Slumdog Millionaire is actually a very poor example

(What this is not: A comprehensive guide to Bollywood cinema and filmi musical directors/singers, classical or contemporary. What this is: a short, beginner’s introduction to some really great Bollywood soundtracks.)

It’s very easy to cop out and describe Bollywood films like Broadway musicals: they’re really only alike in so far as scenes of dialogue are interrupted for song and dance sequences that further the movie in ways dialogue or montages can’t. And while they always retain a sense of grandeur that require a suspension of belief, these giant, all-consuming dramatics differ completely in style, in character, in sound.

When I first started watching Bollywood films, I was apt to point out that I probably wouldn’t like the music so much if I hadn’t seen the films (the engagement party in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge that Raj uses to win over Simran’s family, the yearning in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi as Surinder creates an alternate persona just to see Taani smile again, that free-for-all dance sequence in Love Aaj Kal’s London Town, before Jai realizes everything he’s lost), but behind every particular narrative lurks a much larger voice, with massive concepts and sweeping, panoptic intensity. Filmi is like energy put to song, whether they’re love themes or dance anthems: I’ve never seen or had any London Dreams, but I feel the same desire those kids did when I hear “Khanabadosh“; I’ve never entered a dance competition but when “Jhoom” comes on I want to dance, baby, dance. I suppose if I were trying to convince you that musical theatre and filmi were different I wouldn’t be doing a very good job with these clips, but that’s beside the point and I don’t have enough experience in either to make a good case. All I know is filmi can be an entirely individual affair.

Often composed by musical directors and performed by session musicians who have their own cult followings, filmi is classic and (especially today) contemporary, Western-influenced music written specifically for popular Indian cinema filmed in Mumbai. Accompanied by song and dance numbers that (usually) involve dozens of performers, multiple settings, and lip-synching actors, filmi can sometimes come under scrutiny for being too sincere or opulent by those unfamiliar with more comedic, ironic plotlines – in Om Shanti Om, a meta-narrative of an actor filming a Bollywood movie demands a huge dance number with plenty of beautiful women. When the director points out his character has neither arms nor legs, Om hits him with the script and points out, “Dream sequence!” and proceeds to dance in a dazzling satire of Bollywood’s excess (and who better than Shahrukh Khan?).

Most of the world has heard A.R. Rahman’s “Jai Ho” (or in some cases, The Pussycat Dolls’ “Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny)“, but Rahman is only one of many music directors (and as for the rest of Slumdog Millionaire, it’s just one more soundtrack to feature gun shots and ringing cash registers). The musical directing team of Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani are actually my favorite, with soundtracks such as 2009’s Aladin, 2008’s Bachna Ae Haseeno, and 2007’s Om Shanti Om, the afore mentioned epic so big it requires two lifetimes and over forty Bollywood stars. But it’s the soundtrack that completes the picture: the exuberant, party-starting “Deewangi Deewangi,” the classically inspired, extravagant drumming of “Dhoom Taana,” the otherworldly wailing accompanied by moody, disturbed guitars in “Jag Soona Soona Lage“; the soundtrack is an entire lifetime packed into forty minutes (if you don’t count the remixes, and I never do).

The trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is another great example, with soundtracks like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom to their credit, a collection of music that ultimately stands on its own, even with four versions of the titular song making up the bulk of its content. That menacing chorus line! That badass synth line! That rock star instrumental! These aren’t just songs, they’re experiences, and in the case of epic love stories like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Jatin-Lalit) or even action/dramas like Cash (again, Vishal-Shekhar) or Kurbaan (Salim and Sulaiman), they accompany specific storylines, but are more importantly creations of intense universal situations and high-octane productions that whether wistful or aggressive, make you react with pure, visceral emotion.

While one Bollywood movie can formulate a viewer’s entire relationship to the industry within the first two minutes of a musical sequence, the music composed by the innovative music directors and the performances by such talented vocalists shouldn’t be singularly attached to its visual medium. Bollywood soundtracks are often released well in advance of the movies for a reason: generating buzz by fans of the composers can draw in more viewers for sometimes mediocre movies. While filmi music can soundtrack the theatrics of big-budget movies with hit or miss results, the ones you love will always be a part of your own personal, perfect soundtrack, and you never even have to burst out into song to claim it.

The decade in East Asian pop: a few preliminary, scattered notes

Frank Kogan is writing an essay about the past decade in music and among the suggestions he asked for in the comments section, is this little gem posted by girlboymusic:

The arc of pop music is long, but it bends toward weirdness. We started the decade with relatively neat ‘n’ clean stuff from ‘NSync and Britney and the like. And then we had this movement toward messiness — Avril and Ashlee and their rebellion against “cookie cutter” pop, Pink and Christina making grabs for credibility/authenticity/etc. with their confessional rock and assless chaps, Britney working with the sonically out-there Neptunes. ‘NSync randomly teamed up with rappers and then split so Justin could get all staccato with Timbaland and JC Chasez could release stuff like “Some Girls (Dance with Women).” B’Day happened. Missy Elliott was in there somewhere. Fall Out Boy and their long-titled ilk became the new teen pop. It became all about the clever, the quotably bizarre — a line you could put on your Twitter, stuff you could reblog. See: Black-Eyed Peas, The. See also: Racist, Das. And even now, on its last legs, the decade just keeps pushing toward the aggressively unique, the aggressively personal. Lily Allen. Katy Perry. Britney’s last two albums have been thinly veiled references to how fucked up she is. Rihanna’s latest is a not-at-all veiled reference to how her boyfriend beat her up before the Grammys. Lady fucking GaGa.

It got me thinking, not only about this past decade in music and how awful it is to sum things up in neat decade blocks when movements, styles, etc. aren’t privy to coloring within the lines, but also about how sadly stagnant Japanese pop music has been in comparison. Clearly we’re looking at two fairly different cultural models (it’s beyond apples and oranges; more like apples and Oreos) that require taking audience into consideration and the fact that, you know, Japanese pop tends to borrow a lot of its concepts from its proven-successful Western peer.

But even the music completely unique to the island hasn’t evolved much. In the span of a decade, divas (Hamasaki, Utada, Kumi, Amuro) and Dir en grey have risen and either fallen, released poor English-language albums, or begun working within completely Western frameworks, girls fronting rock bands still demand upbeat, super-charged drums to match their wispy, kawaii vocals, visual kei is still visual kei but with less verve, pop music is still acoustic-lite, at some point super eurobeat was replaced with electro/shibuya-kei (capsule, MEG, Perfume, immi), and boy/girl bands have grown up, changed a few members, but essentially rewrote every third song in their canon.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been a few moments here and there that have stood out, that proposed shifts in attitudes and styles, but for the most part, Japanese pop in 2009 looks a lot like Japanese pop in 2000, with a larger budget and a handful of really great Korean artists jostling to hit the charts: in summary, a lot of good or really great things have ended rather than begun.

That last observation might be a tad subjective, though, because lately I feel the majority of significantly altered musical terrain in Asia is taking place by South Koreans, who have tweaked their agenda more significantly in the past three years or so than the Japanese in the past decade. They may be dressing it up in hypersexed young boy/girl bands, but the music has both innovation (musical and in the merging of other mediums like fashion and video) and a dose of Western influence without entirely submitting to the paradigm. The decade started out with groups like Koyote, Baby V.O.X., and the playing-it-safe BoA, and has ended with 2NE1, SNSD, Big Bang, and the amazingly forthright G-Dragon, a Lord Gaga if I ever saw one. G-Dragon, who recently won the Album of the Year Award for Heartbreaker at the Mnet Asian Music Awards, may be considered more camp and out there than any other Korean pop act, and guys, we’re looking at a country that has embraced the utilisation of eight different fashion movements for every one outfit, but whether or not you actually like Lady Gaga is irrelevant: he’s different; he’s change. Whereas Japanese pop acts who’ve shown any sign of popularity are allowed to hang around as long as they feel like playing the loyalty card out of their record companies, Koreans are rolling out the electric-red carpet for new face after new face. We might be apt to discuss quality here, a feature in which Japanese pop tends to stay very consistent while its Korean counterpart sometimes misses the mark or doesn’t bother aiming at all, but which it exchanges for the courage to gamble on musical risks: Korean pop takes chances, Japanese pop is waiting for Hamasaki’s second generation.

So much like Frank Kogan’s entry, I encourage you to share what, for you, has been the most significant musical shifts of the last decade in East Asian pop music (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, whatever) in the comments sections. Feel free to refute or tear down any of the above arguments I’ve made and point out things I’ve overlooked or forgotten.

Kent’s “Röd”

Kent / Röd / November 06, 2009
10. Töntarna

“So hang them high, so hang them slowly”: such has become the advice of Kent, a band increasingly consumed by producer Jon Schumann’s electronic influence and a penchant for flipping the bird to jerks, bullies, and catty bitches. Transformed from the raw, soul-searching sincerity of Hagnesta Hill and Isola to defenders of the underdog in two albums, Kent’s musical trajectory can either be considered the greatest transformation of the decade or the worst; it’ll become obvious which side I fall on.

It’s almost impossible to talk about Röd without mentioning its predecessor, Tillbaka till samtiden, Kent’s 2007 showpiece that no longer foreshadowed a change in direction, but chiseled it in stone; Schumann took the underlying Swedish gloom and doom of albums like Du & jag döden and The hjärta & smärta EP and transformed them into tactile representations of death, the heart, and pain that have paved the way for Röd’s abject nihilism. Where Joakim Berg’s vocals used to be lilting and nostalgic, they’re now bitter and acute, tearing into adolescent grief without talking down to its audience. Ostentatious though the production has always been, a sound that used to rely heavily on instantly aching guitar loops and bleeding bass lines that gave away both the plot and the joy of finding that not-so-happy-ending within the first verse has become ravaged by bitter synths and a maddeningly patient denouement. Amateurs could easily dismiss at least two minutes of every track without taking into account the pay off of Kent’s new virtues (hint: temperance is not one of them).

Where some of the tracks may come off as too formulaic – loops are still a thorny issue – others round out the machine-heavy production with violins (“Hjärta”), acoustic guitars (“Ensamheten”), and plinking pianos (“Svarta linjer”); Schumman has become the resident spelunker, transcending the band’s more organic, alternative foundation without altering the magic that made past work so inherently dramatic and moving. Drawing influence from 90’s industrial music, the record is almost mired in too much revenge and fury for its own good; if Tillbaken till samtiden bit back, Röd attacks from behind. No longer providing pathetic excuses for its cowering fear by positing anxiety as a kind of courage, “Töntarna” lashes out: no other song has Berg singing with such precision, such scorn, such accusation. Even Röd’s love songs hide in songs translated as “Waltz for Satan (Your Friend the Pessimist)” and “There Are No Words,” an ironic admission of the difficulty in navigating eros within the confines of language: “There are no words for it in this damn language / I have no words for that we breathe, think, feel the same thing.”

However, as carefully as each song treads in its intricate tapestry of the morbid and self-loathing (“I failed myself / So see me as a warning”), the album still crouches in the shadow of Tillbaka till samtiden, an album a hair’s breadth more sophisticated and restrained, letting the synths accent pieces of music rather than frame or even form the base of entire songs. But though Röd seems content to tackle smaller chunks of easily consumed issues like high school social structures and loneliness instead of drug use and abandonment, both know where to inflict the most emotional damage. Subtlety has been thrown out to make room for a full choir and two fast-paced, demi-club tunes no one would dance to; it’s a sweeping album, full of epic build-ups and nuanced sounds hidden behind its blatant discontent.

Magnum opus though it may not be, it’s still a masterpiece, a record that will follow you long after the fading robots and tubular bells have ululated through the speakers. “Even one hundred thousand voices can be wrong”; these just happen to be right.

♫ Official Site
♫ Buy Röd

Japan Today not very well-endowed; to die old, alone

I touched in passing on the issue of Japan Today’s blatant sexism/objectification of women in a recent post, but the situation has escalated beyond the means of mere mention. From singers to actresses, to misleading headlines and inappropriate reporting, the entertainment section is the worst offender. Yesterday, the article “Kyoko Hasegawa makes sexy comeback after having first child” focused entirely on how rocking Hasegawa’s new body is on the cover of anan magazine. A staff member from the magazine is quoted as saying: “She’s even thinner than before her pregnancy. But her bust remains bigger, so her figure is just awesome now.” Every woman should get pregnant so they can reap all those awesome, painless physical benefits!

The brief item concerning JUJU’s performance at the Japanese premiere of Disney’s A Christmas Carol focuses entirely on a joking comment she made about wishing she were lucky enough to spend Christmas with a man (and I realize that Christmas in Japan is more of a romantic holiday than a family one, but seriously?) with the headline “JUJU looking for man to spend Christmas with.” I must have missed something because nowhere did I read JUJU saying she was looking for anything. Inference and misquotation: two of the great fundementals of journalism.

Men on this web site very rarely have to deal with topics of relationships or how well they should keep their bodies looking; every time an engagement, relationship confirmation, or break-up occurs it focuses on the female half, bestowing the woman with chief responsibility/scorn. When Yumi Yoshimura and Nao Omori split, the headline read “Puffy’s Yumi Yoshimura back on the single scene.” How’s Omori doing? No one cares! Men have more important things to do then worry about relationships! He has his whole life ahead of him! And anyway, according to the commentary left by readers, it’s the woman’s fault if she failed to look pretty enough to nab a man before she got super old and no one wanted her. They probably broke up because “she couldn’t be bothered to comb her hair” writes one reader; “[s]he got no chance of finding happy hubby time now at 34 – a lifetime of host clubs awaits…” writes another.

As an extension, reporters seem to constantly badger women on the topic of their love life even when their appearance at movie premieres and charity events has nothing to do with their personal lives.

“Reporters at the event wasted no time getting into Hoshino’s private life, asking yet again about her rumored relationship with JRA jockey Kosei Miura, 19. [...] Hoshino deflected further questions about her love life with her light saber, but was kept in the spotlight by the storm trooper at her side.”

“Actress Yu Yamada, 25, shocked crowds in Ikebukuro on Saturday when she appeared at the illumination ceremony of the Christmas tree in Sunshine City’s fountain plaza with her beautiful brown locks cut short by 30 cm. Jumping to conclusions, reporters immediately questioned if something had happened between Yamada and her beau, 26-year-old actor Shun Oguri…”

Actress Meisa Kuroki, 21, lined up with actresses Rinko Kikuchi, 28, and Hinako Saeki, 32, this week to announce the completion of their upcoming sci-fi movie “Assault Girls.” [...] When asked if she was attracted by the allure of older men – a reference to her rumored relationship with kabuki actor Shindo Nakamura, 37 – she replied: “What are you trying to make me say?!”

“Model Yuri Ebihara, 30, attended an event in Tokyo this week to promote the sale of DVDs of the first season of American drama “Gossip Girl.” [...] Ebi-chan is rumored to be seeing ILMARI, 34, of hip hop group RIP SLYME, and she looked like she had grown a bit weary of questions about her private life.”

It’s sort of hard to exclusively poke fun at Japan Today: to examine this type of “reporting” is to examine the actual system at work in Japan. Most promotional events feature women, rather than men, dressed up in cute outfits, a lot of emphasis is placed on awards bestowed upon women for their physical attributes – prettiest hairstyles, greatest legs – to give women an incentive to focus on and value their appearance above all else, and most reporters ask women questions dealing with their personal lives or fashion sense rather than their body of work (a reminder of where a woman’s “real” achievement is). I’d be very interested if anyone has any other examples of such egregious reporting in the Japanese press, or if Japan Today is a sort of very cruel exception to the rule (if I was as bad a reporter, I would instantly assume that with such a rampant, shallow focus on women, sexism isn’t just alive, but thriving in the Japanese press).

Waiting for Gaga

I’ve been rather mum on the topic of Lady Gaga, a pretty demonstrable feat when the majority of my interest appears to reside in the body of work inhabited by divas of all varieties. Maybe I’m just too ashamed to admit that I’m part of this second generation of Gaga enthusiasm, a movement that occurred shortly after the release of “Bad Romance” when the rest of the mildy interested finally got it and were made to suffer the blows of a million I-told-you-sos. But even that’s not being fairly accurate: I was always more than mildy interested. I was there when The Fame was released, I was there to predict songs later released as singles before (rightly) dismissing the rest of the album as filler (because the album, as a whole, is incredibly problematic on whatever narrative grounds Gaga has defended it), I was there to rank a “Just Dance” remix #9 on a year-end list. But even her gradual climb and eventual domination atop the Billboard wasn’t enough to offer respect to someone so determined to be weird for the sake of being weird (it’s probably pointless to note Gaga has said every moment of her life is a performance).

But though “Just Dance” and “LoveGame” were too big to ignore if at any time you had left the house in the past few months, they were still easy to dismiss as the insane warbling of a one-album wonder; I don’t think it’s as easy to dismiss “Bad Romance” and its follow-up leaks “Alejandro” and “Dance in the Dark,” all which are exceptional moments of sonic improvement. The production on Gaga’s numbers are becoming so huge they’re somewhere up in space and her music videos are bringing discussion back into not just the speculation of video as art, but what art is and where it can function. “Bad Romance” isn’t just acclaimed by casual listeners and fans but by critics, who have adopted Lady Gaga as their poster child of pop (PopJustice called the video “basically fucking amazing” based off of a 30 second preview), marveling over that jerky, schizophrenic (“Thriller”-inspired) choreography, gushing over those avant-fashion costumes, and deciphering the muddle that is her lyrics.

This taste for the bizarre, campy, and sometimes tacky and her inability to wear anything with less than two feet of protruding plastic has given hope to a group still mourning the loss of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition. As a persona, Gaga’s may be one of the most inclusive examples of niche marketing: rarely sentimental, focusing on life’s intimate insta-pleasures, she appeals to alternative subcultures while working even the most conservative mainstream dance floors. The Fame Monster, in particular, seems to have struck a nerve, maybe because the world has waited long enough for this Godot, wanting new material as desperately as Gaga wants your bad rah rah romance. The fact that it technically could have been written anytime in the last fifteen years and still inspires so much adulation is the only proof we have that she may be more than just a chapter in the book of pop: there may be only one Lady Gaga, but we may not be willing to stick around as long next time.

Koda Kumi’s TRICK Live Tour 2009

Koda Kumi / TRICK Live Tour 2009 / Oct 21, 2009
That Ain’t Cool / Venus

Shock for the sake of shock wears thin fast: if you’re wondering why more and more critics are rolling their eyes at Antichrist it’s the promise of jolting incredulity gone flaccid through hype and expectation. By the time the pivotal scenes arrive, you’re already comparing it to things you’ve seen worse, to things done worse better, and wondering if anything has the power to make you recoil anymore. The headlining tours of divas are the same. No, you won’t find any genital mutilation in the choreography, but you’ll find the usual mimed sexual theatrics; even though Koda Kumi’s TRICK Live Tour 2009 makes Basic Instinct look like a Sesame Street segment, it’s all pretty yawn inducing.

Freak shows, circuses, funhouses…in 2009, divas around the world recycled mythologized forms of entertainment for their shows over and over and over again. But while Koda Kumi may have intercepted a few memos for her own greatest show on Earth, there remains something distinctly East Asian about the whole experience. And I’m not just talking about the audience, who could be found weeping hysterically at the sight of her when they weren’t thrusting their TRICK baubles in the standard form of adulation: if you’ve seen a recent Ayumi Hamasaki concert, you’ve seen TRICK.

There’s the standard ridiculous costumes, complete with plumage, glitter, and ruffles, like a spoiled princess’s closet burst at the seams, computer graphics-heavy movie interludes, the uncomplicated synchronized dance moves, the obligatory drive through the crowd on a giant platform, the moment where pop diva turns rock star in leather, the magnificent mile of lights trailing down a ridiculous dress for the slow number, wigs, wigs, wigs, and the laid-back jeans/sweatpants encore, all clocking in at over two hours, which I’m sure makes the high price of a ticket seem fair, but makes for a very long-winded home viewing experience. Koda Kumi doesn’t leave much to your imagination, disposing of the myriad uses for the term trick, instead handing you a decent enough present but without any wrapping paper (this is an arena, after all, not a parlor). A few things will seem interesting, nothing will surprise you, and someone gets abducted.

The following are five moments that stood out for me. Not necessarily good moments, not necessarily bad moments, just moments, worthy of mention and some rumination.

All you need is Ai: “Is” PV

Ai Otsuka’s given name means love and she has never ceased to remind us this on every album she has released: LOVE PUNCH, LOVE JAM, LOVE COOK, LOVE PiECE, LOVE LETTER… Her first greatest hits collection was entitled Ai am BEST, and her new collection, to be released November 11, is exactly the same: LOVE is BEST. It’s a tad more inclusive, ditching the “clever” wordplay for a more straightforward, in your face, in case you didn’t quite catch it the first time summary of everything Ai Otsuka writes and sings about. But everything in her world isn’t just filtered through the permutations, challenges, setbacks, and joys of love, it is love; “Is” being the key word. And I mean everything.