Outlook is the Indian equivalent of Time, more or less, although a little better written at the same time as it’s far snobbier. It’s usually one of the most worthwhile Indian magazines, along with Tehelka and a couple of others. This week, though, it’s extra-good, because it’s all about Bollywood! The magazine (and website) are filled with piles of lists, articles, etc., in which various luminaries complain about the state of filmi music today.

Normally, I don’t have too much patience for complaints that this or that art form is going down the tubes; I see no reason that the percentage of talented people would ever change. It’s just that sometimes good things are popular (as in ’60s American rock), and sometimes they aren’t as much (like ’70s American rock). Sometimes the hit of the year is “Hey Ya!” and sometimes it’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” In Bollywood music, though, I might concede the point, although maybe it changes things that a few musicians and composers can be so dominant that a single R.D. Burman can make an entire decade swing, where his modern descendants are often stuck with trying to look cool via lame rapping and bland synthesizers. Not that there aren’t still great songs coming out of Bombay, but it’s hard to compete with the golden days, when Mohd. Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar were all working with the greatest Bollywood composers.

The people who made Outlook’s top 20 list don’t seem to agree that there’s been more than one great song in the last 25 years (admittedly, the one they picked is a corker), but cantankerous juries is one thing that makes best-of lists sort of fun, even if they’re not particularly valuable or reliable. At least this one makes some sort of sense, even if it’s biased towards the distant past; that makes it stand out from the New York Times’s appalling, deathly conventional list of the best American novels published in the last quarter-century – that is, since Umrao Jaan was released. That’s a significant date because if that movie had never been made, we wouldn’t have this gorgeous ghazal by Asha Bhosle, “Dil Cheez Kya Hai,” and it would never have tied with 13 other songs for fourth place in the Outlook top 20. The movie is based on a famous 19th-century Urdu novel, Umrao Jan Ada, by Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, which describes the life of a tawa’if (courtesan) in Lucknow, in northern India, in the period before and after Lucknow’s tolerant, sophisticated culture was partly destroyed by the British following the 1857 Mutiny.

The music for Umrao Jaan was a bit of a departure for Asha Bhosle; she’d largely been pigeonholed in the ’60s and ’70s as a singer of sexy, rockin’ songs by her husband R.D. Burman, to be lip-synched by the vampy likes of Helen. The more respectable, classical-influenced songs mostly got assigned to Ashaji’s sister, Lata Mangeshkar. Although courtesans often carry associations of prostitution, they also carry a long tradition in India of culture and refinement; young noblemen often used to be bundled off to a courtesan to learn to write poetry, especially the ghazal form of this song, and appreciate music and dance. So the chance to sing the sophisticated ghazals written by composer Khayyam and lyricist Shahryar, on a soundtrack that would quickly become well-beloved, was a big deal for Asha.

“Dil cheez kya hai” means, “What thing is the heart?” You can read the rest of the lyrics on BollyWhat. Note that “cheez” is the Urdu (originally Persian) word for “thing,” and gave us the marvelous phrase “big cheese.” You can easily lay your hands on more Asha; I recommend The Rough Guide to Asha Bhosle, which includes this song. The Best of Asha Bhosle: The Golden Voice of Bollywood is equally good, and contains a different song from Umrao Jaan, “In Aankhon ki Masti.” I had the tremendous pleasure last year of hearing Ashaji sing with the Kronos Quartet on the tour for their collaboration album, You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood. The album’s pretty good, and if you know the songs already, some of them can be fun to hear with the Kronos treatment. If you’re looking for a nice intro to Asha, though, I’d probably skip it in favor of the Rough Guide.

Asha Bhosle – Dil Cheez Kya Hai

Suresh Wadkar and Usha Mangeshkar – Goron Ki Na Kalon Ki

By all accounts, Disco Dancer is a terrible movie. The ’80s were a bad time for Bollywood, and making a low-budget movie about a guitar-wielding disco dancer (the title’s no lie, apparently) probably wasn’t the easiest way to buck the trend. Even some of the well-regarded movies from the era are bad – Silsila (Affair), for instance, has a couple of good songs and stars the ever-hot Amitabh Bachchan, but most of its reputation comes from the rumors, seemingly true, about how it’s more or less a true story about the affair he was having at the time, with all the participants playing themselves. But it’s a boring movie. Don’t see it, even though people will tell you it’s great.

But that has nothing to do with Disco Dancer. Really, I know nothing about the movie. The reviews I’ve read say it’s outlandishly cheesy, and not very enjoyable once you surf out the kitsch. Naturally, Bollywood movies are famous for their cheesiness, but there are so many that know they’re cheesy and ride with it that, if that’s what you’re in the market for it’s pointless to waste your time. See Don or Amar Akbar Anthony instead – both are terrific movies with great soundtracks.

OK, that still had nothing to do with “Goron Ki Na Kaalon Ki” (”Neither the Whites’ nor the Blacks’”). Usha was not as great as her sisters Asha Bhonsle and Lata Mangeshkar, but she still puts in a solid day’s work on this song. I’m not familiar with Suresh Wadkar or the composer, Bappi Lahiri, but I often get this song stuck in my head. It’s not a disco song at all, but just a ’70s-style Bollywood jammer with a sweet groove.

It doesn’t seem like you can find this on a CD anywhere, but Hamara CD (Our CD) will put it on a custom CD for you.

The lyrics are hard to find, so here they are. If people want, I can translate the rest, but the chorus means, “Neither the whites’ nor the blacks’, the world belongs to the passionate / We should live by laughing, die by laughing, just like the passionate.”
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