Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Some great filmi music

I'm a bit behind in my blog reading, so I'm just now catching up with two excellent posts on Indian film music.

I don't know why I wasn't aware of this series before (except that it began during my final exams), but Filmi Girl is posting a series of podcasts on Indian film music called My Filmi Mix Tape. The series is a terrific introduction to film music both classic and contemporary: episodes have already covered the playback singers Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, and Mohammed Rafi; another offers samples from Filmi Girl's picks for the top ten songs of 2008. If Filmi Girl isn't a radio announcer, she should be--not only is her delivery incredibly smooth and professional-sounding, but what a voice!

In recognition of AR Rahman's recent Golden Globe Award for best original score for Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Memsaab has listed My 15 favorite AR Rahman songs. She includes an appreciation of Rahman's lengthy career, and for each song in her list she offers brief commentary and links to YouTube clips or MP3 files. It's a wonderful survey of Rahman's marvelously subtle and evocative music.

4 comments :

  1. Thank you so much for the plug! I haven't been able to find any other podcasts on film music, so I thought I would do my own! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Filmi Girl, I hope you have plans to continue this excellent series--I'd love to hear episodes on Udit Narayan, Asha Bhosle, Sonu Nigam, and Ila Arun, among many others. (And after the playback singers, there are the music directors!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. thank you, P! :-) Yay for his 3 Oscar nominations too!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Memsaab, thanks for the labor of love that is MemsaabStory, produced on a daily (and sometimes more than daily!) basis. I'm in awe.

    And yes, here's hoping that the Golden Globes presage the events of Oscar night (though I'm worried that AR Rahman is nominated twice in the "Best Song" category--he might split his own vote!).

    ReplyDelete