The song is by an MC I’m really surprised hasn’t been covered by the Mutiny before. Brooklyn Shanti, a Bengali DJ coming outta…. well … Brooklyn,  I heard about via Mandeep Sethi, my connection to all the latest in Desi hip-hop. Brooklyn Shanti is ridiculously prolific – his website and his bandcamp have tons of songs available for download and he’ll be coming out with an album in the next couple of months. Of course, I have an affinity for all things Bengali, and I absolutely instantly fell in love when I heard his Bangla lyric-ed song Rani, Rani.

His theme song’s not so bad either. Keep an eye on this guy – Brooklyn Shanti’s going to be going far with these skills.

Check out his bandcamp discography – if you like the above songs, I’m sure you’ll like what else he has. You can download his full album from June 2011 for free right here: Brookylin Circa 2012

I hope you’ve enjoyed the #MusicMonday’s at Sepia Mutiny these past couple of years – I started them because I wanted to have some content to provide for you on a weekly basis. After a while though, it became more of a scavenger hunt and a game to find the songs I would actually listen to on my iPod. I’ve found and befriended many of the artists profiled on these pages – and I’m hoping that my fantastical dream of Alterna-Desi Music Fest on the So Cal desert of Bombay Beach with these bands will happen some day. Some day…

As longtime readers know, this isn’t the first time Biden’s gotten into hot water with the desi community. Back in 2006, the then-Senator noted that “You cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Watch the video of yesterday’s speech below. The imitation begins at 00:09 and ends rather abruptly. As one Buzzfeed commenter noted, “It’s like halfway through the impression he thought, “Oh sh–, better not follow through with this one.”

The music is by Basheer & The Pied Pipers. Visit Nushmia.net for more about Khan and her trip to Pakistan (“Leaving Pindi is always hard” and “It’s a man’s world”).

I will helpfully subtitle this for you.

Amma: Eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat EAT

Translation: I love you

Amma: [In this scenario] you will die; [in that scenario] you will die

Translation: If anything ever happened to you I don’t know what I’d do

Amma: If you wind up in hospital I’m not coming!

Translation: I would be there in a hot minute

The HI magazine is a nice touch. Also, since I saw this on FB, I hereby invent Sri Lankan Social Media Amma. “This one is carrying on with that one with the poking and the friending and that fellow! Have you used the Sri Lankan Foods application? Do you think this Facebook wall is your social media hotel for you to post and go as you please?”

Very good for you. You go! [update: Sh** Sri Lankan Fathers Say after jump]

Update: Appa is coming for you too. From the same team, Sh** Sri Lankan Fathers Say:

As the token Muslim mutineer, I will attest, my folks also have holiday lights up at their house, I buy candy canes and we even mail out holiday cards. This parody ain’t so far from the truth. Happy holidays, from our mutiny to yours!!

P.S – Continue to boycott, sign petitions and write letters to Lowes – it’s been a week and they still haven’t come up with an acceptable response. And while you are at, boycott the website Kayak.com too for their backhanded apology for pulling their ads off the show. But do support Russel Simmons and all his business ventures for buying ad space when no other corporations were willing to.

MadGuru found 8-bit inspiration for the video from the original film.

I wanted to do something quick, which seems next to impossible in animation, and fun too. I really enjoyed the story of the film and that along with the creative sounds in Ben G’s mix made me think of old 8 bit video games like Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers. It sounded like a mashup of the two and so I thought, why not approach the visuals in the same way. Watch the original film and you’ll recognize many references in the piece. [madguru]

Watch the original film Junglee here and see if you can spot the references. The 8-bit video game inspired animation reminds me a lot of Das Racist’s Who’s That? Brooown! video. And of late nights playing Mario Kart in college. Bollywood 8-bit video games, now there’s an idea. How about it, MadGuru?

The MetroPCS Tech & Talk ads are a long-running series (two years in December) featuring desi characters named Ranjit and Chad expounding upon the evils of contracts and benefits of MetroPCS’s phone plans and features. The characters are not a little zany, dressing up in colonial-style wigs to declare wireless independence, playing an intense guitar-riff set off by fireworks and using “Holy shishkabob!” as a catch-phrase, to give a few examples.

As I noticed in retweets about the ads posted by the characters @ranjitmetropcs and @chadmetropcs, some people found the ads hilarious, declared themselves fans of the duo, and wanted to dress up like them for Halloween. Others writing for business and tech sites found the ads cringe-worthy, racist and/or in poor taste.

Personally, I found a recent ad in which the desi duo persuade the T-Mobile lady to leave T-Mobile and join up with them funny for it’s mascot-stealing premise, and I like the wacky style of the two actors who play Ranjit and Chad. But what do you think of the ads? And what do comments like these ones retweeted by @RanjitMetroPCS –e.g., “The Indian guys in the metropcs commercials make me laugh but itd be funnier if they were in a quicky mart” and “#lmao when the Indian maid with her accent asks me to fix her phone and she has metro pcs”–suggest in terms of what other viewers find funny?

I reached out to the actors who portray Ranjit and Chad—Anjul Nigam and Sid Veda—to find out more about the ads and what they think. Some of their responses are posted below. In addition to the questions seen below, I asked them about the audition process and whether the ads have helped them get work. Read their complete responses to learn about those topics.

What kind of work do you do outside of the MetroPCS ads?

Anjul Nigam: I’m fortunate and blessed to have been making a living as an actor based out of Los Angeles for over seventeen years now. Much of my work is in television, including a recurring on “Grey’s Anatomy” (as Psych “Dr. Raj”) and on JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! (as the lead in the quartet of “Indian Call Center Guys”).

Beyond my work as an actor, I am a founding partner at Brittany House Pictures, where we have several projects in various stages of development.

Sid Veda: Outside of the MetroPCS ads, as well as the rest of Hollywood, I work in support for a Financial Software company in NYC. I help I-Bankers structure municipal bond deals with a program called DBC Finance. In 2010, every vacation day I took was a break from tech support to pretend to be a tech/phone supporter for MetroPCS and “Outsourced.” My life has a theme, apparently.

What’s your favorite one so far?

Anjul Nigam: So far, my favorite spot for the “Tech & Talk” ads is “Solo.” I loved shooting this one because we got a chance to really let loose in it, and it’s not too often I get to be an air-guitar rock star!

Sid Veda: That’s tough… some of the more popular ones (“Solo,” “Spicy News,” and a couple others) were rather painful to shoot for me. It’s not like I have memory-pains or recurring bruises or anything, but I think I prefer the one with the Mongoose. I got a good rolling “rrrrrr” whilst petting that thing.

In a Buzzine Bollywood interview one of the ad’s writers, Kiran Koshy, says Ranjit and Chad are based on real people. What direction did you get for portraying Ranjit/Chad and how did you develop the character’s accent and zany qualities? Is Chad a nickname or short for anything?

Anjul Nigam: By real people, I believe Kiran means the characters are based on the saturation of H-1 visa holders from India in Silicon Valley. They are super intelligent, technology enthusiasts and often have heavy accents based on having been raised in India. Sometimes their sense of style is a little dated or even middle-aged, which they in fact are. I was born in India myself, and although I was raised in the US, my household was quite traditionally Indian. In fact, I grew up speaking in Hindi with my parents at home, so the Indian accent has always been easily accessible for me. Probably the most important direction we receive regarding the characters is to really enjoy ourselves… these guys love what they do (host a talk show where they get to talk about technology!) and they’re at the top of their game.

Sid Veda: Interestingly, Chad’s accent, if not his entire person, is based on a South Indian and Kiran has worked hard with me to nail the hint of dialect/accent he had in mind. He and Jason, the other writer, are extremely helpful in communicating goals and message. As for the zaniness, much of that comes from the deep recesses of the director, Jim Hosking’s mind.  For some of the more challenging spots to shoot, I would be trying to follow direction or suggestions as they’re being shouted out thinking “why the why do we have to shoot a bunch of noise that will never make air?!?” When I see the finished product for the first time, I am always like “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH… that’s why he wanted me to lick the amplifier!”  I am happy to take so much of the credit that Jim actually deserves for Chad’s dancing skills.

And yes, just like Sid is short for Sridhar, Chad is short for something. That’s all you need to know at this time.

I’ve noticed different reactions to the ads, including people variously finding them 1) light-hearted and hilarious, 2) unfunny racist stereotypes, and/or 3) politically-charged ironic sendups of ethnic caricatures. What’s your take on the ads? Given these responses, do you have any regrets about working in them?

Anjul Nigam: I have absolutely no regrets about working on the campaign. On the one hand, humor is subjective, so if someone finds the ads unfunny, then I know it’s not the kind of humor that person responds to. For example, I’m not a fan of toilet humor, and am usually turned off by content that contains it; but I’m not judgmental of it.

Meanwhile, I find the negative response is often misplaced. Perhaps, sometimes people have a knee-jerk reaction to things they believe are caricatures, but it’s important to remember that every stereotype is based on a certain reality. Personally, I have known many Indians who are very much like Ranjit and Chad, their accents, style, energy, etc. And yet still, beyond that, for me an accent is merely an extension of a character’s wardrobe. I don’t ever hear anyone finding Hugh Jackson’s Australian accent denigrating. It’s all a matter of perception.

With regard to racism, it’s worth taking a look the cultural immersion of other ethnicities, each which have their own set of challenges and advantages. For example, twenty years after the Civil Rights era, African American filmmaker Robert Townsend made a movie called HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE, which satirized the racial stereotypes of African Americans in film and television. A significant portion of the black population in America had achieved a certain position in American society, and it was being depicted in content like “The Cosby Show.” Townsend’s film was a no holds barred depiction that Townsend was able to make through humor.

In the same light, Indians are now one of the most successful minorities in the US, a group that continues to have an increasingly greater presence in the forefront of technology, business and media. If we are not in a place to have fun with ourselves, I don’t know who is.

Sid Veda: No regrets whatsoever! We made two silly characters to pitch a terrific telecomm deal; we are not making a statement about 1 billion Indians. The fact that Ranjit and Chad were born to pitch the most cost-effective deal in celluworld (by far) is a blessing.

And seriously… having worked in tech support since 2000 (as well as in telemarketing for Stanley Steemer in college), how offended should I be by the stereotype?

Read the complete interview to learn more about their experiences with the auditions and how the ads affected their ability to get work.

A Bay Area based second year college student, I first heard about Raginder “Violinder” Momi when he performed at the 5K for the 5Ks Walkathon a couple months back. Looks like he has performed w/ Bhangra Knights before and got his start doing devotional music. He’s good at what he does unplugged too.

Keep an eye on this one – at this rate he’ll be touring with Kanye West in no time.

There are no actual questions about her new book on the Halloween night episode of The Daily Show featuring guest Mindy Kaling. But you’ve probably already read excerpts and other slightly more substantive interviews if you’re interested in Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me. So sit back and enjoy a six-minute segment (I would embed it here in addition to the audio book excerpt above if WordPress allowed it) in which Kaling and host Jon Stewart joke about Halloween costumes, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and her FOX News-watching, Sanjay Gupta-loving parents.

Kaling also stops by The View this morning at 11 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT/C.

The trio of young men from Lahore, Pakistan, in the pop group Beygairat Brigade (The Dishonor Brigade) seem to be singing a catchy little ditty in Punjabi complaining about their mom making potatoes and eggs when they really want to have chicken. But those are just the opening lines of their first song Aalu Anday–the lyrics appear in English subtitles. Before the video’s three minutes are up, the group has covered many topics that pack a political punch.

Dawn’s cultural critic and senior columnist Nadeem Paracha offers details on a few of the many references contained in the lyrics of Aalu Anday.

In a clean, unadulterated sweep that lasts not more than ten seconds, BB wonders about a country where killers like Mumtaz Qadri (who assassinated former Punjab governor Salman Taseer after accusing him of committing blasphemy) are treated as royals; and where Ajmal Kasab (the Pakistani terrorist who took part in the attack in Mumbai) is a hero; and where mullahs escape wearing a woman’s burqa (like the head cleric of the Lal Masjid); and how no-one ever mentions men like the Nobel-Prize winning Pakistani scientist Abdul Salam (just because he belonged to the outlawed Ahmadi sect). –“Enjoying ‘Aaloo-Andey’ with the people”

Will Pakistan’s government crack down on this group, which includes economist Daniyal Malik, 15-year-old Hamza Malik, and local news director Ali Aftaab Saeed? They seem to expect that as well as other kinds of attacks against them. A poster at the end of the video reads “If you want a bullet through my head ‘Like This Video.’”

Though if we take them at face value in this interview, BB might not even believe some of the things they sing about. That’s some of what I gathered from the English sprinkled into their responses. If you can understand more of the interview and share in the comments, I’d be interested to know a little more about what they’re saying in the video interview.