r/Indianindieheads

heyy soo there's this indie artist called shauharty many of might've heard of him and recently he came out with an interview with Saransh Kharbanda, and the top comment on that post by the 22nd will recieve signed merch by the man himself, I love shuahar a lot and i need to win this bad pls pls go and like the pinned comment by "Dakshayyayaya" i can't attach a url as per the rules but please i beg yall

🔗 - https://youtu.be/66JDXlAULeg

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcJFDl0g93C/?igsh=MW1oenNhZng1MWZkcQ==

Music truly immerses you in it when one is free.. Maybe it’s not about the ‘perfect’ singing at all, but it’s rather more about the expressions of ‘freedom’!

We often celebrate Independence Day as an occasion when our country became free and came out of the clutches of colonialism.., but true independence can’t only rely over the dependency of external chains. If you consider India as a country, then the main message that India has given the world is the message of “inner freedom” via it’s rich contribution of wisdom literature.

So, let’s analyse the meaning of true ‘freedom’ this Independence Day with Indian music.
Let’s analyse a very beautiful classical Hindi Cinema song in the light of non dual wisdom:

🎶 Humsafar mere Humsafar ➖ Oh my dear life partner (referring to my highest possibility)!
Pankh tum Parvaaz Hum ➖ You are the wings behind by flight.. whenever I am flying, its because of you!
Zindagi ka Saaz ho Tum ➖ My life is able to sing the songs of freedom because you are there as the mediator instrument of that music..
Saaz ki Awaaz Hum ➖ Although the voice is mine.. but without the mediator, there is no rhythm to hold my wings in freedom.
Zikr ho ab Aasmaan Ka Yaa Zameen ki Baat ho ➖ Whenever I feel my flight towards the sky or whenever I am fainting mid way to rest in the land,
Khatm hoti hai Tumhi Par, ab Kahin ki Baat ho ➖ I am grateful for your presence everywhere.. there is no fainting or flying without you!
Pyaar ki Tum Imtehaan ho, Pyaar ka Agaaz hum ➖ When you are the test for my ‘freedom’, only then love sings out of me.
Humsafar mere Humsafar ➖ Ohh my dear beloved! Thank you for giving me these wings in this Independence day.

So , I don't know how everything works out here , all It did for me to join was the name of the community itself and thoda sa selfish motive ( hehe ) . So I kinda had a recent release , worked on it all by myself, although still figuring out kaise logo Tak pohochaun?. So , not to impose anything on anyone but It would definitely bring me a big ass smile knowing that someone (who I don't know) gave it a listen ! Dil khuch ho jayga yaar ! https://open.spotify.com/track/70BlgtuDpGkD05zXzIYGA3?si=655d548418474c36

MA FIRST MUSIC VIDEO FINALLY OUT!!

Check it out, hope yall like it (pls turn on captions/subtitles - I put a lot of time into typing those lyrics out for YouTube 🥲)

https://youtu.be/vYbsAif-BZc?si=gBIopZuMgwGOvhus

ALSO, in case ya wanna check out the debut EP: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/selfish4/joat/

https://youtu.be/B1F_PW0JfDQ?si=WstyDNBRY7BKJvBO​

I'm a music nerd, and lately I've been trying to expand my listening well beyond Bollywood, because there's so much incredible music out there from other countries that most of us never really get exposed to. I grew up on Bollywood music, my whole family did, and it's still a family thing now, we jam together at home, my kids play instruments, and someone's always humming a Hindi film tune. But going out and actually exploring music from elsewhere has become its own habit.

What keeps happening, though, is that I stumble onto a connection back to Bollywood almost by accident, a rhythm, a scale, an instrument, and that pulls me in further. I start digging into the genre or the tradition behind whatever I just heard, and what gets me every time is how much work sits underneath it, years, decades, sometimes centuries of actual trial and error, an entire culture slowly working out what a rhythm or a vocal style should even sound like. That process is what I find genuinely fascinating. It's made me notice something about Bollywood too, almost as a side note:

>these traditions spent all that time slowly working out a sound through real trial and error, while Bollywood, more often than not, just reached for something already proven, a hit that had already worked somewhere else in the world.

So this is going to be an ongoing diary of what turns up as I keep exploring. Here's what I've found so far.

Finding one: La Maritza and R.D. Burman's "Tu Tu Hai Wahi"

I was listening to "La Maritza," a 1968 French song by Sylvie Vartan,https://youtu.be/iibyWyFGWUE?si=s5oKvxs3klFlvgQL, and it hit me: this is the same architecture as R.D. Burman's "Tu Tu Hai Wahi" from Yeh Vaada Raha (1982), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agBokRAQggs. "La Maritza" is written in D minor, a key that carries a soft, aching sadness, but it actually speeds up near the end, the tempo genuinely accelerates as the song closes. That combination, a minor-key ache paired with a rhythm that keeps pushing forward, is a real signature of French chanson from that era. It's a very different emotional engineering trick than, say, American ballads of the same era, which tend to slow down to match sad lyrics.https://youtu.be/iibyWyFGWUE?si=9Mq4GFKUaDSdeFQL

>French chanson often does the opposite, keeps the body moving while the melody aches.

Burman pulled from continental European pop constantly, not just the American and British sources people usually point to, and "Tu Tu Hai Wahi" keeps that same aching minor-key core while pushing the pace even further than the original.

Finding two: Ladaniva, Trio Mandili, and the sounds Bollywood borrowed

This week I've been listening to Ladaniva, a French-Armenian group, especially "Saraiman," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGGbp88ziXU, and "Pourquoi t'as fait ça," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_uJSIc0vjU.

>There's a playful, folky energy in their music, full of "hurr" vocal ad-libs and a bouncy rhythm, and it kept reminding me of O.P. Nayyar's "Maang Ke Saath Tumhara."

Ladaniva draws heavily on Balkan music alongside Armenian folk, and that's probably not a coincidence. Balkan and Eastern European folk dance rhythms carry the same galloping, clip-clop bounce the tonga beat rides on, and it's Bollywood that borrowed from that tradition, not the other way around, India never really had a genre of its own built around that particular bounce.

I found the same pull toward Bollywood in Trio Mandili, a Georgian folk trio, through "Ai Dunia," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQr_VY5ObdY, and "Kakhuri," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDK9KOfknTw.

>My wife walked in while I had both Ladaniva and Trio Mandili playing back to back, and without any prompting from me, she said it sounded like it had a Bollywood vibe.

I'll take that as confirmation I'm not just imagining all this 😊

Finding three: a Flemish blacksmith's song, and my wife's "it's Raj Kapoor" verdict

Then I played her Trio Mandili's version of "'t Smidje," https://youtu.be/GWVArZ5oiB0, a traditional Flemish folk song popularized by the Belgian group Laïs, about a blacksmith who's been aged prematurely by his own hard labor.

>The moment it came on, she said, "it's Raj Kapoor," same musical style.

She's right. It's the same sweeping, aching, string-led sadness that runs through "Waves of the Danube," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxvW8Z9-7Kg, the waltz Raj Kapoor kept returning to across Barsaat, Awaara, and Bobby. Different country, different language, same emotional engineering, and it took an untrained ear catching it in passing to notice it, not mine.

More entries to come as I keep exploring. If you've caught a connection like this yourself, I'd love to hear it 👇

🔗 - https://youtu.be/\_Ab60IYx5I0

It's been a while since we last hosted an AMA on r/indianindieheads, and we couldn't be happier to bring them back with Shashwat Bulusu this Sunday at 6 PM. we'd genuinely love to have you there, drop by, say hi, and bring along any questions you've been wanting to ask. see you on sunday!