[Pic – NY Times/MTV Desi]
When MTV Desi starts airing Indian music for desis[second-generation immigrants from the Indian subcontinent as described by NY Times], we can believe music of Rahman and his types, will get a wide opening to the mainstream music in America. The musical boulevards of LA will await them to come over and render soul searching, foot tapping, IPODish numbers only to get the American musical industry, another addition to their genre list, Indie music.
While I’m positive about the music from peninsula will have a positive honeymoon with the american youth for the first few days, it remains to be seen, that some of our manufactured filthy music and annoyingly explicit copycat versions of ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ and ballards of Richard Marx, don’t get aired through MTV Desi. It’s time to spice-up the music album scenes in India. The hindi pop has already come of age and hence MTV wants to get them aired across America. I am personally not a great fan of Indie Pop because I think there is enough trash alongwith some good ones.
The media in US is already mis-understanding any product as a bollywood piece, Tamil will have very less role to play in this hungama. The Tamil pop music has already died with Suresh Peters’ last album, it’s time Yuvan and his teammates rise up to occasion and start delivering tamil music albums. I would be more than happy if Suresh Peters would come back. Even if we have some good albums in Tamil coming out because of this move from MTV Desi broadcast, tamil music lovers will be happy to resurrect a bygone genre.
More on MTV Desi in NYTimes article, I Want My Hyphenated-Identity MTV [need userid/pass]. Link Via Tilotamma.
kirukkal.com 
7 responses to “Desis on the (rock &) roll”
suresh peters returning??no chance.he’s crossed over to malayalam.
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What we need is the mix with our traditional music instead of completely crossing over to western. The Punjabis did it, why can’t we?
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Hi LG,
I don’f find any better future for Tamil Pop and also i don’t like something to actually evolve as Tamil pop, if it going to be like the same as in hindi. But still i find atleast a few noteworthy non-film albums releasing and the recent one being “Moongil Nila” by Niru. It has got some excellent melodies but the lack of publicity and marketing is again the major problem to get these albums to a wider range of people even if it has some good stuff.
Check out my revu on this album here
http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Moongil_Nila_Album_-_Niru-75132-1.html
Smile
Sureshkumar
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Jebin:
I agree with you, we can definitely take Tamil folk to international audience but i don’t that anybody less than an A.R.R of IR can do full justice to such albums without compromising the nativity in the name of giving an international sound. But don’t you feel that there is too much monotony in Punjabi albums releasing these days. It is the same stuff being repeated again and again. But yours is really a good idea, we have lot of varieties and instruments in tamil folk unlike punjabi, so if someone can give it try, it would definitely make it big.
Smile
Sureshkumar
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hindi cinemamusic is considered representative of indian cinemamusic. which i disagree with.
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Wont be surprised if the channel largely plays the videos that have become ads for sex and are nothing less than sleaze fests.
As for acceptance of things other than bollywood….it is all a part of the marketing excercise….bollywood uses every rupee in the pocket to exhibit itself all over….but regional films ( tamil, malayalam, bengali etc.) are often not seen even by folks in the neighbouring state forget country. When i say this i am referring to those people in the neighbouring state who speak a different language than the movie.
Today tamil movies are watched by tamilians, telugu by andhrites, malayalam by keralites . But bollywood has managed to pull in strata who dont even understand the movie but are simply bemused by the sights and sounds of it all.
I promise you, the day a regional movie is released as a national movie rather than a tamil, telugu or malayalam movie and is enjoyed by a kannada, marathi or urdu speaking guy ( with subtitles if necessary ) then nobody can refute the power of these movies.
When these movies reach international festivals, they rarely come away unnoticed. If only our own country celebrated these movies, then the rest of the world would too.
Why make subtitles only for the versions in malaysia and japan. Why not make subtitles for the guy watching in the neighbouring state??
Until regional movies become national movies ( i dont expect box office success, but mere awareness and curiosity ) it is unlikely that bollywood will be shown its place…it is as “regional” as a malayalam, tamil, bengali or marathi film…just the language is called “hindi”.
Unfortunately, before that happens, george bush would have won the spelling bee!
P.s: Whoops…lazy, sorry for the overly long comment 🙂
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MTV Desi will probably be more successful if they dedicate time to different regions of India and even the broader subcontinent of South Asia (including not just Tamil pop, but also Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Pakistani pop).
There are a lot of people looking for something besides Hindi and Punjabi when it comes to representing India in the diaspora.
That said, I live in New Jersey, and one thing I have noticed is that Telegu and Tamil movies tend to be pretty successful here. A couple of them are always playing at the ‘desi-plex’ movie theater in North Bergen, and the Telegu and Tamil sections at my local Indian video store (Sur Plaza) are pretty extensive.
One other thought: A.R. Rahman songs in Tamil have occasionally crossed over… For instance, there was that one song last summer…
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