Nazia Hassan | Disco Deewane + Star

Grab it quick fast in a hurry before it "disco"pears. (Seriously. Read below.)

Caution, my friends. This is a Blow Head Off (BHO)-level "disco"very of a very disco nature: Pakistani teen Nazia Hassan's breakthrough 1981 and 82 albums, which propelled her into international stardom and broke the stranglehold on Bollywood's iron-vise grip on the Indian pop music market. 

Disco Deewane is not -- I repeat, is not -- a Bollywood soundtrack. It's an album. An album that blew every Bollywood soundtrack of the time out of the water to become the all-time best-selling record in all of Asia. Star, recorded the next year, became the musical basis for the Bollywood film of the same title, also released in 82. (I have the DVD, but I think I've only watched the dance scenes.

Nazia released a couple of more albums before she abruptly retired from the music industry to pursue a career working at the U.N. here in New York and then UNICEF. She died in 2000 of lung cancer when she was just 35 years old.

I meant to do more with this post, but I spent the day at PS1 with my friend Carol, watching Jace Clayton (aka DJ /rupture) & Co. perform The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner in the courtyard Dome. Also, as you'll see in the post below, this blog is skating on thin ice for the moment (all of the other links are dead), so I need a bit of time to think things through. Thanks for everyone who commented and wrote in today. You are, all, why I do this.

PS: I reupped an old, fabulous Zeki Muren double CD here because the fabulous WFMU DJ Doug Schulkind has been sending people to it of late. Thanks, Doug! 

Here's the title track from Disco Deewane:  

And here's "Boom Boom" from Star, with lots of pics of Nazia, from childhood to adulthood: