Music from India & Bangladesh?

January 1, 2008 5:34 PM

Looking for suggestions of Indian & Bangladeshi music to help get me in the mood for an upcoming trip.

I'll be in Bangladesh and India in a couple of months. What music would be good to listen to as I wade through my Lonely Planet books?

All genres are welcome, as my musical tastes vary wildly. I'm interested in music from the two countries as well as bands that might take inspiration from them. (I'm aware of bands like Cornershop, Asian Dub Foundation etc, but don't yet own anything. Where should I start? )

Bonus points for music available on iTunes Canada.

posted by valleys to media & arts (11 comments total)

I love You've Stolen My Heart. It takes Bollywood music, the vocalist Asha Bhosle, and the Kronos Quartet and mixes them well.
posted by santojulieta at 5:52 PM on January 1

And it's available on US iTunes.
posted by santojulieta at 5:54 PM on January 1

Try Bollywood Brass Band - Indian Brass band tradition, with some great arrangements, and Movie Masala is all taken from great Bollywood movie scores, plus a second remix CD. It takes a little digging to get on this side of the pond, but I ordered the CD from Amazon UK and it only took a few days to arrive. NA iTunes only seems to have one track available.
posted by pupdog at 6:13 PM on January 1

I am not sure what mood you are referring to, but if you like north indian classical music, almost anything by Vilayat Khan or Kishori Amonkar will be good. Both these are available online at Amazon; not sure about iTunes as I don't use an iPod.

Of course, there are always the latest hits from Bollywood (here is a site that I found where you can preview stuff). I personlly avoid that genre. YMMV.

Enjoy your trip!
--R
posted by rasputin98 at 6:29 PM on January 1

Ananda Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Anoushka Shankar, and Ravi Shankar are fantastic. If you like electronic music, you might like Karsh Kale, Talvin Singh, and Badmarsh and Shri. A lot of these guys work with each other too.
posted by mazatec at 6:38 PM on January 1

You're not going to be able to escape Bollywood music. That's pretty much all I heard everytime I went back to Dhaka. That, or really old classical music.

Funky electronic stuff that the rest of us calls "cool" isn't really popular there. There are a few popstars there (thanks to TV shows like Indian Idol and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa), which are quite popular, but no hipster stuff.

Bangladesh does have the mixtape industry down pat.
posted by divabat at 6:53 PM on January 1

Asha Bhosle - Rahul and I. Pretty much anything by Asha is awesome, but the Rahul stuff is kinda techno-ey and every time I listen to it it makes me want to jump around and do crazy Bollywood-style dancing with whoever is nearby.
posted by tra at 7:25 PM on January 1

Have you checked out the Banglacast podcast on iTunes?
posted by lindsey.nicole at 8:02 PM on January 1

valleys, very happy to hear you're coming to India, and Bangladesh--hope you enjoy your stay here.
I was just listening to this (Taare Zameen Par) while reading your post and thought you'd enjoy it too. Don't know if it's available on i Tunes, but maybe you can download it or something?

PS. Click on the Music link on top to go to the songs page--enjoy!
posted by hadjiboy at 7:42 AM on January 2

Not quite traditional but BBC radio's Bobby and Nihal play a range of Bhangra and Desi inspired music in their show. you can listen to it through a link on the page given above. As Divabat says, Bollywood is pretty unescapable, in India at least, not so sure about Bangladesh. You can also try listening to some of the Mumbai based radio stations on Itunes for more Bollywood, other than that Zakir Hussain is also a good listen, although more classical than what you're likely to hear on your trip.
posted by MrC at 7:49 AM on January 2

Some great answers here, thanks folks. I'll explore them all in depth when I have time, hopefully this weekend.
posted by valleys at 11:06 AM on January 2