There may be listenable music styles – instrumentals can be fascinating – but most Indian vocal music I’ve heard seems kind of “jangly” to my ears. High-pitched female voices akin to Chinese restaurant music, along with plenty of reverb, do not make a good combination.
Indian food is great. Indian folk art is fascinating. Indian music … well, not every culture can master everything.
Did anyone mention Indian matrimonial ads? The American equivalent would be if someone placed a personal ad seeking a Methodist who was born and raised in eastern Nebraska who was an engineer who is between 5’11" and 6" in height, brown hair and blue eyes only, that made more than $75K, and came from a family where both parents are college professors. The matrimonials get far more specific than any Match.com profile I’ve encountered.
Yeah, unfortunately I have to agree. all of those examples are unpleasant to my ears.
As far as general indian stereotypes, the only two that jump out are tech support phone people and good students. I tend to half expect every indian person I meet to have a degree in physics or math regardless of what they’re actually doing.
I’ll also second that in my experience, Americans don’t think of indians as Asian. We know that india is in asia (well I do, I can’t speak for everyone), but most people I meet say asian and mean east asian.
Huge families that are pretty close. I find this one refreshing because generic Americans look at me crazy when I explain how close I am with cousins who aren’t 1st cousins.
Depending on what region your family comes from you know every person from that region in a given area of the country. For example, people that I go to school with who live anywhere between Virginia and Boston know people that I grew up with in NJ.
Family, in particular elder members, is extremely important.
Thank you for the links—like I said, I was sure I only had the bad luck of hearing the Indian music that heavily featured women’s high-pitched, amelodic squealing. I’d hate to be soured on a genre’s—or an entire subcontinent’s—music just because I only heard the crap (The spikey-fendered, coal fired, spirit crushing crap…).
Those links, needless to say, ain’t too shabby. Nothing I’d put on iTunes quite yet, but hey, baby steps.
Thanks for listening Ranchoth! Baby steps is brilliant! Can i interest you in a 17th century existentitial angst song sung by a guitar wielding male Sikh?? Its got a “self explanatory” video too.
Singer: Rabbi
Song: Bulleh Shah
Genre: Sufi Rock [?]
I don’t particularly prefer the Indian female voices myself. As others have said, a little too high-pitched. Probably 90% of my music collection is male-sung.
Thanks Anaamika . I can understand why high pitches can annoy, especially if you do not understand the lyrics, elmwood and 5-HT’s dislike is understandable. I actively hate Mariah Carey/Celine Dion’s pointless warbling myself. So you can sing in a pitch audible only to canines - so what?
But i do not get that with indian music. Of course its a style i am familiar with, and i understand the emotions and idea behind the song, so its different. I dont get how indian music is “jangly” but what the hey. Thats an opinion.
I generally don’t like female singers at all, even in Western music, so it’s partially a personal thing, too. I love our poetry and our lyrics, but female singers just don’t send hivers down my spine like male singers do, and I just don’t feel the passion as much.
You say that like it’s as common as choosing Corn Flakes for breakfast. “Honey, we’re out of mangoes, and don’t forget to abort the girl fetus.”
That’s not how it is. And it’s not common among educated Indians.
Speaking anthropologically for a moment, a society’s overall fertility is dependent solely on the number of females. It is a routine phenomenon in overpopulated human societies for practices to arise that result in the shrinking of the cohort of fertile females.
Turbans are still pretty common amongst laborers and farmers. It’s a fairly practical form of headgear in those jobs.
Unfortunately, for the last five decades about 87 percent of popular Indian music has been recorded either by Asha Bhosle or her sister Lata Mangeshkar (it’s usually their voices you hear in the singing-dancing portions of Bollywood movies). If you don’t like their high, nasally singing style – and I don’t – then filmi music is pretty much a dead loss.
Gender issues are very complicated in Indian culture. Statements like this don’t even begin to touch reality. Generally speaking, it is boys who are pampered. Girls are expected to look nice, but never get the kind of indulgences that boys do. Practically from birth, girls are told that they have to right to cry when they are hurt, “because girls have to suffer a lot worse than this in life.”
This is only common amongst business and working class types. You won’t see very many professionals anglicizing their names completely. That is, Rakesh might be called “Ricky” informally, but he would never tell you that his name is “Richard.” Educated Indians tend to be very loyal to their cultural backgrounds.
Well, that’s odd. Indians and Pakistanis are ethnically alike. The only thing that would work “at a glace” would be the difference in clothing, and that might only tell you if someone’s Muslim. And there are more Indian Muslims than there are Pakistani Muslims. And it wouldn’t work for Bangladeshis, because Bangladeshi Muslim women wear saris, just like Hindus.
(Okay, fine. Pakistanis tend to wear a lot more green than Indians do. It’s a fact.)
Personally, I like female musicians. However, I prefer hearing music that is sung at a more-or-less natural pitch, and to my ears female vocals can sound harsh when they seem artificially high-pitched. In Asian and South Asian popular music, it seems like most female vocals are sung at an unusually high pitch, and to my ears it sounds like what Ranchoth described earlier as “amelodic squealing”.
I can tolerate indie college radio twee, because although the singers have high voices, it sounds natural and even “cute”. American Idol-style melisma isn’t my thing, but it’s not something that makes me run for the earplugs. With Indian music, though, it seems like a disproportionately large amount is like this stuff; to my ears it’s squealing with the added bonus of what seems like another staple of Indian music – reverb. It literally sounds painful.
I’m digging around Youtube, and I’m having a very difficult time finding Indian music with female vocals that doesn’t sound like reverb-enhanced squealing.
I grew up in Houston, where I knew quite a few Indians (and Pakistani) immigrant families, almost (or probably) all of whom were richer than mine. Like a lot of first generation Americans, there were a couple of idiots who squandered their parents’ sacrifices for stupid thrills. But there were many who were intelligent and very driven individuals. Two of my best friends growing up, one is at GWU and another at one of those Five Sisters in Massachusetts.
Some Indian women are not that attractive, and some are smoking hot. Same with a lot of folks really. In my experience (and my brother, who has an Indian -American girlfriend of 5 years, jokes about this with her family to me) Indian men are completely useless, but Indian women are hard-charging asskickers.
Green clothes? Not heard that one before…In UK one can usually tell if somebody’s Indian or Pakistani by their dress too:
British born Indian women never wear Indian clothes, except for weddings and parties. Same for the guys.
British born Pakistani women are a lot more likely to wear Indian clothes. The women do cos their families are often strict and think western clothes are obscene. Some even think saris are obscene and won’t wear them. Many Pakistani men wear shalwar kameez.
I’ve always liked Mehndi hai rachneqali. I think it’s got a nice hook, and the female vocals aren’t too out there for Western music.
Other Indian pop I enjoy includes Tere Bin Sanu Soniya and Dil Kya Kare (kind of an Afro-poppy sounding Indian tune.) I also dig a lot of the electro-Indian banghra music.
I work with a lot of Indians here are my thoughts:
Very hard working and driven overall, most seem very eager to work and to do what’s needed. They outshine a lot of US workers in this regard.
The ones I have spoken too all seem well educated. Not just the ones in my workplace but outside of it as well.
They are very interested in bargains, whenever we’ve had a yardsale there have been long bargaining sessions over almost any item, even if the price is low to begin with.
They are usually well dressed, either wearing khakis and button down shirts or name labels. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in just a no name t-shirt and jeans.
The men wear jewelry more often than most US men and it’s always gold, sometimes with stones.
They almost always eat only Indian food. They are the only ethnic group I work with that don’t seem to eat any other type. Our cafeterias usually have anumber of vegetarian options. However, even though the Indian food is prepared on site and is no more likely to be authentic or any more vegetarian than any other entree they will rarely choose anything out of that cuisine.
The men don’t perform household tasks like cooking, cleaning, laundry. Even if the wife and husband both work.
. I can understand why high pitches can annoy, especially if you do not understand the lyrics, elmwood and 5-HT’s dislike is understandable. I actively hate Mariah Carey/Celine Dion’s pointless warbling myself. So you can sing in a pitch audible only to canines - so what?