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For our last in this mini-series of the cinematic ‘woods’
taking or providing inspiration to Bollywood, we travel to Kannywood, in
northern Nigeria.
In the early 1990’s I was working for some months on the
borders of Iran and Iraq. We lived in tents on a sort of heavily mined DMZ on a
plateau in the dry dun hills that rose steadily into the Zagros mountains. The
nearest city, to which we repaired once a fortnight or so, was Suleymaniah, the
largest centre of Kurds in Eastern Iraq.
On one trip into town I swung through the crowded bazaars in
search of a particular brand of cigarette.
The constricted street led into a small square which was crowned with a
cinema hall. That evening’s show was a
potboiler from India called Insaaf ke
Tarazu (Scales of Justice). I had been aware that Bollywood films were
popular beyond the borders of India but this was the first time I had actually
seen Indian heroes and heroines doing their moves and making their faces on
posters in a foreign land.
A few months before arriving in Iraq, I had spent a long
time in Pakistan working for the UN; I was interviewing refugees from Iraq and
Iran for resettlement in the West. One Iranian young man took the interview in
flawless Urdu. I was surprised and
impressed and asked him how he had become fluent. I suspected he might be a local
student and was trying to rort the UN system to get to Europe. He insisted that
he’d learned Urdu from watching Bollywood movies on TV. One day, he hoped to
return to the sub continent to try his hand at acting.
Raj Kapoor’s
giant hit of 1955 Shri 420 , had been
a major hit in the Soviet Union and other East European countries. Across the
Middle East and South East Asia, people who otherwise spoke not a word of
Hindi, could rattle off entire dialogues from Indian films. Indeed, for the developing and recently
Independent former colonies of Asia and Africa, the films of Bombay were a sort
of cultural security blanket, far more important to popular culture than the films
and heroes of Hollywood which were causing similar waves in post war
Europe.
And like jazz, that American music that found such fertile
ground around the world, the playback singer based music of Hindi cinema, was
the soundtrack for millions of African, Middle Eastern and Asian youth growing
up in the 50s-70s.
So I wouldn’t say I was surprised but rather entirely
pleased to discover through today’s featured record, Harafinso: Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria. Put
out by the excellent cultural warriors at sahelsounds this record gives the
world the chance to listen into contemporary popular music from Kano and Kaduna
and the Islamic lands of northern Nigeria.
Full post and goodies here
