Masala Dosa Cowboy: Quick Gun Murugun

Quick Gun Murugun

We’ve had spaghetti westerns and Rhinestone cowboys. But a few years ago India introduced the world to the first masala dosa cowboy, Quick Gun Murugun.

Quick Gun Murugun is the protagonist of a 2009 south Indian western film of the same name.  It is a hilariously riotous tongue-in-cheek piece of cinematic buffoonery starring one of Dravidian cinema’s most beloved leading men, Rajendra Prasad as a cowboy whose holy mission is to defend the Holy Cows of India.

Quick Gun Murugun is an unlikely superhero, a South Indian Tamil cowboy whose duty is to protect the world against arch villain restaurant owner, Rice Plate Reddy (played by Nassar). The movie revolves around adventures of Quick Gun Murugun along with Rice Plate Reddy’s girl friend Mango Dolly (played by Rambha), who has a secret crush on Quick Gun, and Locket Lover (played by Anu Menon).

Murugan is just an ordinary vegetarian cowboy who is killed in a battle with Rice Plate Reddy. He goes to heaven but 25 years later returns reincarnated as Quick Gun Murugun, with a mission given to him directly by God in Heaven:  Make the world safe for vegetarianism. He returns, with snappy clothes, a big hat and phrases like, “Mind it!”, ‘'We are like this only” and  “Vegetarianism is the need of the hour!”

Quick Gun Murugun discovers, upon his return to earth that Rice Plate Reddy is still at it and is on his own mission to create a chain of McDosa restaurants where the speciality is a meat dosa! The two rivals battle it out in a series of gun battles including one in a Chennai traffic jam!

Mango Dolly gets hit by a bullet and while dying, she expresses her love to Murugun. Realising that he too loves Mango Dolly, he tells her that he loves her and she can "stay with him". In the end, having won the heart of his moll, Quick Gun Murugun is able to succeed in his vegetarian mission and defeats the wily and villainous Rice Plate Reddy.

The film was a flop when it first came out but soon caught on and became a cultish favorite at film festivals in the US and Europe. Its irreverence and OTT storyline which lampoons nearly every cultural icon of Tamil and south Indian culture from Murugan, the Tamilians favorite diety, to vegetarianism, reincarnation and the humble but delicious snack, the dosa breaks new comedic ground. The confidence with which it is brought off reflects very smartly the new young, daring India.  No longer is Bollywood comedy all inside jokes and vernacular punning, funny only to Indians. This film takes on and then quickly disposes of Spaghetti Westerns, Bollywood heroes and villains, the Hindu pantheon and McDonalds with a cocky swagger and a funky, hilarious creole of Tamil, Hindi and very exaggerated Indian English.

The music is just as electic and electric. Bits of dialogue set to heavy house beats, Tamil rap, country and western ballads reminiscent of Sergio Leone soundtracks with Mexicali trumpets and disco beats all tell the story of this most unlikely of superheroes and his quest for dietary purity and pure love.  Not only is the music first class but the lyrics, sung in Hindi, Tamil and English poke fun not just at the characters but at the very languages themselves. They are sung and spoken in a way that completely takes the piss out of all three. Given that there were once upon a time, riots in the streets of Chennai against the imposition of Hindi as the national language and English is the old colonial language, these songs underline just how far India has travelled.

It is quite simply the most fun I’ve had in months and out shines the excellent Bombay Connection series by the length several special paper dosas.  If you love Bollywood funk and pop, then you can’t miss this.

            Track Listing:

            01 Dialogue Mix

02 Murugun Superstar

03 Mind It (Tamil Bhangra)

04 Kyoon Keeda Hai Aapko

05 Ek Tha Murugun

06 Chat Mangni Lover

07 Kuchi Kuchi Twist

08 Naam Mera Mango Dolly

09 Space Goddess (Chat Mangni Remix)

10 Mind It (Club Mix)

11 Aunties On The Dance Floor (Chat Mangni Remix)

12 Ragamuffin Mix

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Nice Catholic Boy Proves Mother Wrong: Vijaya Anand

Tamil film poster

Tonight’s feature is Carnatic music with a difference. Actually it is only Carnatic in that it comes from South India. In actuality it is pop music.

Long before A.R. Rahman was known to Western audiences and many years before the current craze for Bollywood funk/pop/jazz filled the blogosphere, soundtracks and record racks David Byrne, chief Talking Head, introduced the music of Jude Mathew to American ears.

Jude who?

Jude Mathew, aka Vijaya Anand, is an early pioneering musical director of Tamil films who ground together instruments, beats, rhythms and styles as if he were a musical chef concocting an outrageously spicy curry.   Born into a family of serious, practicing Catholics in Madras (Chennai) in 1952, Jude was bewitched by music from a very young age. 

It is much easier to stumble upon movies in the process of being made in India than in other countries and near Jude’s house was a place where a movie orchestra rehearsed.  The youngster visited regularly and tried to get his parents to agree to buying him an instrument. They refused. ‘Education is the future,’ they told him. ‘Forget this movie nonsense.’  But they ultimately did crack a bit and bought him a set of bongos to stop his pestering.

A rare photo of Mr Anand

He practiced his bongos and played them for the conductor the orchestra who was immediately impressed. Little Jude was invited to join the group. He was 8 years old!  His mother blanched and tried her best to discourage what appeared to be the beginning of the slippery road to hell.  But his dad was converted and agreed to let him continue to hang out with the orchestra.

A mother’s intuition is usually right. And so it was in this case. Jude announced he preferred music to education at the end of high school and formed a group he called the Melody Cans who performed the music of Tamil movies widely across Madras.  You start off smoking soft drugs and soon you’re addicted to the hard stuff. And so our hero soon got bored with playing other people’s music and turned his restless spirit to composing his own music.

Breaking into the conservative Madrasi film studio world was hard.  The films he worked on were flops or never made to the cinemas. Producers ran out of money. Actors died. Jude quit music and took up a job as machinist. The long commute to work and horrible hours and working conditions nearly sucked his creativity dry.   He took up a diploma course in Western Classical Music conducted at the Trinity College of Music, London. The classes were held in a musical instruments shop called Musi Musicals in the heart of Madras. Here, Vijaya learned theory, piano and classical guitar. He also took classes in South Indian Carnatic music from Mr. Jalatharangam Radhakrishnan, a noted master.

But somehow when he had the energy he did his music and found some work composing music for Tamil stage plays. This led eventually back to the film studios in the mid 1980s. With the support of a prominent local actor, he changed his name to Vijaya Anand. Perhaps that did it. But however it happened he was suddenly scoring all sorts of south Indian films. Though a native Tamilian, he wrote songs for Telegu and especially Kannada films, a language he didn’t speak!

To say Anand’s music is electric is to but scratch the surface of his style. Here you will hear, xylophones, sax played like a shenai, inerludes of Hawaiian guitar, jazz trumpets, synths, wild screaming guitars and something that sounds like door bells.  The songs are fast and melodic. If listening to them is so much fun imagine what composing them must have been like. A bit of this, some of that and lots of the other. More more more!!!!

Here are the roots of A.R. Rahman. The music is bombastic, ambitious, orchestral-disco and grasping for greatness which it usually achieves.

Vijaya Anand’s opinion about his own music is very candid. “I am just a music lover. We so-called ‘masters’ like Beethoven, Bach and Thiagaraja Swamy (a South Indian classical music composer from the 18th century) draw from these rich sounds and blend them together to suit the taste of our audience.” For Vijaya Anand, creating an exciting blend of music is a cinch.

           

            Track Listing:

            01 (The Light of Life) Dancing Is Beautiful

02 (The Emperor and the Prince) I Am the Emperor

03 (The Ramayana of Today) Desire Soars Up High

04 (God Incarnated) Loving Hearts

05 (Dance Raja Dance) Only You Were Mine

06 (I'm Not That Kind of Guy) Love Is Everywhere

07 (Inspector Vikram) When I Say Come

08 (The Emperor and the Prince) I Said I Love You

09 (Krishna, When You Danced) Dheem Thana Thana Nana

10 (The Ramayana of Today) Lover You Speak Beautiful Words

11 (King of Kings) The Drink That Has Gone Up

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Stone Genius: A.R. Rahman

A.R. Rahman

From Hindi disco of the 1980s to Indian pop of today. 

The name A.R. Rahman is near enough to being of the household variety as any other out of Bollywood.  Most of his American and Australian fans only realised who he was when the triumphant anthem Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire climbed to the tops of the pop charts from Tucson to Tokyo. But the diminutive musical genius from the city once known as Madras (Chennai, these days) has been in the business of composing some of the most sophisticated pop music even before his ‘discovery’ by the Tamil film industry in 1991.

Born into a high caste Hindu family, Rahman’s parents were involved in the musical side of the south Indian film industry based in Chennai.  As a youngster, Dileep Kumar (his given name), accompanied his father to the studios and played various instruments on some of his compositions.  His father died when the boy was only 9 but he never considered any other profession than the one he had been exposed to by his dad.  In 1988, one of his sisters fell seriously ill and in spite of the family's effort to cure her, her health deteriorated. The family consulted a Muslim pir - Sheik Abdul Qadir Jeelani or Pir Qadri. At first blush, this seems an unusual step for a Hindu family, but when one considers Dileep’s mother had Muslim roots, a perfectly natural thing to do.  The holy man’s prayers and blessings saw the girl make a ‘miraculous’ recovery. In response Dileep, his mother and his sisters converted to Islam and the young boy took the name Allah Rakha Rahman.

Rahman’s musical journey saw him forming a rock ‘n roll band (Nemesis Avenue) with college friends  and recording his first album in English in the late 1980’s.  As is required of all artists, dues had to be paid, and Rahman worked in the jingle jungle writing musical ditties for companies pedaling everything from motorbikes and paint to breakfast drinks and watches.  

He spent time travelling internationally as a member of the great tabla player, Zakhir Hussain’s, band before returning to Chennai. When he won the local advertising industry’s top award in 1991 one of the Tamil film industry’s most famous directors, Mani Ratnam asked him to score his film Roja. In composing the song Tamizha Tamizha which became all the rage Rahman gave the public a  glimpse of the amazing fusion of pop, Western Classical, reggae, rock, and classical Indian music that would make him one of the world’s most imaginative composers. The film won him three awards for Best Music Director.

Since then he has simply dominated the film industry of India like no one before.  He has moved from the southern film industry to the mothership, in Mumbai, but continues to compose an amazing range of music for Indian and western audiences.  He has performed for President Obama, and with Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger. Andrew Lloyd Webber produced his musical Bombay Dreams, which ran to rave reviews for two years.  The accolades seem endless and yet from everything I’ve read or heard he remains a man of great humility. 

Baz Luhrmann, the Australian director, of such musical extravaganzas as Romeo and Juliet  and Moulin Rouge, sums up Rahman’s incredible talent:  I had come to the music of A. R. Rahman through the emotional and haunting score of Bombay and the wit and celebration of Lagaan. But the more of AR's music I encountered the more I was to be amazed at the sheer diversity of styles: from swinging brass bands to triumphant anthems; from joyous pop to West-End musicals. Whatever the style, A. R. Rahman's music always possesses a profound sense of humanity and spirit, qualities that inspire me the most.

I picked up this collection of his ‘Best’ from a friend in Kerala several years ago. The set is entirely from his Tamil and Malayalam films but the diversity, humanity and spirit that Luhrmann refers to comes through strong and clear.  I know three words of Tamil. But this is (honestly) one of my favorite records of the many thousands I am proud to own. 

If you know only his Hindi or recent music or if you know his music not at all, please dip in and discover. You will not be disappointed.

         Track Listing:

01 Baba Theme Music

02 Mustafa Mustafa

03 Shakalaka Baby

04 Kaadhalennum

05 Lucky Lucky

06 Sakhti Kodu

07 Velli Malare

08 Santosha Kanneere

09 Kaiyil Mithakkum

10 Rajyama

11 Kaadhal Vettukili

12 Muthalavanae

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