My all-time greatest Turkish cassette tape favorites, or: how I discovered what *that music* was really called.

Back in the 80ties, you could tune in to several FM radio stations that would play the most amazing music you’d hear nowhere else. All the intros would be given the total over-the-top reverb treatment. Adding spice, there’d be spoken ads for “Tropisch Winkel Hei” (the Tropical Shop) – which might have been a hint as to where it came from. It was out of this world, with awesome music in between. I loaded stacks of cassette tapes with that music, and I loved it. I worked with it in the background, I felt at home with it. Only thing is, I used to refer to it as *Turkish* music. I had no idea… Those radio pirate stations were run by Surinam immigrants, playing treasured old Hindi Bollywood music.

I can’t recall where I got the notion that this stuff was Turkish, but that’s how my cassette tapes are labeled. It now seems incredibly silly, shallow, and naive to me, but how could I have known, in those pre-internet times? I had no clue about titles, any famous artists, or worse, where to get more info. Nobody around me knew, although we all listened to those radio stations. In Rotterdam the music was all around: I once pulled the plug of my radio out of the wall socket and to my surprise the music just kept on playing – outside.

The Cassette Tape Shop

Around 1985 or so I was really keen to get to know more. In Amersfoort where I lived, I didn’t know of any Tropisch Winkel Hei, so I went to a local Turkish shop. Looking back, I realize I’m making my case even worse as the shop could well have been *anything but* Turkish, but anyway. I tried. I took one of my favorite songs, hoping it would be famous and instantly recognizable. A klatch of headscarfed women was gossiping in the corner, and a scrubbed, polite young man was called in from the back to help me. I explained my predicament. I love this stuff, don’t know what it’s called; help. He played the song on the shop’s stereo. Smiles all around. He thought it was nice, but he didn’t know what it was either.

In 1997, when I already had the nagging suspicion that my cassette tapes somehow weren’t Turkish, I visited Istanbul and planned to find out once and for all. I quickly found the place to be, for people like me – Lale Plak, the Cassette Tape Shop, which was at the Galipdede Caddesi, Beyoglu. The music street! This street is in an amazing little corner in the old “European” part of the city, just out of the tram tunnel, up on the hill. The shop windows are a heaven full of unfamiliar acoustic instruments, beautifully made and shaped, and you can’t help but wonder how all that unknown wealth must sound, and how much there still is to be discovered. I bought a cümbüç there. On a Friday. Shopkeeper closed the door on the call to prayer outside, and played for us, to demonstrate. The cümbüç looks like a 12-string fretless banjo, but with a more mellow, rolling sound. I negotiated an extra set of strings and was over the moon.

And to illustrate how really hard it is to find anything in music if you don’t understand the language and can’t ask or do the research: what I managed to bring home from my visit to the Turkish cassette tape shop was some cool acoustic pre-war *Greek* music. Yeah, baby.

And still no Bollywood connection.

Getting close

Then in 1999, by total coincidence, I came across the name of Ahmad Zahir as a popular download in a forum. Ahmad Zahir is an Afghan singer of great fame, with a tragic story that could stand for the whole of his country. He seems to me a cross between Jacques Brel and Elvis – a poet, rebel, lover and rhine-stone rocker.

Now *this* I realized, was getting close. I finally had a lead that might get me somewhere. I found a site, and from there got to another. I finally discovered what I was looking for; what it was called; that it’s actually in a sub genre and a period (according to one of those sites) known as “The Golden Age of Melody” – a-Ha!; how it works with playback singers and all that. It was my good fortune that in those days the web wasn’t able to display Devanagari, or Hindi in its native writing system, so I could read the English phonetics. For the first time I could read about it, find out *what it’s called*, and research what I loved.

Another side-road I took at that point led me to Abdel Halim Hafez, the Egyptian movie singer, aka the Black Nightingale. Also no Bolly, but very much related to it in black and white movie atmosphere.

Internet being so much smaller and simpler then, there still was no way at the time for me to find out what exactly it was I had on tape. Those early fan sites offered songs in .ra format – streaming real audio of low quality – and I recorded stuff from there using the “what you hear” option. That is like holding the mic up to the radio; if you’re not careful you’re adding modern click sounds to the treasured golden oldies. But it was the real deal! And even Lata M. bumps into microphones in those songs, and nobody seems to mind, so extra noise is keeping in character. Someone called that idea “porn flick production values”, which somehow seems appropriate.

The Favorite Song

But yesterday I decided to get out the (badly worn) cassette tapes again to digitize some of my favorites, or once more try to find out *what it’s called* and look for better quality recordings. Of the three songs I selected, I actually managed to find *one*! Awesome! And my favorite too! It’s the tune I took to the Turkish shop in my attempt to find more info. I gave it a guessed title in 1985, phonetically transcribing it as “doenia etilwa loki”; I now recognize the first word as “duniya” (world), so I searched for “duniya etil wa loki” in YouTube. And lo and behold, their awesome text-crunching search engines found me : “Goron Ki Na Kalon Ki, Duniya Hai Dilwalon Ki“!

Oh boy, my favorite! This is the song I have been looking for all those years. It’s a 1982 Bappi Lahiri tune from Disco Dancer. Yes: *oh dear*. Found it, but maybe I shouldn’t have watched that clip… On the other hand, I’m glad to have found a translation as well, which makes up for the eyesore. And it still is an awesome song; ah, it still IS.

What’s in the collection:

Naturally, it starts off with the rediscovered goodness of “Goron Ki Na Kalon Ki”, which I used to play off cassette till the tape folded double. “Not for the fair, nor for the dark. The world is made for lovers. They live happy, die happy. It’s for lovers like us.” (source)

Then there are two songs from Sandokan, mighty pirate prince; it’s music from the 70ties TV series that I was a big fan of. This probably lies at the root of my Bolly fondness. The music is Italian, the story is set in Malaysia; but when I saw the original 1963 movie, its style reminded me of Bollywood. And in 1976, Indian actor Kabir Bedi played the lead; so there: a firm connection. I didn’t include the main theme song as that seems rather crude to me now.

Ahmad Zahir is also from the mid 70ties. The emotionally charged “Az Man Begurezed” was part of The Kite Runner score. The “Khuda Buwad Humrayet” bowled me over when I first heard it; can’t find the translation I had, but I think it’s about love for this world, this awesome place made by God.

Both Abdel Halim Hafez (>) songs are from the 1955 movie “Ayaam W Layaly” (Days and Nights), which is called “a timeless musical classic” in a review on IMDB. The songs do sound like that. This is just me getting side-tracked by romantic crooning.

Then, starting with *Wasted Love* (Barbad-e-mohabbat), my old cassette tape favorites kick in again, quickly building up to the epical *I’m a tramp* (Awaara Hoon). Thanks to the internet I was able to see the movie – long after I got to know the song – and I was surprised by strong emotion even when the opening titles were still rolling: goose bumps and tears when the familiar melody kicked in. Which is probably just according to the directors’ plan. I loved the visual side of the movie too, btw; and Tim Burton ought to ‘fess up where he got his inspiration for his Nightmare Before Christmas backgrounds. I only think that the next song, “Meera Joota Hai Japani” (My shoes are Japani, the trousers Englishtani, the red hat is Russi, yet my heart is Hindustani), would make a more fitting second anthem to India than Awaara Hoon, but that’s just me I guess. It seems the Russians would consider “Goron Ki Na Kalon Ki” a good candidate for second anthem, which was a big hit there. Oh, well.

Awaara Hoon, translation attempt (various sources):

A vagabond am I,
A vagabond;
I’m on the horizon, but should be a star in the sky; A vagabond am I.
No home nor hearth, not a roof above,
there’s no one here to call my love,
Nor do I long for anyone on the Other Side.
There’s nobody that loves me,
only the desolate places and less travelled roads seem to like me.
A vagabond am I,
A vagabond;
I’m on the horizon, but should be a star in the sky; A vagabond am I.
So what if I’m not rich, broke I’d rather be, Yet I sing my songs full of happiness and glee.
So what if my body and soul are hurting, I’ve a smile in my twinkling eye as you can see.
Oh World!
World, I’m either the victim of your arrows, or cruel misfortune!
A vagabond am I,
A vagabond;
I’m on the horizon, but should be a star in the sky; A vagabond am I.

With “Khilte Hain Gul Yahan”, a song from Sharmilee, I was introduced to Kishore Kumar the Amazing, who could go from whistling silly man to honey-voiced romantic to likable bad guy, dubbing for Amitabh Bachchan. I think it is unique for Bollywood that they’d use three singers of the magnitude of Kishore, Mohd Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar in one song, and the *song* is still leading, a killer – “Mere Dil Mein”. I also included it because I’m now able to tell the famous singers voices apart, Kishore from Mohd, Lata from Ashe; something that I remember I definitely could not do 10 years ago.

The tragic Mohd Rafi song “Yeh Duniya, Yeh Mehfil” is there at the end because it is also featured in a dramatic scene in the book “Shantaram”, where the Australian main character sings this song to the “delighted surprise” of an Indian woman. Although I would not pick that particular song (“all the world, all its people, it means nothing to me”), and I don’t speak or understand Hindi at all, I’m afraid I’m now fully able to break out in song just like that – except that I usually sing words I don’t know the meaning of. Which is a minor detail, of course.

download: The World Is Made For Lovers (132x)