Cooke duet A better place to go

I've been working on a series of posters with portraits of musicians and singers I admire from,roughly, the Global South or more precisely, the stretch of earth all the way from Morocco to Bangladesh. These portraits are now on show in the art space 38CC in Delft and were also featured at the Cairo Comics festival in 2023 and on the facade of pop-temple Paradiso in Amsterdam. This mix strings together one track by each of the 37 artists. Tracklist follows!

37 artist portraits

This mix of Indian 78rpm records isn't the result of curating a vast collection of discs, rather of recording the ones I liked and picked up over the years, often coming across them serendipitously and in the real world. So expect, like in the typical Bollywood movie, a lot of variety; there are classical dancers who bring their own orchestra, like the world famous Ram Gopal, there's the cherished onscreen dancer Sadhona Bose with two dance scenes from the film Rajnartaki, there is comedic interlude like N. Dutta's song from Black Cat (serving here as the perfect curtain closer) and an enchanting love song from that same movie. There's mystery, like in the opening instrumental Oriental Dance by S.J. Mani Bardhan's Orchestra, there's western dance hall styles like in S.D. Burman's filmtunes (here credited as S.D. Varman), there are devotional bits (Hindi Stooti) and spectacular displays of Indian percussion in Sri Gopinath Party's Kathakali Keli Kottu. In the Telugu classical song by M.S. Subbulakshmi you can imagine George Harrison sitting there taking notes for Revolver.  All in all a Variety Show you can lean back for in your chair to enjoy sweet moments of a bygone era.
It was carefully recorded on a Lenco L76, using the high-filter of the 1960s Armstrong 521 amp to suppress some of the hiss without losing the format's vibrancy.

00:00 - sj. mani bardhan - oriental dance with orchestra #1
02:48 - snehal bhatkar - film song chhabili
05:45 - m.s. subbulakshmi - enneganu rama bhajana part 2 - telugu classical
08:56 - sadhona bose's dance part 1 - film hit rajnartaki
11:59 - n.c. vasanthakokilam - ananda natanam part 2 - tamil classical
14:44 - s.d. varman - ae meri zindagi - urdu film - taxi driver
18:02 - ram gopal's orchestra - dance allaripu
20:50 - n. dutta - film song black cat 2
24:05 - sri gopinath's party - kathakali keli kottu
26:25 - sj. mani bardhan - oriental dance with orchestra 2
29:39 - sadhona bose's dance part 2 - film hit rajnartaki
32:46 - s.d. varman - dekho mane nahin - urdu film - taxi driver
35:49 - baksh, roy, gupto - hindi stooti part 2
38:47 - n. dutta - film song black cat 1


Cooke duet A better place to go

dshiman

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