Shubh Diwali

Given the ethnic breakdown of the IT workforce in the SF Bay Area, it's probably not much of a surprise that my office doesn't celebrate Halloween much, but we throw a big celebration every year for Diwali.

Diwali (or Deepavali -- the Hindu festival of light) is based on the Hindu calendar, so it's kind of like Easter Sunday, falling at a different date on the Gregorian calendar every year, usually sometime in late October or early November. This year it falls on Friday November 9th, which is today, so I thought this would be a good day to explore the music of the Indian subcontinent.
Bollywood here we come!



That's Mohammad Rafi's "Jaan Pehechaan Ho" from the movie Gumnaam (1965), more famous in the Western world as the song that Enid is dancing to in the opening sequence of Ghost World.

The movie Gumnaam (based on the trailer on Youtube) was "India's first suspense thriller", loosely based on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. One of my co-workers gave me a bootleg DVD of the movie (copyrights on 40 year old films are a little looser in India) and this dance sequence really is the best thing about the film.

If you look closely, you'll see that the band is called "Ted Lyons and His Cubs", which baseball historians might find funny because the real Ted Lyons was a hall of fame pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. Ted and his Cubs (or at least their bass drumhead) also appeared in the 1965 movie Janwar, dressed up in Beatle wigs and backing up Shammi Kapur on "Tumse Hai Dil Ko".



This clip has been floating around the internets for awhile (I think the Jestaplero posted it a few months back), and it really deserves to be watched multiple times. India's music scene isn't as insular as Westerners think it is, they have boy bands and Madonna clones just like the rest of the world, and in the mid-60s when Beatlemania was in full bloom, there were bands like Ted Lyon & his Cubs bringing the rock and roll to the Indian kids. It's like audio chicken tikka masala, an eastern attempt to imitate western taste that ends up as delicious synthesis of east and west.

It's interesting to note that in 1965, these Indians were trying to ape the Beatles while George Harrison had discovered the sitar and was starting to explore Indian Music in "Norwegian Wood". Tjinder Singh and Cornershop's Punjabi cover of "Norwegian Wood" could have been what completed the cycle thirty years later.

Cornershop - Norwegian Wood (this bird has flown)
Mohammad Rafi (with Ted Lyons & his Cubs?) - Jaan Pehechaan Ho

For hours of rainy day enjoyment, watch all six part "Bollywood A Go Go" clips on youtube. One of the Bollywood backing bands has "The Monkees" written on their bass drum. Did Mickey Dolenz have to pawn his drum kit on the way to the Maharishi's ashram in 1968?

Happy Diwali everyone. I'm going to sign off now. It's nearly lunchtime and the chicken tikka masala catered from Swagat isn't going to eat itself!