This is the second video in my new series “Bollywood Roots” on tracing the roots of influences in Bollywood music:

One thing worth clarifying: I’m not trying to identify naked copies. Copied tunes are a dime a dozen and frankly, are uninteresting. What I am interested in is tracing culture and influences. When I see a Hindi music director take a snippet of a 19th century Irish song and turn it in to a modern hit, I think that is talent. You may not. But I hope you recognize the difference between this kind of an inspiration and the Pritam-style note-for-note Korean copies.

In any case, here’s the story in the video above:

This time, the search has been 11 years in the making.

The song is “Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuchh Kaha” from Basu Chatterjee’s “Baton Baton Mein”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157339/ starring Amol Palekar and Tina Munim. The music was by Rajesh Roshan, sung by Amit Kumar and Asha Bhonsle with lyrics by Yogesh.

I had no idea this song had any older roots than the 1979 film until 1995 when I was watching Die Hard: With a Vengeance and the tune plays throughout the film. Once more, I had a case of a western version of an Indian song appearing after the Hindi version. Clearly, the song had older roots- but I had no idea just how old. I was about to be surprised… 11 years later. It was this military beat with an orchestra playing the tune which is the main part of the Hindi song: (Read More)