuing what came to be one of the most successful solo careers of any African performer.
Akwaba Beach, a dazzling example of Euro-Africaine dance/club music, opens with the #1 smash hit Yé ké yé ké and continues in the same upbeat vein for the rest of the album. Fast moving synth pop mixed with Kanté’s thrilling tenor voice, punchy kora riffs, blaring brass, feisty backup choruses led by Djanka Diabate and the percussion riding high in the mix. Dance music distilled to its essence.
Released in 1987, Akwaba Beach pounds with drum machines and shimmers with the synths that dominated the music of that decade. But unlike a lot of other relics of the 80’s, these machine instruments fit Kanté’s music to a ‘T’. It is the cocky, blatant sound required when performing in a crowded, noisy club. Unapologetic disco. If you’re looking for folk-lorish ‘authentic’ African music, you’ve come to wrong place. Kanté’s singing and playing is so good, his musicians so tuned into his vision, all that matters is the quickening of your blood.
Akwaba Beach shot Kanté into outer space as a world music superstar and opened the field for other Africans to experiment and go boldly into new territory.
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On the other end of the BPM spectrum is Waldemar Bastos’s 1990 album, Angola Minha Namorada (Angola, My Beloved). Recorded in the picturesque Portuguese coastal town of Paco D’Arcos and released in 1990, this music is urbane and sublime. There is none of the frenetic energy of Akwaba Beach within 100 miles.
Waldemar Bastos, who passed away in 2020 was born in colonial Angola in 1954. Like so many creative Angolans, he self-exiled himself from his country to settle in Portugal after it became clear that the revolution was willing to strike down musicians and other artists, not just ideological opponents. Music had played a huge part in mobilising the Angolan people to support the anti-colonial revolution, but many popular singers and musicians found themselves caught up in the 27th of May 1977 purge unleashed by the ruling Marxist-Leninist party in reaction to an internal ideological challenge. Within 18 months of securing independence, artists and musos were realizing that the dream was turning into a nightmare. Bastos left his homeland in 1982, aged 28.
Blessed with a warm and supple voice not dissimilar to that of Al Jarreau, Waldemar was considered in his lifetime a giant of Angolan music. His album, Angola Minha Namorada, was released nearly a decade before Pretaluz, the record that saw him “breakthrough” to European and American music fans in 1998.
It’s a gorgeous album. Calm, somewhat laid back in pace but deeply felt lyrically and musically. This record is the thing you want to listen to on late Sunday morning. When there is no reason to rush, nowhere to go and everything to be gained by letting Waldemar’s soulful voice slowly insinuate itself into your being. Hues of fado and tints of jazz colour this beautiful music. Though entirely different from the club music of Mory Kanté this album is another fine example of Euro-Afro pop.
Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits 