Malkit Singh, Bhangra Master

                                                 

               

                For years I've been enthralled by bhangra music, ever since I first heard samples of it in my late middle school days from library CDs and online sound bytes. But I first really exposed myself to the growing industry of bhangra, based mostly in the UK by Panjabi expatriates and second/third generation Panjabis, when I bought the album Rough Guide to Bhangra Dance at the end of my 10th grade term. I remember that at first, I had mixed feelings about the absorption of Western influences into bhangra, since I'd been trying as hard as possible to distance myself from Western music, but eventually I found that I was more comfortable than I at first had thought. Looking back, maybe it was that the mixed music was a lot like me in its nature; a smattering of Western influences blended with a growing desire to be more and more desi. Since then, I've been addicted to the beat of the dhol and the strum of the tumbi, the liquid melodies of harmonium and keyboards mixing, and the intoxicating voices of bhangra legends alike, most notably Malkit Singh, whose soaring voice and desi approach to singing  ignited true-blue bhangra fever in me. In fact, the Rough Guide to Bhangra Dance album introduced me to this legend in the first place with the thudding beat of the song "Chal Hun."

                Not long after I heard "Chal Hun," I began to get myself further and further into bhangra, finding tracks online and recording them off the Internet with my poor-quality tape recorder, taking the tapes to my car or bedroom and listen while driving, reading, or doing homework.  I got to know more about Malkit Singh's songs, about his pioneering of Panjabi folk music over the decades through SmasHits.com and Youtube, recording some of his biggest hits like "Gur Nalon Ishq Mitha" and "Jind Mahi" onto my cassette tapes, the latter of which I discovered when watching Bend It Like Beckham, thinking, "Isn't that Malkit's voice?" When I started learning how to play tabla and dholak, his tracks often provided the model for self-teaching and practice while I tapped along.

                Though Malkit is among my favorite bhangra singers (others include Gurdas Maan, Sukshinder Shinda, Panjabi MC, and Sangeeta), he has a special place in the world music scene. First of all, he got in the Guiness Book of World Records in 2001 for Biggest Selling Bhangra Solo Artist, totalling sales of 4.9 billion records since he began his career in 1985. Only a few years ago, he became the first British-Asian musician to get the MBE (Most Excellant Award of the British Empire) from the Queen of England herself. That certainly stands for something in the world music scene, much more so in the bhangra industry.

                What I've always liked about Malkit Singh is his approach to combining musical styles and folk themes. Often his songs are based on common folk themes, such as the inevitable bhangra/giddha dances, girl-watching, love songs, village songs, but he is able to sustain these things without losing the Panjabi touch to the music, partially reinforced by the tunes and the instruments he chooses in his songs. He has kind of a Midas touch (pun fully intended, since that is the name of one of his albums) with the music he sings to, many of which are based on traditional folk lyrics that you could hear in any pind (village) in Panjab. With some other bhangra musicians you can see that their influence is more Western (such as Juggy D or Veronica, even some of Tigerstyle's songs), whereas with Malkit you can see he has more of a desi approach to music. And yet he incorporates some of the most unexpected instruments into his songs (such as, in the song "Naram Jehi", the use of steel drums and a ska-style trumpet to a bhangra beat, or in "Mar Javaan Gur Khaa Ke" the use of bagpipe skirls), which add ethnicity to the song but are still touched altogether by the Panjabi sense of the tune and the urbanized folkiness of the lyrics. Malkit's voice also carries some weight with it, reminding me of the quintessence of energetic bhangra, whose road he has helped to pave over the years with the help of other pioneers such as Gurdas Maan and Channi Singh from the band Alaap. Still, Malkit Singh holds a special place in the arena, and he still has the golden voice that proves he is still a champion.  

             Here are some Youtube videos of Malkit Singh's newer songs:

 

Hindi's Versatility

                Sometimes I am amazed by the versatility of Hindi and other South Asian languages in the expansion of globalization and the reign of English as ruling lingua franca here in the 21st Century. So far I've noticed that Hindi/Urdu, along with Panjabi, Gujarati, and Tamil, are almost ambidextrous when it comes to incorporation of English speech and writing into their languages, which leads to exploration of some interesting aspects of the broad desi mentality.

                First, we start with speech. In my time studying Hindi/Urdu and other desi languages, I've been around a lot of desi people who use English words and phrases in context with their native tongue without any kind of hesitation. I remember wondering why a lot of desis used this mixed language, this khichri bhasha, when it dawned on me that the British Raj had a great hand in it with their widespread reign and the unification of a bunch of desis who didn't speak the same local languages under the banner of English. It could be argued that this basis of English was one of the great reasons why India wasn't split up into numerous localities after Partition from Pakistan and Independence in 1947, but I won't touch that, other than the fact that the only way desis from all over communicate today both professionally and casually is mainly through English, despite the push in Nehru's India for Hindi as the dominant national language (opposed virulently by a strong South Indian sentiment for Tamil and Telugu). But with this British hand on India's past, English is used readily and incorporated into local languages without a second thought, though maybe NRIs do it more than stay-at-desh desis because English has more of a pervasive presence. This mish-mash of Hindi and English is often called Hinglish and has gotten popular in advertisements ( think of Pepsi's Hindi slogan of  Yeh Dil Maange More! or the back-and-forth Hinglish of films like In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones or Love Aaj Kal). I myself use Hinglish all the time, using Hindi phrases and words most of the time and English words when I'm not familiar with how to translate an idea quickly or when I don't know the Hindi/Urdu word for something. It's catchy, quirky, a blend of the familiar world of English returned with the zany Hindi colloquialisms, a taste of elegant British tea with a spoonful of chai masala thrown in. Bole to, it's ek dum unique and zabardast, the khichri bhasha of the British Raj badshah and the jhakaas Bombay-wallah tapori. Hinglish Zindabad!

                But Hindi's versatility doesn't just lie there. Something I've noticed that I've never seen mentioned deserves a note here. People always talk about Hinglish and its effect on speech, but what about Hindi's adjustment to the Roman script itself? Traditionally, Hindi is written with the Devanagari script, which I learned while I was in middle school, Urdu is written with an adapted version of Arabic script in a poetic style called Nastaliq, Panjabi is written in Gurmukhi (or Shahmukhi, in Pakistan), Gujarati is written with the Gujarati script, etc. Yet because a lot of desis use English when writing to eachother, they often transliterate the words of their native tongue into Roman script, and now it's led to desis writing to eachother in Roman script, especially in e-mails or on posted comments on YouTube. Why is this? I think it's because, since computers and the Internet have ushered most desis into the English-dominated world, to type in Hindi fonts requires an extra effort, an extra discipline to something is otherwise fun and easy to do (since the letters of the fonts are all scrambled anyway when they are put onto computer keys and it could take an hour or so to write a simple note to a friend). The same would go for other desi languages, which have mostly incorporated the Roman script to write their words and phrases ( except maybe Tamil, which I've noticed is generally kept in its native script whenever I see it).  Understand, too, that desis have a history of pragmatic thought which comes through in their collective cultures, and the attitude when it comes to this kind of situation is that of "kuchh bhi chalega", or  "anything goes." That is, as long as the Romanized transliterations of their languages helps them to convey the idea they want to convey to the reader, it'll do. It's the old attitude that Pavan K. Verma describes in his book Being Indian through the single word jugaad, which, though a difficult word to translate exactly, is a way of getting through a situation using whatever means is available. It can be used to talk about the car mechanic who fixes his malfunctioning car's leaking radiator with the crude improvisation of chewing gum if he doesn't have the right compound to fix it with or it can be used to talk about the desi man abroad who, sitting at the computer and unable to get the fonts to work, resorts to transliteration. In any matter, this adaptation of Hindi and other desi languages through Roman script may be the next necessary step to communication in the 21^st Century.

MNIK--A Peaceful View of Islam

In the wake of 9/11, many Muslims have undergone persecution for their religion, seeing as it was that Islam was a part of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center buildings, and this has also changed the way that Americans in general perceive Islam. In earlier times, during the Cold War, Islam was seen as a weapon against the Communist ideology that was perceived for years as a threat to the Capitalist system, and American forces worked through Pakistani and Afghani forces in order to crush the power of the Iron Curtain. Later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it wasn't seen as much of a threat, and it was only about ten years ago, when the terror attacks took place, that the image of Islam became tarnished in American eyes. Muslims suddenly gained the ire of Americans and were branded with the image of self-detonating fanatics, which still remains with us today. But though there are forces that continue to portray this image, there are currents of resistance to this unjust branding of Islam as an entirely violent religion, including the recent Bollywood film My Name Is Khan.

                The story of My Name Is Khan ( abbrieviated to MNIK) is about an Indian Muslim man (played brilliantly by Shah Rukh Khan) named Rizwan Khan who moves to the United States. He is a high-functioning Apsberger's patient who comes to San Francisco to work for his brother Zakir as a salesman for Mehnaz Herbal Beauty Products, and this takes him one day to a hair salon, where he falls in love with a Hindu hairdresser named Mandira (played by Kajol). After marrying Mandira (with resistance from his brother Zakir) and bringing into his life Mandira's son from a previous marriage, Sameer, things begin to appear all right, but only for a short while. Not much later, the attacks of  9/11 occur, and there is persecution of Muslims in America shown ( including a TV salesman in Dearborne whose shop is broken into and all of his merchandise destroyed). The beuaty palor that Mandira and Rizwan own gets less customers because of the "Khan" in the title. In Sameer's classroom, a teacher calls Islam "the world's most violent religion", teaching that jihad is "killing people in the name of God." When he opens his locker, an avalanche of Osama Bin Laden pictures fall out, much to the laughter of those standing by. Zakir's wife, a psychologist at a university who wears a hijab, has her headscarf ripped off and the words "Get out of my country!" screamed at her, causing grief for the family. And then the unthinkable happens: Sameer is killed by some teenage boys on the school soccer field, and this brings havoc to the lives of Rizwan and Mandira. Mandira blames the death of her son on her husband, who has the last name Khan. In her anger, she suggests that Rizwan go and say to the President, "My name is Khan, and I'm not a terrorist." Rizwan, being an Apsberger's patient who thinks literally, leaves not much later and goes all over the country in order to track down the President in order to say those lines to him, while Mandira searches for Sameer's killers. On Rizwan's adventure through America, he meets all kinds of people, gets into jail because of a misunderstanding that he is a terrorist (and gets out of jail thanks to two young desi journalists who happened to have recorded his exact words and bring all of this to the media), and in the end, after demonstrating to the entire nation via media that he is not a terrorist ( that too by helping victims of a hurricane in Georgia recover from disaster), he finally gets to meet the President and is reunited with Mandira.

                One of the recurring themes of this film is a simple dichotomy of humanity, a lesson that Rizwan is shown by his mother in the beginning of the film. During the riots of Bombay, his mother hears him repeating some things that other Muslims underneath their chawl window mutter about killing Hindus, and she brings out a pen and a piece of paper before him. She draws a stick figure of Rizwan with another stick figure holding a lollipop, and then another stick figure of Rizwan with another stick figure, this time holding a gun. She says to him "Tell me which one of these is Hindu and which one is Muslim." After a minute, she says to Rizwan that there are only two types of people in the world: good people and bad people. The film runs forward on this theme, and Rizwan uses the same line when his brother gets upset that he intends on marrying Mandira: "Meri ammi kehti thi ki is duniya mein sirf do kisam ke insaan hain: achche log aur burre log." This shows the message of the film as being ecumenical when it comes to religions, meaning that since there are only two types of people in the world, it doesn't matter whether or not you marry outside of your own religion. Humanity is more important.

                This theme becomes more important and more controversial when Rizwan reports to the police, after visiting a mosque, a man named Faisal Rehman, a fellow Muslim, who intends on committing terrorist acts in the city. More poignant is the scene beforehand, when Rizwan listens to the conversation of Faisal Rehman with other Muslims who support his cause, and Faisal Rehman begins to liken his situation of being called to acts of terrorism in the city to Ibrahim being called by Allah to sacrifice his son Ishmael. Rizwan intervenes and says that Allah didn't call Ibrahim to sacrifice Ishmael because Allah is a merciful God who would never do such a thing. He tells them again about the dichotomy of  humanity and of what his mother said, and noted that committing acts of terrorism in the city was absolutely unnecessary and wrong. Faisal Rehman begins to get angry, but the real symbolism of the moment comes when one of Rehman's listeners asks, "So then who called Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael?" To which Rizwan replies, taking his prayer stones from his palms, " Shaitaan tha, Shaitaan tha! It was the Devil !" Meanwhile, he throws the prayer stones at Faisal Rehman as he announces it was the Devil. The real symbolism being, of course, that the stoning is the same as stoning the pillar of the Devil in Mecca and equating Faisal Rehman to Satan. After leaving ( Faisal Rehman doesn't follow), Rizwan reports Faisal Rehman to the police. All of this is controversial because it emphasizes that true Islam is peaceful and doesn't promote violence, meaning that Muslims who commit acts of terror are not true believers. Unsurprisingly, Shah Rukh Khan got death threats after this film was released from militant Muslims.

                There are othermarks of this belief in peaceful Islam. The main saying of the film, "My name is Khan, and I'm not a terrorist," depicts that a person can be a Muslim and not be violent at all.  There is also the chanting of "Allah hi Rehm" or "Allah is mercy" in one of the film's main songs. It seems that one of the aims of this film is to give the world a view that Muslims are not all terrorists, that most of the world's Muslims are tolerant and peaceful. As Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid states in National Geographic, "Yes, there are extremists here (in Pakistan). But most of us want nothing to do with violence." In the wake of 9/11 and American views of most Muslims as radicals, this film is an act of moderation on those harsh views, which are not entirely baseless but often ignore the Islam of the masses.

                Here is the URL for a song clip from My Name Is Khan, a soulful, heartfelt song called Noor-e-Khuda (Light of God). The lyrics break my heart every time I listen and the tune remains in my ears long after I've listened to it.

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