Kohinoor & Aan soundtracks | Naushad

Listen to Lata Mangeshkar sing "Aaj Mere Man Mein Sakhi" from "Aan"

Get it all here.

A friend recently told me he'd just seen Abigail Child's "Mirror World," a short experimental film that I collaborated on with Abby several years ago. You can watch it here. My contribution was limited to (a) choosing the source film (or several Bollywood films, from which, Abby chose Mehboob Kahn's epic early color film "Aan") and (b) supplying the language, which was all "found"--literally just subtitles from various other Bollywood films.

That reminded me that I hadn't posted many Bollywood soundtracks recently, so I decided to post the soundtrack to the film that serves as the basis for "Mirror World." Like most Bollywood soundtracks on CD, it comes with two soundtracks; in this case, that of a much later film, "Kohinoor." The great Naushad Ali composed the music for both. Singers include Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar and the insanely underrated Shamshad Begum.

I was interviewed about a month or two ago by a brilliant Anthropology grad student, Portia Sedon, who is writing her Master's thesis on music blogs. She interviewed a number of music bloggers, wanting to get at our motivation for blogging and our general philosophy, if any, behind what we do. I confessed at the time that, while I love doing the hodge-podge that is Bodega Pop--it's really, to me, a blog as much about New York City and the immigrants who make their home here, as it is about fabulous music--part of me would like, someday, to do a more focused blog on Bollywood soundtracks.

I have hundreds of them, mostly from the 50s-60s, the "golden age" of Hindi film. Poking around online this evening, I couldn't really find anything out there now that focuses on this incredible treasure trove. So ... I'm thinking.

I won't abandon Bodega Pop. But I'm thinking I might launch a second blog, dedicated to this music. It seems like it would serve a genuine function, providing listeners and scholars (*cough*) alike with a vault of some of the most incredible pop music ever made. [Wipes tear-of-inspiration from eye.] In order to justify it, though, I feel like I'd have to include full track listings, composer(s) names, lyricist names, singers, etc., etc.--in other words, make it data heavy, and well-organized, so people could actually use it as a reference.

What do you think? Should I do it? Would it be too much like having a second job? I'm on the fence; it might be a lot of work but I can also see how it'd be enormously gratifying. Also, I kind of already came up with a sort of cool name for it. Ergh. Ack! Gawhd. Can't ... decide ...