cough

The few desis of my generation that live here are into Bollywood music and desi pop unfortunately.

Yep, things aren’t much different here, stateside.

But eh, ladies as vocalists in a death metal band? That sounds highly unusual – to my best knowledge, death metal is the genre with lyrics about gore and pestilence.

Yes it is that genre, but women can scream those lovely lyrics as jarringly guttural as anyone else. I always make sure to blast the Angela Gossow when using the skull of my vanquished foe as a wine goblet.

Also, they weren’t death metal, but these grrrl rockers from your northern neighbor really knew how to be heavy. Tenuous desi angle: their biggest (read: only) hit was in a harmonic minor, and everything comes from India uncle will be happy to tell that scale’s place of origin.

Nerdout over.

Interesting thread. Metal as a genre is literally HUGE in Europe, almost all of the biggest bands from Scandinavia are metal bands. One of my exes was a metal-head, and I learned most of what I know about the genres from him. I myself never really saw much appeal in the music, though I like a few songs. The power metal variant with female operatic singers(Nightwish, Within Temptation, Epica, Lacuna Coil) is especially popular, Within Temptation has even entered the mainstream(though actually they’re not really metal). But eh, ladies as vocalists in a death metal band? That sounds highly unusual – to my best knowledge, death metal is the genre with lyrics about gore and pestilence. I haven’t come across any desi metalheads yet though I’ve heard Iron Maiden sold out in Bangalore. The few desis of my generation that live here are into Bollywood music and desi pop unfortunately.

Yes, but sadly, there’s no more all-night rock competitions and no more free flowing ganja(we call it ‘maal’ now) as it was then.:( On a more positive note, we do have bigger national level artists ( Shankar Mahadevan, etc ) and more established indian rock bands performing.

Ganja (called thool, potlam or potli) was freely available along with the usual Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton and for some reason Hotel California from the Eagles (easy to sing?) was popular. College was when we small town or rural types picked up this ‘cool’ western music from the big city cool types and even watched Pink Floyd The Wall on rented VHS tapes, on the urging of the cool cats and were left scratching our heads over what was cool about that, while they raved about it! Before that chances are that most small town guys had never heard any vestern music and if at all it was the usual BoneyM or ABBA tape that came with the first purchase of a tape recorder by some rich neighbor or relative. Of course we all probably heard some LP of The Ventures (usually Tequila) somewhere without knowing anything about it.

Thank you. I know you didn’t mean to, but you just articulated, most efficiently, my thoughts on this matter for me.

Not everything that happens inside India can be explained via the (perception of) experiences elsewhere. For example, it would be ridiculous to say that the saree has suddenly taken on a new meaning inside India just because several non-Indian (non South Asian) UN employees of various races and ethnicities inside the UN building wear the saree occassionally to work or on a special occassion.

I don’t think it’s that simple…it took on a new meaning influenced by western sources…it didn’t just organically take on a different meaning, nor did it take on a new meaning via reinterpretation in an Indian context…

Even the part about the nose ring? I had a problem with that:

… Essentially, the nose ring had traveled to the other side of the world, assumed a fringe rather than traditional meaning, and then come back to India, where it now has two different meanings…

I don’t think the nose ring ever really left India. It just took on a different meaning inside India irrespective of what it stood for elsewhere. I think that is what a couple of us tried to say in our own different, narrative ways– at least, that is what I tried to say in a round about way in comment 8. The modern nose ring inside India is neither traditional/subservient nor part of the alternative community. It is quite mainstream and very much voluntary.