There are times when India really makes me laugh….
… I mean, other than things like watching Bollywood videos where it seems like people are always going through weird mating rituals replete with bright costumes, head bobbing, and peculiar synchronized dancing….
… or like the time that a student asked me to download a song for him. “There is this Hindi song, Hum Honge Kaamyab,” he said, “and it has been remade into an English song called ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Can you see if you can download it for us to play at next week’s cultural event?”
“Sure,” I said, deciding not to correct him. “I’ll see what I can do.”
But I couldn’t help sharing the story with someone else.
“No. You’re wrong,” they told me. “Of course it’s a Hindi song.”
“How do you know for sure?” I asked.
“Because we have a version of it in all our local languages.”
Pete Seeger, you’d better relinquish your copyright….
Anyway, this post isn’t about “We Shall Overcome,” but, there is some happy “overcoming” in this story. This post is about the mithun—and animal whose appearance “gave endless hopes to the people and fulfilled their aspirations.” The following is the text of a story, The Birth of Mithun. Because the text is a little too funny to be believable, I’ve also included a scan of the three pages from the book as proof that, unlike my claim that We Shall Overcome is an English song, this isn’t something I’ve made up in my spare time.
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I still like hardcore…
Although, I guess that by posting this here for free, maybe I’m now giving away my hardcore soul. Hmm. Not sure.
Anyway, here are two cool hardcore comps: Give Me Back and Toxic Waste on Yer Plate. The first is from an LP put out by Ebullition, and was one of the first records that got me into the hardcore scene way back when. The second is from some tape I got from (I think) Green Earth Tapes or something like that and had lots of cool crusty/pogo stuff to listen to. (Read on for the downloads….) Read More »