10-26-2007 Traditional Choora and Jago Sangeet

So many days of work to find that one perfect 'Choora' song finally pays off. The 'day of' actually happened to be our wedding anniversary as well so, Djing and having fun sounded pretty good. We DJ-d a sangeet for which a lot of time was spent with the bride in the car, in the parking lots, in the tea shops, just to find that one perfect Choora song, prior to the wedding. The journey itself was so much fun and we got to know the bride very well and became friends too.

The evening kick started with the traditional Choora ceremony and as the music waved through the hall, the bride had a corner full of competing family members to grace her with Chooras and get a picture. After the hustle and bustle settled down, the ladies had a traditional 'Jago' and the lights were dimmed out. It was a beautiful scene with the pot lit with lights on top and we had given a few hidden mics to the ladies and they all sang lovely jago songs.

We opened the dance floor immediately after the jago so as to not loose that momentum and guests kept dancing whilst having dinner. We got to play the really traditional punjabi folk dance numbers as the guest profile was mostly elderly and wanted the traditional bhangra music. It was a fun night to watch so many people shake a leg or two for the true folk bhangra. Not that, I would have anything against the fusion bhangra, but, it is so hard to dance to.

We saw the couple off to Gurdwara for the wedding next morning. I worked myself to death on this one so, no pics. :-(

10-20-2007 - Indian Filipino wedding

Have you ever seen children that are born to Indian and Asian ( Indians are Asians too but, I mean, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino etc )? They are so gorgeous. I had a friend back in California, who was married to a chinese woman and their children were model-like. I think they get a perfect combination of beautiful features, blemishless skin and stunning hair.




Well, we DJ-d a wedding with an Indian groom and a Filipino bride. A very fun loving couple, preferred a small ceremony here in the states, so as to have a full blown bash back home. We did get to play some filipino music but, it was given to us by the family and we were told to play particular songs. While we could not understand anything from the tracks, the music was very soothing.

The most interesting part of the evening was the dance floor. We raked in all the bhangra beats and bollywood reggae and all the guests hit the dance floor and danced crazily. We were surprised to see the filipino guests dance to bhangra with so much rhythm, way better than some of us indeed.
One of the guests was an amazing singer, so we threw in a few karaoke tracks for him. Sohail joined too and then, DJ Amri and DJ Vinny also joined them and sang a few songs before the night was called off.

10-12-2007 Weddings: American-Punjabi, South-North combo

We have been running too many gigs and have not had time to update our GIG Blog. So I decided to post all of them at once today.

The roughest weekend started all on Thursday, the 11th of October. I roped myself into a situation where I committed myself to applying mehndi to the ladies at the home based sangeet. It was fun but, I got myself home at 12 midnight and I had to work the next day and also DJ their Sangeet on friday night. The ladies were awesome, a couple of them could play tabla and dhol and they sang all night at home and also put together a power-packed performance on Friday night. It was a traditional, typcial sangeet with everyone having fun with live music.

The bride and the groom were an interesting mix of south and north indian. I say interesting because, they both sang a song, with each of them singing in their mother tongue. The songs were Jotheyali Jothe Jotheyali, a Kannada song from the movie 'Geeta' and Jaane do na, which is a Hindi song from 'Cheeni Kam'. Both were composed by Ilayaraja and the Kannada song was the original old song and the hindi song was recently made by him in Cheeni Kam. I sent them the lyrics, original tracks and also the Karaoke track for them to practice. This was a surprise to the entire family and a lot of fun. Oh and yes, we also met a budding Kannada actor Venkatesh Prasad, who is our groom's best friend. He set the dance floor abuzz with his lip sync and dance on "Mere angne mein...". It was fun.

So, I slept much after midnight both on Thursday and Friday and Saturday was the true test for strength. We had to DJ an American-Punjabi wedding in Dearborn on 13th October 2007. We had to rush ourselves over there by 8AM, as I signed up for wedding planning as well. If you are wondering, I have already vowed to myself that I ain't doing this again.

A fresh flower mandap and plenty of Dhol set it to 'perfectly ethnic'. I saw two cool things in this wedding. The couple hired a caricaiturist and an illusionist. The caricaiturist kept the guests away from getting bored, and the illusionist went to each table and showed them some card tricks. I heard people exclaim once in a while. While going home, the illusionist pulled out a business card with flames, he blew the flames and gave it to me. It did smell smoke. Way cool!

The best part was Sachin's live dhol. Sachin is an amazing dhol player and after everyone was out from the party, he played some dhol for me and Vinny too, to dance, while we were tearing down. All in all, it was a lot of fun but, honestly, we are not doing 3 gigs in a weekend ever again.
In all the work I had, I had no pictures shot at any of these events. :-(