Rahman + Deva

Charles Johnson:

Completely whacked out, but oddly appealing in a twisted multicultural kinda way.

Indeed!

I remember watching that in 1994. It was in Saudi Arabia; at the time my family shared a satellite with fellow desis in our building. We got less than 10 channels but they were light years ahead* of the soul-crushing dreck in the local arena.

This song, from the movie Kadhalan, was a megahit for two reasons:

1. The music composer, A. R. Rahman, was continuing his meteoric rise in the Indian movie scene. His new sound, a fusion of Western music with an Indian core, was becoming the gold standard and this soundtrack put the rest to shame.
2. The main actor, Prabhu Deva, brought his unique kinetic and wicked ishtyle to the dance sequences. It's usually the actresses who do the heavy duty dance scenes, so Deva had really no competition.

By the way, Charles titled his post, "Saturday Night Bollywood". Technically, this is not from Bollywood since that term refers to the Bombay-based Hindi movie industry. This song is actually in the Tamil language. (Though, because of its massive popularity, the entire movie was later dubbed into Hindi and called Humse Hai Muqabala.)

* Baywatch was the most popular show, of course.

Comments

[Muslihoon]

Check this out, Isaac:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9VTLImbEZM

[Muslihoon]

Roti de pakhana wey hehehehehehehe

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Muslihoon: That was definitely not Bollywood.