A set of steamy hot disco songs, heavy, funky, sleazy, and laced with campy samples – an awesome mix, music to go crazy for.

Most people would say that the golden age of Bollywood music is from the 50ties through to the 70ties, and everything after that is going steeply downhill. Consequently I didn’t listen much to anything with a date later than say 1980. I never cared much for disco back in the day, and the cheesy side of Bappi “King Of Copy” Lahiri leaves me cold.

But when I finally found out what the title was of one of my great all-time favorite cassette tape songs – Goron Ki Na Kalon Ki, see previous post – the flood gates seemed to open. It’s a song from “Disco Dancer”, a rather horrendous, campy flick. Doing a bit of research on Goron Ki, all of a sudden I came across so much *hot stuff* that I just had to make a compilation. And although yes, there’s lots of rubbish to be found, there’s also everything I love about Bollywood, and in abundance: great melody, a super wealth of riffs, beats and sounds, and that terrific, creative mix of East and West.

My initial “shortlist” comprised of way over 3 hours of music. So I pruned mercilessly and threw out the ubiqutous disco compilation songs that to my ear are only so-so, like “I Am A Disco Dancer” or “Disco Badshah”. I’ll reserve the cool ones from filmi like Karate and Surakksha for a compilation full of Kung Fu, Bond and Ennio Morricone related material, which should be great fun in its own right. I wish I could read this Japanese blog called Curry No Kobushi aka “Fists Of Curry”, which seems to talk about all that good stuff.

And it seems there’s also another spin-off genre, called robo-disco, that came just after the period that I focused on here. Much more electronic, some of it sounds to me like a sort of proto-techno, proto-acid, and this stuff is made as early as in 1982, which is awesome and mind-blowing. For example, there is the re-issue of an obscure 1982 record, that is currently doing the blog rounds: “Synthesizing – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat” by Bombay Connection (of Sitar Beat fame). The movie songs of that time are less extreme, but still, soo worth checking out.

Mithun Chakraborti again with an unnamed female dancer, photoshopped from the LP sleeve of Amne Samne (which is not used in this comp.)

What’s in this compilation

What has remained from my pruning are songs from the late 70ties to early 80ties. They are still heavy with funk and rife with campy samples – in those 16 songs I have no less than 5 counts of that Donna Summer / Moroder riff from “I Feel Love” – and oh, they’re all slightly different :-) Some of these songs, like Everybody Dance With Me and Jimmy Jimmy Aaja, are considered anthems and they’re in every Bolly disco compilation, but I like them too much to leave them out.

But the “title” song – Deewana Dil Sangeet Ka (aka “I am a lover of music”) is I think lesser known – and I think it’s awesome. A driving disco beat and a great catchy melody. Also, and like Goron Ki Na Kalon Ki, the transaltion of its lyrics were a pleasant and topical surprise to me (source: subtitled clip):

I am a lover of music
Songs are my life and soul
music is my religion
music is my God
music is like a treasure to me!

I came across Saara Zamaana in a blog post about the disco jacket with lights that Amitabh is wearing – great commentary on the video there! Ah, and not only Bono, but also our excruciating “Toppers” tried that too, pretending to be original and unique… thirty years later. Again, my impression is the movie is so-so, but the music stuck in my head and wouldn’t leave for days.

Then there’s Pag Ghunghroo Bandh. The track I found was near 12 minutes long, with a totally steaming “intro” of about 2,5 minutes that I just *had* to include – roll over Beethoven and check dat sampling! – but now I’m not so sure if this is the original from Namak Halaal. Also – and this is sacrilege, I know – I cut out a largish chunk to make its length more conform with the other songs. I cut out the throat-clearing bit and the wobbly singing in the middle, which is funny in a movie, but quickly becomes irritating in a compilation that I mean to play a lot. So there. I cut the Mona Lisa to size, to make it fit over the sofa. And I think it’s actually better for it, too. I’m a barbarian; go take a peek at what you miss. From what’s left, I absolutely *love* that sultry, classic riff that is the core of the song. Amazing stuff, original or not. I’m in luv.

From the two songs from Surakksha and the two from Shaan, just a year apart, it’s clear how quickly the music was developing at that time. The first two are still heavy with Bolly funk, the later stuff is much more modern and westernized. Maybe it’s because of that, that the Bollywood 80ties have such a bad name… A creative explosion, going too fast for some? In a period of rapid change, it’s easy to overshoot, and just mimic an outer layer of (Western) style, forgetting the hard work of real creative discovery, that would result in great music.

As a side note: that Bappi Lahiri is singing his own stuff is because Kishore Kumar seems to have had some “personal issues” with dancer and actor Mithun Chakraborty (in the pictures above). Makes you wonder if creative *big ego’s* were also introduced in the 80ties.

There is much anthem-like goodness in the other songs as well. So get out the old fish net and colored light bulbs, dust off the disco ball, check those high heeled boots, and go stoke your saturday night fever in Bolly Disco Music Mania Style <add echo here>.

The length of this collection is made to fit an audio CD of 80 minutes.

download: Bolly Disco - Crazy for the music (210x)