MYBINDI RADIO Session 4.0   with Mohamad Click here to listen to myBindi Radio

Playlist

01 Sweeter / Panjabi MC
A short intro, and PMC releases the reggae vibes, backed by big dhols and sampled bols. These irresistible vocals flow from the throat of an unknown singer (unknown to me, anyhow, because I lost the Grass Roots album cover). Panjabi MC has worked with a couple of black vocalists, but the result never turned out as good as this; unfortunately the track is only available on the CD version of Grass Roots, while the cassette is more common (or more commonly bootlegged). Note that PMC never samples the harmonium, but always plays it himself, probably showing off the skills he learned doing kirtan at the Gurdwara.

02 Projaproti / Lal
Another occasional harmonium player, Toronto artist Rosina Kazi delivers a sweet-voiced and powerful track, pupal English verses bleeding into a metamorphic Bangla chorus. Prithi Narayanan's delicate veena-playing splashes teardrops upon Murr's trippy beats and programming, creating a beautifully translucent dreamscape. If you can't guess from the context, "projaproti" means "butterfly". Lal's smooth debut album Corners, on Public Transit Recordings, is the stuff sapnein are made of.

03 See Breeze / Talvin Singh (feat. Swati Natekar)
Rapid eye movement accelerates and light slumber bursts into full-out fantasy. One of a couple of tracks on Talvin's second album Ha that sounds like it belongs on his first record, with tablas dancing all over frenzied drum n' bass. The highlight of the song, however, is definitely Swati Natekar's flawlessly haseen vocal performance, no less masterful than her tracks on Nitin Sawhney's Beyond Skin.

04 Tanha / Josh
Former Montrealers Rup, Rik and Qurram deliver a well-polished, rich and melancholy melody about being lonely. Anjana Srinivasan's Karnatic violin skills drive an extremely catchy song.

05 Sajna / Junoon
No tanhaai here, just bewafaai. When it comes to ending relationships, most Desi artists sing dard bhare geet, but the Pakistani rock rajas seem to like these stingingly sarcastic and slightly malevolent songs about breaking up, written from that "go sit on a tandoor" point of view. The only song I've heard in which the music was actually written by lead vocalist Ali Azmat; electric guitar virtuoso Salman Ahmad is normally the brains of the operation.

06 Homelands / Nitin Sawhney (feat. Rizwan-Muazzam)
Qawaali duo Rizwan and Muazzam Mujahid Ali Khan float haunting vocals over Nitin Sawhney's violins and flamenco guitar on a classic track that bridges the musical gap between Spain and Pakistan. Considering the strong gypsy and Arabic influences present in flamenco, it's not surprising that it jams so well with South Asian sounds. 

07 Sajenio / Musafir
Yet another song about separation, this time in the Rajastani language, with an entrancingly hardcore sound. The album, Dhola Maru, was marketed to the Western audience as a sort of gypsy record, since there are indications that the Gypsies of Europe have their roots in Rajastan. Musafir consists of a number of Rajastani Muslim and Hindu performers, mainly from the Manghaniyar and Langa musician castes, whose livelihoods in Rajastan depend upon their vocation as entertainers for the upper-case Hindus and upper-class Muslims. This is why they're so damn good. Besides singing, dancing and entrancing listeners, Musafir's performers like to walk on glass in their spare time.

08 Shyamythscience / Bill Laswell
A short excerpt from Bill Laswell's half-hour South Asian electronic tornado. Also, Bollywood superstar Dharmendra delivers an informed speech offering an innovative solution to the problem of parental interference in their childrens' love lives.

09 Gaali / Devang Patel
Soon you'll find yourself singing it in the shower, on the bus, and to your in-laws.

10 Koka Karva De / Kiran Ahluwalia
Budda baba Qaido catches Heer and Ranjha being naughty, and limps off to tell Heer's mother. More importantly, Toronto-based ghazalkaar Kiran Ahluwalia exercises the skills she picked up while traveling in Punjab in search of somebody who could train her in the lok geet tradition. The track sounds very traditional at first listen, but keep in mind that they don't use guitars or Latin percussion in the pind. Kiran's voice makes any song sound sweet and deep; a lesser artist could turn this one into an ad for Jijaji Jeweller's. A beautifully playful piece, and one strangely familiar to me.

11 Rhythm Blues / Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka a.k.a. LeRoy Jones was a black poet of the Beat generation, alongside Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, etc., who steered away from the Beat ethos to give voice to his Afrocentric anger and aspirations. Like sax-player John Coltrane's jazz, Baraka's poems often took western forms and murdered them in verse, as though he hoped that the destruction of the English language would revive the African tongue that his ancestors had lost.

12 Blood Brothers / Karmacy
Gujarati rappers Nimo and Swap, on the other hand, retain their mother tongue and use it spectacularly on this bilingual rap. This piece, in Gujarati and English, tells the story of two brothers, and what happens when one of them immigrates to America, leaving his brother behind in India. Even if you don't understand the language, this track will make you wish Talib Kweli could rap in Gujarati.

13 Ali Mullah / Transglobal Underground (feat. Natacha Atlas)
Ya rabbi, subhaanak. Palestinian singer Natacha Atlas praises Allah and Hazrat Ali against TGU's steady beats in this sample from the full song.

14 Throw Down / State of Bengal & Ananda Shankar
From the RealWorld album Walking On, a collaboration between hippy-era fusionist Ananda Shankar and his biggest fan, DJ State of Bengal, who flipped when he got the invitation to work with the Indian music legend on a cooperative tour. This CD was recorded after the fact, and most of the tracks are difficult to describe; vaguely Latin with funky sitars strums and drones, all drowning in SOB's chill-out beat soup.  Hamaari jail mein surakh?

15 My Dancing Days Are Done / Cornershop (feat. Parsley & Sasha Andres)
Here we have your typical dhol, sitar, and French vocals. Tjinder Singh has some sort of Franco-fixation for sure. I've inserted a Polynesian fertility chant directly afterwards for your benefit.

16 Raja Ki Aayegi Baaraat / Lata Mangeshkar
After hearing all that craziness, you deserve this. I saw the movie Aah when I was a chhota bachha, but all I remember is Nargis singing this song. Anyhow, it has to be better than most of the films Bollywood is squeezing out of its rectum nowadays. (The opinions expressed during the preceding program do not necessarily reflect those of MyBindi Corp.) Salaam alaykum.