TITLE: "Streets of Calcutta"
ARTIST: Ananda Shankar
ALBUM: The Rough Guide To The Asian Underground
RELEASE DATE: 2003
Generally speaking, I'm not a "World Music" devotee. I don't know my bhangra from my baile-funk, and usually couldn't care less. With some very select exceptions, I tend to listen solely to music made by white, English speaking folks -- usually angry ones. I'm not proud of that, necessarily, but I simply don't get as excited about Afro-Cuban rhythms or traditional indigenous folk music in the same way I get a charge out of, say, heavy metal, Punk Rock or simply good ol' pop music. I'm getting better at broadening my horizons, but I'm still largely pretty provincial in that respect.
About fifteen years ago, I had the distinct honor of interviewing one of my then (and still) favorite-ever bands, Cop Shoot Cop. I met up with them in the long-since-dormant Pizza Canteen adjacent to CBGB (now also dormant). I sat down with lead singer/strategist, Tod [A] and sampler "Cripple Jim" Coleman to talk about their then new album titled -- somewhat ironically -- White Noise. At a certain point in the conversation, I was quizzing them about the band's influences and reference points, and asked them what bands they were currently listening to. Without hesitation, Tod said, "The Klezmatics." I thought he was joking. The Klezmatics - their name a wry spin on the uber-shlock ersatz-punk phenom, the Plasmatics, also a big fave of mine, I'm somewhat sorry to say - played a contemporary take on Klezmer, i.e. traditional Jewish wedding music. Sensing that I didn't believe him, Tod expounded, saying that he appreciated the passion with which the band played this style of music, suggesting that it was no more ridiculous to be playing Klezmer music at this stage in history than it was to be playing the sort've grimacey rock Cop Shoot Cop was playing.
A few years later, of course, Tod quit Cop Shoot Cop to form Firewater, a much more light-hearted ensemble that abandoned CSC's frowny brand of quasi-industrial skronk-rock in favor of a dizzying mix of musical styles, Klezmer foremost among them. Shortly after that, Tod and I became friends, and he began a tireless campaign to expand my musical parameters. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we'd shoot each other MP3s of new music that we were currently grooving to. By around `03 and `04, Tod had started to explore his deep love of Bollywood music, i.e. the somewhat frantic music culled from Indian cinema. For every conventional piece of current rock that I'd send him (usually met with instant messages saying "this is awful" and/or "you actually like this crap?"), Tod would send me truly odd bits of bizarre Indian music.
I'm not going to lie and say he completely converted me, but I did develop a bit of a taste for some of it, even going so far as to spring for some cheap-o Bollywood compilation discs every now and again. Some of it was truly great stuff, merging disparate elements of Eastern and Western music into disarming collisions of style. This particular song is one such example. It's not a Bollywood track, rather it's a song by the renowned Indian musician, Ananda Shankar, who was evidently well known for his deft fusing of styles. I stumbled upon via a random cache of Mp3s and then luckily found it on a compilation. I don't really know much about it beyond that, other than I think it completely rocks. Listen for yourself.
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