Week 6 // On the ... 45
A hopeful song
A few weeks ago, I began to obsessively listen to songs by the British band Cornershop. As with most music, there was no reason to it, just falling down the rabbit hole of their discography. I loved the sound and the groove they were able to create. Their music is chock full of nostalgia. The most famous of their songs (the one we ended up recording) was stuck in my head the whole time so we ended up doing a cover of it.
Without further ado “A Brimful of Asha” covered by Pathalogic:
What was different about this song than all the other ones which highlight being Indian in a foreign land? To me, it was reverent without being stuffy. It was happy without the rose-tinted goggles. I loved it. This is exactly how I feel about the music my parents would play in the car.
A quick explanation of the song might be helpful so here’s one from the Cornershop site1:
‘Asha’ is a pun. It refers to Asha Bhosle, but the word also means “hope”. What does “hope” signify in this context? The movies and songs are in many ways a fantasy of something better than people’s own lives. For instance, Indian youth whose overbearing parents would never permit them to marry those they fall in love with may yet indulge themselves in the romances they see onscreen and hear about in these ballads. The “45”, for you of the CD player generation, is the 45 revolutions-per-minute record player.
For us, Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeskar weren’t the headliners. We’re fans of course but they don’t form the musical backdrop of our childhood. We’ve swapped out a handful of names in our rendition of the song so just for context, here are a few selected songs from the legends we pulled into our rendition of Brimful of Asha.
We were immersed in their music (amongst many others artists) as kids and they’ll form the bedrock for whatever music we play and perform in the future. Hope you enjoyed a little behind the scenes!
From https://www.cornershop.com/2012/01/brimful-explained