Beat It!
by
, SEPTEMBER 10, 2006
Amsterdam-Based DJ
and record collector Edo Bouman is living every music snob’s dream;
operating at a rarefied level of eclecticism that lesser collectors can
only aspire to. He owns some of the rarest Bollywood titles on LP and is
on the point of unleashing a wave of compilations via his record label,
The Bombay Connection. The first volume, The Bombay Connection, focuses on
desi funk from action thrillers — music by people you’ve heard of and
love (like RD Burman and Kalyanji Anandji), from films too obscure to even
be regarded as footnotes in the history of Bollywood.
Some of the tracks on
The Bombay Connection are from such little known gems as Habari (an
Indianisation of popular safari hunting film Hatari), Bond 303, and Bombay
405 Miles. The Bombay Connection is the real deal and Mr Bouman would have
it no other way — this is no soulless disembowelling of classic tracks
in the name of a remix. He believes the songs are good enough to hold
their own even today and makes no apologies about kitschy arrangements
that some of them are saddled with. He says, “I don’t know where the
camp value ends and where my genuine appreciation begins. The borders have
dissolved.”
Bollywood seems an
odd choice though, even for a collector like Mr Bouman who was interested
in the Rare Groove scene, devoted to discovering uncommon, interesting
pieces of music. The first album he heard was the soundtrack to Hare Rama
Hare Krishna, an LP found in a second hand store. He says, “I was
totally blown away.
It was like hearing
something from another planet — so eclectic, yet so organic and played
with such hysterical energy.” Tracking down LPs was not as difficult as
it seems considering Holland had a sizeable Indian population. Mr Bouman
recalls, “There was stuff around but only me and my friend Mika were
picking it up.”
Chance visits to
India soon began to double up as shopping trips — he got the soundtracks
to Teesri Manzil and Jewel Thief, and fusion albums by Anand Shankar from
a makeshift market near Red Fort. Bollywood music from the 50s up to the
80s, especially the more off-beat experimental stuff is something of a
speciality with Mr Bouman who has heard over a thousand LPs in the genre.
He says, “Musicwise, I know 10 times more than anyone I meet except the
old guys who are not into the funky stuff.” It’s no idle boast; Mr
Bouman has material for a whole set of CDs and collectors edition LPs.
Built around themes such as horror, spy movies, and night-club jazz, each
of the volumes will be lavishly mounted and produced, with extensive liner
notes, posters from the film, original lyrics, translations of these
lyrics...enough to satisfy the most discerning hipster.
He has no illusions
about albums from The Bollywood Connection attaining mainstream
popularity: “Modern Bollywood music has become mainstream. Kabhi Kushi
Kabhi Gham sold 50,000 copies in Germany! The Bollywood Connection is for
people looking for different sounds. I’m packing it for the hip people
in their 20s and 30s. The emphasis is on fresh grooves and not One-Two
Cha-Cha-Cha which is a great song, but has been played to death even in
the West. It’s also a matter of pride, since I come up with stuff people
haven’t heard of.”
Mr Bouman is
confident of a fairly vast distribution through a deal with Germany-based
Normal Records, a label that’s also involved in a fair amount of
mainstream Bollywood film music. Mr Bouman’s interest doesn’t end
there — he’s actually met a few of the performers on these albums
eager to find just how so many influences were subsumed by Bollywood’s
music directors. His knowledge is encyclopaedic and enthusiasm boundless:
“RD Burman was hearing a lot of jazz. Kersi Lord (a
multi-instrumentalist and arranger who worked with Mr Burman) played the
organ, introduced for the first time in Teesri Manzil. He also introduced
the moog synthesiser, brought in echoes on flutes and voices to create
some really psychedelic sounds.”
His interest is,
however, mainly in the music, he’s unable to sit through most movies
without a lot of help from the fast forward button, skipping to the
“songs and the night club sequences. Somebody did a survey and found
that even the Indian community in Holland uses the fast forward button
while watching movies!” He’s also conscious of a decline in the
overall quality of cinema over the decades: “In the 50s the cinematic
level was much higher; it deteriorated somewhat in the 60s; a lot more in
the 70s and of the 80s we shall not speak!
