Month: June 2008

Anjali and I caught Firewater at the Doug Fir last week.  I had never heard of them before, but when DJ Rekha was in town recently, she had told Anjali that the legendary dholi and leader of the Dhol Foundation, Johnny Kalsi, was touring with them.  Anjali and I weren’t aware that the show was happening until the day of (or I would have writtten about it in my blog), and I was very skeptical that Johnny Kalsi was actually going to be on stage with them in Portland, Oregon, but shortly after we arrived (forty-five minutes after their start time, according to the posted schedule) at the Doug Fir, Todd A, the leader of Firewater, introduces a song called “Bhangra Brothers” that featured some solo dhol action Johhny Kalsi.

As I watched the pumped and packed crowd respond raucously to Johhny’s acrobatic dhol solos, I realized that after nearly six years of Andaz, we have yet to feature a live dholi at our night.  Anjali and I travel so much, and see such a range of Desi events, featuring dholis of many different ability levels, in many different contexts, that I forget that people stuck in Portland, who rely on our nights for their bhangra fix,  have possibly never seen the power and thrill of a live dhol performance.  We have to do something about this.

The problem is that there are so many mediocre dhol players, and so few real talents.  A lot of Desi DJ nights in other towns regularly feature dholis who often can’t play in time with the music, and just create a clashing, clanging mess.  Sometimes they can stay on rhythm briefly, and then they veer off into trainwreck territory.  I was once in the balcony of a club at a Desi DJ night, and I heard the downstairs dholi consistently playing a completely different rhythm from the DJ, that sounded awful. I couldn’t see him from the balcony, so I went downstairs to see what was going on.  The dholi was in the crowd, not on stage, and playing for a group of his friends, showing them his licks, while completely ignoring what the DJ was doing. No wonder it was such a train wreck.

Quality first.  That is why you haven’t seen Anjali and I feature a dholi yet, because we would only want to spotlight the very best.  Raymond Bhullar of the Dhol Nation Academy often comes up in our discussions, so we may just have to arrange for him to come down from Canada at some point. After the Firewater show we asked Johnny Kalsi about performing a solo show in Portland, but he says he wouldn’t do that to his band.  The Dhol Foundation are an awesome and powerful sight, as I discovered when I had the joy of seeing them at the Basement Bhangra Ten Year Anniversary show, but we are going to need to source some major funding to bring a fourteen-piece percussion ensemble from London.  Their albums don’t even come close to capturing the force of their live presence, and I highly recommend checking out the Dhol Foundation if you happen to be attending European Summer festivals, where you will probably be most likely to see them.  Our fantasy is to have them play an all-ages outdoor Summer show at the Oregon Zoo some year.  That would be amazing.

IK

6/8/08

Thank you to everyone who came down to our first night of Filmistan yesterday evening.  It has been a long time since Anjali and I threw an all-Bollywood party, and it felt good to have the dance floor full all night.  We went on after an early show of Mortified, and the owner of the Someday Lounge said that Filmistan was the most success they have ever had throwing a late event after an early event. Because of my experience playing at spoken word events, I know that most people that pay to sit around and listen to people talk for hours don’t stick around to dance afterwards. The place was PACKED with screaming, howling, laughing audience members when we arrived, and I predicted to the promoter that they probably wouldn’t stick around for the DJs. I referred to Mortified as a spoken word event and the promoter corrected me, explaining that it was not “spoken word,” but a “comedy” event, and that therefore people would be more likely to hang around after the readings stopped. Yeah, right. However, even I was taken aback at the rapidity at which hundreds of thoroughly-engaged people immediately vanished after Mortified ended. There were only a few stragglers left when I made it to the stage to begin setting up after Anjali and I had been introduced as, “Filmistan, a Bollywood DJ.” Given how much name recognition Anjali has in this town, I wonder if any more people would have stuck around, if we had been introduced by name.

The event would have been a total bust without all the people who showed up and danced and sung along, so thank you to everyone who came for making the event a fun one. We don’t have any future dates set up at the Someday Lounge currently, but don’t be surprised to see future installments of Filmistan.

Being a gora who has only been listening to filmi for a decade, who is often playing for Desis who grew up listening to filmi all their lives, I am always curious as to how Desi audience members will respond to my sets. I went on first, and I started out playing vintage Bollywood disco and funk. I entertained the idea of going more contemporary before the end of my first set, but I never did, instead choosing to play nothing more recent than the early ’80s. It turns out there were a few attitudinal Desi girls from Seattle at the show, who complained to Anjali about how “awful” I was. No doubt if I was playing more recent songs from Tashan, Race,and Jab We Met, like I did in my second set, they would have been much happier. I don’t think they stuck around that long, which just goes to show that while there are plenty of Desis that appreciate the eighty year history of filmi music, the ones I often deal with at dance nights, are the ones who only care about the songs that in their minds are the latest and the coolest. If you only care to hear songs when they are at the height of the charts, and don’t want to hear them once they have aged some, how good were they ever really?

Contemporary Bollywood may be slick, but it is mostly missing funk and soul. While some of the goreh had trouble with the percussion breakdowns on some of the older Bollywood numbers I played, I was happy to feature so much vintage funkiness in my first set. Thanks to those who danced and supported from my first tracks. See you next time.

IK