Azadi !

Funny country ours. Bollywood stars do three hours of Hindi dialogue inside a movie ,they can't manage three seconds outside it. Strangers from your socioeconomic class find it offensive if you didn't approach them in English. Cool young urban Rock is about singing in a put-on accent about far-off things. I know a city website from the north eastern part of the country that actually headlined a visiting American musician ,can't recall the name,saying that people in this city knew his music more than folks back home in the States. Yes,congrats on the bone. (No offense. I'm from there myself but you gotta say the place is seriously Westerner-Than-Thou)

Took coming out the country and meeting other people for me to truly realize the absurdity of these things. No other nationality makes such a fetish out of what's basically mental slavery than we the subcontinent elite. The Chinese don't,nor the French , or the Arabs , Swedes...just nobody to this extent.

Can you separate out your music from your identity politics ? With age and exposure i've realized that - when you do give it any thought at all - the question's tougher than it appears. You might think it a bit rich all this coming from an English-language blog about Rock music. Tough one. All told , and after all these blog posts, i do find myself wondering if it wouldn't have been better if this music wasn't such an all-consuming obsession , if it was only one of the many passions of a really culturally well rounded mind. The reality though is that this stuff is a very big part of my life and no fucking way am i ever going to be apologetic about it. And the point of the post was never about taking anything away anyway.


Where i am going with this is the search and the hope for that original desi rock and roll sound. Desi in origin, desi in context, rock and roll in form and spirit. Hard to articulate actually ! Innovation,basically, i guess . Which doesn't equate to randomly inserting a sitar-tabla bridge section in a song. Nor to singing in an Indian language necessarily. 'Vernacular Rock' of the Rock On variety sounds quite contrived to me, even weird and unnatural. And ordinary as hell.Sorry.

I haven't quite found that 'it' yet. No doubt a breakthrough is around the corner- later if not sooner.To be sure there're already some good acts around. Bhoomi's Bangla Rock sound is original and great but somehow i couldn't connect. The language probably. Likewise i snatched a glimpse of this Tamil band on TV, just a couple minutes but they already sounded really interesting. Indian Ocean of course is mega- but that i'd put in a different category , more technical,more virtuoso.


But the straight-on , three minute shot of great original rock and roll ?

I found it across the forbidden border, deep inside the territory of Junoon's Azadi. Sufi Rock ! What is more rock and roll than Sufi and what could have been a greater inevitability than
Sufi Rock ? Somebody had to do it and it turned out to be Junoon. Don't know all that much about the band. What blows me is the album.

Easily , freaking easily , the freshest and most original Rock sound to have ever come out from our side of the world. Quite a few other acts emerged in its wake but i believe when Azadi came out , it was path breaking. I'm big on it. Its there in my car and it's probably the only album i listen to days at a stretch a couple of times every month ,been doing that for a few years now !

I thought it broke new ground in just about everything. First , the sound. Remarkable how a bare combination of light guitar , bass and some kind of dhol (Indian percussion) somehow manages not to leave any empty spaces in there. And the vocals are powerful. The beat gets you moving - think Stones or AC/DC at their punchiest and then some.

Then , there's the lyrics. Not a great one for lyrics myself normally but here it's part of the package. Great Sufi poetry (when you understand it TBH , not easy but then there's always Google !) and some pretty powerful messaging , including,yes, the politics of mental slavery ! ("Ghulami me khush hain abhi dusro ki / Ke rehte hai jannat mein woh ehmaaqo ki../... Kaha jo unhone woh sab ne suna / Aur jo hamne kaha woh kisne suna ? Koi yahan apni zubaan samjhe kaha ?" - great dig !).

And over it all is just this spirit , once the album gets into your system you sense it. It's creativity , originality, intelligence and musicmanship all coming together in the freedom that rock and roll is all about !

I consider it not just the greatest desi rock album but one of my favourite rock albums of all time. Period. If you're an Indian rock lover and not heard it , hear it NOW.

Here's Khudi. I couldn't find a more apt dedication than this beauty for this the first day of our 65th year as a nation state. The video & sound quality is passable but you get a sense of the song and its movement. A powerful and inspiring piece based on the poet Iqbal placing the human individual and the human spirit at the higher plane where he thinks it belongs.

"Sitaaron se aage jahan aur bhi hai / Abhi Ishq ki imtihaan aur bhi hai/.... Tu shaheen hai, parwaaz hai kaam tera / Tere saamne aasman aur bhi hai /Tu shaheen hai Basera Kar pahado ki chattanon par / Tu shaheen hai, tu shaheen hai...."

Rock hard,ride free , Jai Hind !