If there is a bhangra song that you absolutely love, and you want to keep enjoying it for years to come, I suggest that you stay away from its video. But if you want a good laugh, pick up a few Bhangra DVD compilations for your amusement. Unlike hiphop/reggae videos, bhangra videos appear to have a negative effect on its genre altogether. They in no way promote the genre of bhangra further, instead become a running joke within bhangra fans "did you see that gandh?" Why do they suck so much? If you've seen one bhangra video you have seen them all. They have become so redundent that you cannot tell one song apart from another. However, you can cateograzie these bhangra videos into 2 categories, 'Western Bhangra Vids' and 'Eastern Bhangra Vids'. The 'Western Bhangra Vids', as the name suggests are created in the western hemisphere (north america, UK) and the latter, represent videos from the motherland.
Bhangra has to be, one of the only genres of music where the bad videos out-number the good ones. You may say, "well thats a matter of personal opinion Samosa!", I would agree, if the majority of bhangra fans disagreed with my taste. However they don't and thus this blog entry.
So why do they suck so much?
Number 1, Lack of Creativity.
This lack of creativity appears to be inherent to our 'desi-culture' where most people just operate with the 'monkey see, monkey do' mentality.
"Hain? Tu apneh store vich DVD dey naal Meat bechda? meh vi vecha ga".
If you live around Toronto or the Vancouver area, you may have noticed the influx in 'desi-style' pizza shops. This desi-pizza business model proves my point perfectly. It takes the first person to do something different, and if it works for him/her, well then the next monkey says "it should work for me, kyo nahi?". This same model can be applied to Bhangra videos. In the Eastern bhangra videos, if you've seen one 'duet' bhangra video in front of a Chandigarh mall and some of the wackest back-up male dancers in questionable costumes from the disco-era, you've seen them all.
As for the West, you have lip-synced videos by some metrosexual dude miming some of the most hardcore panjabi lyrics, when off camera, he'll greet your mother by saying "Sas Si Kal".
These 'mimers' are usually best friends with the producer of the track or wannabe 5'4" models, whose egos have been inflated since aunty told their mother "your beta looks like Shah Rukh". This leads me to my next point why Bhangra videos suck so much.
Number 2, Mimers aka 'Lip-Sync-ers' aka 'Nah Bitch that ain't Angrez Ali'
I remember back when Dark n' Dangerous dropped, Shazia Manzoor had became the Miss Pooja of UK/North American bhangra scene. Dark n' Dangerous had made a huge impact in the Bhangra scene, rightly so, it is one of the best produced bhangra albums. So the after affects of this release included various fanpages of Shazia Manzoor, by her fans in the western hemisphere. Clearly, these fans had no idea what Shazia looked liked. So the hunt was on, most of her past efforts, prior to Dark n' Dangerous included a model on the cover. And this same model was used in her videos miming her songs. Here is one of 'her' album covers:
So clearly you can imagine the shock on the fans faces when they found out that their 'gori-gori soni soni Shazia' looked something like their favorite aunty: *Side Note, Bhangra album covers are a whole different topic, which i will tackle another day.
This mystery can now be applied to 'Sudesh Kumari', who has a brilliant voice, but has left her fans wondering which hotty is she really?
Is this her?
Or is this her?
Nope! But my friend, THIS IS HER at 0.33 sec mark (one of my favorite songs btw):
Mimers are rampant in the Western bhangra scene, but they have become like this ugly painting in your friend's house. It disgusted you at first sight, now you know where it is hangs, so the next time you arrive, you simply ignore it. And overall, the mimers in uk/north american videos do a terrible job, unlike their desi-counterparts, its very easy to spot the fakers. Not only are they bad mimers, they do these weird hand gestures that could misdirect airplane traffic at Heathrow. That 'hand-shit' works fine in hiphop videos but not in bhangra. In addition artists like Lehmber personally hates having mimers for his songs, he has mentioned this distaste in several interviews.
Here are a few vids from the 'Vest':
Apart from the obvious mimer, these guys are chiling with 2 beers in a tent while there are mad girls outside. What part of the game is this?
An excellent song, but dont agree with the video.
Number Tin, 'You ain't no Gangsta!'
Fine you wrote and recorded a song called "Donali Da Pyar", this does not mean, that you must act out every lyric in your song in some stereotypical gangster fashion. Leather jackets? Collars popped? Sunglasses? and the infamous "Blue Steel" look in all your camera angles? I mean as a director what have you been
Here are some "Gangsta" bhangra videos: Peep at 2:20 mark, Nikku blinks when he fires a shot.... wait a minute A GUN?...IN A CLUB? on a BMX?
Every cliche i have mentioned, is here in this Balkar Sidhu song, "Gabru" (wicked song, but bad video). James Dean + Fonz + Bullet motorcycles =
forced hand signals + motocycle gang + hiphop gear on 40 year olds = this disaster. I cringe everytime I see this. I can only imagine the reaction of a non-desi channel surfer, on a saturday morning.
I'm done for now.... I'll continue this.
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