A couple of months ago, This American Life on NPR featured the extraordinary profile of Chaim, a young Hasidic Jew who redubbed himself “Curly Oxide” and became something of a Williamsburg punk-rock star before marrying and returning to the life of Hasidim. Along similar lines, sans reversion, an emerging Hasidic reggae star of dubious talent but well-pitched niche named Matisyahu has hit the scene, performing at Joe’s Pub last week and scoring an interview on WNYC. Still more press has been accorded to 50 Shekel and his Jew-Unit, named one of the “Nine Most Remarkable Things in Culture This Month” by the December 2003 issue of Esquire Magazine. I must say that “In Da Shul” — his rewriting of the 50 Cent song — is pretty darn endearing; read the lyrics here.
Among ethnically inflected renditions of “In Da Club,” my personal favorite remains Tigerstyle‘s bhangra mix — a mainstay on BBC One’s Bobby Friction & Nihal and Punjabi Hit Squad’s Desi Beats shows. Speaking of bhangra (as I always seem to be), this recent Washington Post article takes a fresh approach, emphasizing the dance-form and actually encouraging readers to attend bhangra classes and club-nights, much as one would go salsa-dancing. Balle balle!
As Bollywood buzzes about the possibility of Hrithik Roshan starring in a remake of Superman (Dharmendra starred in the Hindi para-original), Gotham Comics and Marvel team up to bring us Spider-Man India. In addition to Spider-ji, of course, the world is also big enough for Spider-san, a (theoretical) Spider-jew, and a (newly imagined) Soviet Superman. For those curious about further case studies in the globalization of the comic-book, this site inventorying major superheroes around the world is a good place to start.
In more crossover news, The Pet Shop Boys have composed a new score for Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which the Dresdner Sinfoniker will be performing at Trafalgar Square September 12. Neil Tennant writes about the project in The Guardian. Letters to the editor clarifying the history of the film’s scorings are also worth a read.
Today’s not particularly critical Critic’s Notebook (“India Resounding in New York”) in The New York Times surveys the overseas South Asian music scene — as every major NYC-centric generalist periodical seems to every seven months or so, whenever some nominally new item prompts re-inventory. The special occasion in this case may be Bombay Dreams on Broadway, an event too tepidly received to garner much prose of its own. Jon Pareles does an adequate job but little more than naming the usual names: Basement Bhangra, Bollywood Disco, the dear-departed Mutiny parties, DJ Rekha (materfamilias of the whole scene and single fixture of every article ever written on Desi music in the US), Nitin Sawhney, Karsh Kale.
Earlier this week, at Club Passim’s Arabesque Mondays, I saw a performance of classical Indian song and Indian-Arabic fusion by Falguni Shah (a.k.a. Falu), a vocalist on Kale’s Realize album and whose clarion and elasticity of voice surpass anyone’s I’ve heard in months. Accompanied by another singer/sitarist and an Indian-tabla player, she opened with a set of ghazals and qawwali (including “Allah Hoo” and “Tery Bina,” made famous by Nusrat’s recordings); in the second half they were joined by an oudist and an Egyptian-tabla player (Boston’s star percussionist Karim Nagi Mohammed). Falu is one to watch. Over the summer she can be seen in New York at the CBGB 313 Gallery and Mercury Lounge. Only after the Passim show did I realize I’d seen her before, when Karsh Kale and the Realize Live Band headlined Six Degree Records‘ Asian Massive Tour in October 2002 — a lively show, at S.O.B.’s in Tribeca, especially memorable for the turntablism of DJ Cheb i Sabbah. As Pareles mentions, Kale now has a residency at Kush (currently on summer hiatus).
On wunderkind A. R. Rahman, composer of Bombay Dreams, Pareles’ critical faculties and/or fact-checkers could do better: “while the Broadway show hints at styles from across the subcontinent, many numbers end up sounding like mildly exoticized Andrew Lloyd Webber.” No surprise there: Lord Lloyd Webber produced the entire show — the West End original as well as the Broadway retooling — having called up Rahman with the very idea in 1998. And it would be more accurate to say that those numbers sound like mildly de-exoticized A. R. Rahman. While Pareles notes influences on filmi music from “electro to salsa to surf music to funk with vocals that hint at ancient Indian traditions,” many songs in Bombay Dreams are undisguised rearrangements of Rahman’s earlier hits: dance-floor warhorses “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from Dil Se (1998) and “Mujhe Rang De” from Takshak (1999) become dance medleys, the twinkly ballad “Ishq Bina” from Taal (1999) loses luster in English as “Love’s Never Easy.” US reviews of the show I’ve come across consistently fail to acknowledge this recycling, which is also to miss a crucial point of its appeal for Bollywood-wise audiences: sing-a-long-ability. Still, as with many crossover projects, the songs of Bombay Dreams are ultimately so unsatisfying because they’re neither here nor there, rather than, say, the best of both worlds. The show’s primary appeal for me when I saw its March 29 preview was Farah Khan’s choreography: winsome razzle-dazzle, a lot more impressive than any chorus line.
Further proof of the affinity between the Victorian novel and Bollywood cinema: Farah Khan was hired by director Mira Nair (of Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding) to choreograph a scene in her forthcoming adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp. (The lengthy trailer looks pretty good. Nair talks about the film in this interview.) It’s in academia, too: UC Berkeley Victorianist Priya Joshi’s next book will be on nationalism in Bollywood.
Incidentally, Farah Khan also choreographed the dances for this $60-million château shaadi.
Films seen or re-seen since February ’04:
The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927)
The Dreamers (Bertolucci, 2004)
Enthusiasm (Vertov, 1931)
The Spanish Earth (Ivens, 1937)
Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1934)
Germany Year Zero (Rossellini, 1947)
Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
Deserter (Pudovkin, 1933)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
L’Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962)
Ivan the Terrible I & II (Eisenstein, 1945 & 1958)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)
In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955)
Bicycle Thieves (de Sica, 1948)
Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica, 1988)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Stray Dog (Kurosawa, 1949)
Ceddo (Sembene, 1977)
Imitation of Life (Sirk, 1959)
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)
Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
Woman of Tokyo (Ozu, 1933)
A Mother Should be Loved (Ozu, 1934)
Brothers & Sisters of the Toda Family (Ozu, 1941)
Early Spring (Ozu, 1956)
The Munekata Sisters (Ozu, 1950)
The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Ozu, 1952)
Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1959)
Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960)
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu, 1962)
Double Suicide (Shinoda, 1969)
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964)
Lola (Demy, 1961)
The Go-Between (Losey, 1970)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)
Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932)
Godzilla (Honda, 1954)
Troy (Petersen, 2004)
A few very recent, admissibly notable events:
Anna Karenina bolts to No. 1 in bestselling paperback fiction. On her May 27 show, still days before the official announcement, Oprah whispered a few hints to guest Sharon Stone about her next Book Club selection. For any alert lit-critter, Stone’s remarks in response were a dead giveaway: a timeless story, a long novel that isn’t as intimidating as it seems, about a woman of yore, her passions, her todestrieb. This is an event impervious to high-brow snickering: for better if also for (i.e., symptomatic of) worse, Oprah will have done more for this classic than many a literature professor. Just think: across the beaches of North America thousands of women will be reading Tolstoy for the first time! Will there ever have been more copies of a single novel open at the same time under the sun? WGBH Boston seems clued in: this weekend it begins re-airing the 2000 UK/Masterpiece Theatre adaptation, starring Helen McCrory (Anna), Kevin McKidd (Vronsky), Douglas Henshall (Levin), Amanda Root (Dolly; excellent as Anne in Persuasion), and Paul Rhys (Nikolai; excellent in Gallowglass). Ophah’s Book Club proceedings can be found here.
Listening to Furtwängler again and more, thanks to the wonderful Wilhelm Furtwängler Orgy on wonderful WHRB. What other conductor, apart from Knappertsbusch, can make Bruckner’s plodding transitions sound so convincing, inevitable even? The EMI remastered 1952 Tristan & Isolde is a fulgent force of nature.
A famous British chemist, Dr. Charles Henry Maye, tried to determine exactly what man is made of and what is man’s chemical worth. Here are the results of his scholarly research. The amount of fat found in the body of an average human being would be enough to make seven pieces of soap. There is enough iron to make an average nail, enough sugar to sweeten a cup of coffee. The phosphorus would yield 2,200 matches; the magnesium would be enough to take a photograph. There is also some potassium and sulfur, but the amount is too small to be of any use. Those various materials, at the current rate, would be valued at around 25 francs.
— Georges Bataille, “L’Homme,” in Documents [possibly quoting from Journal des Debats], 1929.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Happiest discovery of the week: thanks to the friendly pilferers at Textz.com, the full German texts of Minima Moralia and Dialectic of Enlightenment have been made available online. OpenApple+F does the work of a concordance. Autonomedia/Interactivist reports on related copyright hoopla.
Saturday, January 31, 2004
Weight is a value for me… the balancing of weight, the diminishing of weight, the addition and subtraction of weight, the concentration of weight, the rigging of weight, the propping of weight, the placement of weight, the locking of weight, the psychological effects of weight, the disorientation of weight, the disequilibrium of weight, the rotation of weight, the movement of weight, the directionality of weight, the shape of weight. I have more to say about the perpetual and meticulous adjustments of weight, more to say about the pleasure derived from the exactitude of the laws of gravity. I have more to say about the processing of the weight of steel, more to say about the forge, the rolling mill, and the open hearth.
It’s hard to convey ideas of weight from the objects of everyday life, for the task would be infinite; there is an imponderable vastness to weight. However, I can record the history of art as a history of the particularization of weight. I have more to say about Mantegna, Cezanne, and Picasso than about Botticelli, Renoir and Matisse, although I admire what I lack. I have more to say about the history of sculpture as a history of weight, more to say about the monuments of death, more to say about the weight and density and concreteness of countless sarcophagi, more to say about burial tombs, more to say about Michelangelo and Donatello, more to say about Mycenaean and Incan architecture, more to say about the weight of the Olmec heads.
We are all restrained and condemned by the weight of gravity. However, Sisyphus pushing the weight of his boulder endlessly up the mountain does not catch me up as much as Vulcan’s tireless labor at the bottom of the smoking crater, hammering out raw material. The constructive process, the daily concentration and effort appeal to me more than the light fantastic, more than the quest for the ethereal.
— Richard Serra, “Weight.”
Filed in Art/Architecture, Labor, Philosophy
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Tagged difficulty, fire, forge, heft, iron, Labor, richard serra, sculpture, serra, sisyphus, stell, strenuousness, vulcan, weight
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Thursday, January 1, 2004
“Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known.” — Henry Green, Pack My Bags.