CDOTD 2/14/2023

 VA: The Rough Guide to Psychedelic Bollywood (Rough Guide) disc one

Borrowed from the library

Once again I get to take advantage of the benefits of a good public library system. What a great thing to find while browsing the shelves!

I don't know much about Bollywood soundtrack. Hell, I don't know much about Bollywood films in general. I have a few LPs and CDs, mostly things I've come across used and cheap, though there's a collection of so-called "Bollywood funk" I actually ordered. I recognize the version of "Hare Rama Hare Krishna" by Usha Iyer and Asha Bhosle, presumably from that collection.

There are a few names I recognize here, such as Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi (who I think I remember was M. Rafi), and probably the best known Bollywood composer of all, R.D. Burman. I couldn't tell you anything about him, only that I've heard his music in bits and pieces before.

Sometimes I like my musical genres undiluted. What I mean is: if I'm listening to (for lack of better terms) some folk or "ethnic" artists, I want that music to be really backroads, uninfluenced by mainstream Western trends. 

But sometimes I enjoy the opposite. The music here is taking the sounds, methods, and tropes of 60s and 70s pop music and running it through a Hindustani sensibility. The results come out weirder. The recording quality is consistently listenable but very raw. Production is practically non-existent. Everything is compressed, any vocals pushed high in the mix. There are those high pitched and even warbling female vocals I associate with Indian pop music. Despite what is probably budgetary limitations, there are full studio orchestras playing the music at times.

That said, psychedelia this ain't. Oh there's an occasional wah-wah guitar, possibly a Moog synth here and there, but this isn't spacey music at all. I also recently listened The Rough Guide to African Disco. African yes, funky, but not disco. 

I'm happy for any film industry happening outside of the United States, and even more specifically Los Angeles. I mean, living in Pittsburgh, I enjoy that a significant piece of American independent cinema originates from here, starting with Night of the Living Dead.

I know there are international film studios and artists, but I wonder if it's anything like the 1950s-1970s in Japan, India, Mexico, and Italy. The latter two countries in particular released a lot of films during that time, but I think it's now those countries as film centers has largely dried up.

Am I wrong? If so, I expect to be corrected if I'm wrong. I think I've read Dario Argento commenting on how he more or less can't get films made in Italy any longer.

These are reasons that I was really happy to see Parasite win many of the Oscars a few years ago. A Korean filmmaker, Korean cast speaking in Korean, set in Korea? Yes please. Plus I thought it actually deserved the Film of the Year award.

There's a second disc included, entirely of R.D. Burman. Maybe I'll get to it before returning this.