One day last week, David emailed to tell me that Asha Bhosle and the Kronos Quartet were performing right here in Boston, at the Berklee School. "The concert's on Sunday," he said. "Do you want to go?"
Yes, please. I was so excited. Asha jii is my favorite Bollywood playback singer. She's the favorite of lots of others as well; at seventy-five years of age, she's been recording film songs for sixty years and I understand that she's the most recorded singer in human history and has sold more records than Elvis and the Beatles combined.
I had heard about Asha jii's project with Kronos - Liane Hansen interviewed her on NPR. They had re-recorded about a dozen songs written by R.D. Burman, one of Bollywood's funkiest, most visionary composers. I wasn't crazy about the new versions of the tunes - hearing them just made me long to go back to my own collection and listen to the originals. But they did record some of my most favorite, beloved Asha tunes, like the psychedelic "Dum maro dum" and the delightful, melodic "Chura liya," after a translation of which Kronos named its album. Besides - the opportunity to see Asha jii, live! It doesn't matter who she's singing with or how good or bad their interpretations are, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
So I was thrilled. Sunday evening I was practically vibrating with excitement as David and I enjoyed a pre-show drink and pizza in the Back Bay.
Then we looked at the tickets.
We're not at all sure how this happened - David had thought the concert was that Sunday, December 11. He had been looking, he thought, at the December 2005 schedule of performances at Berklee and had seen the concert listed there, and he clicked on the listing and ordered the tickets. But when we looked at them, it was clear as day - the concert is April 9, 2006. Now, when David returns to the web page on which he originally saw the listing, it isn't there.
So there it is - no Asha Bhosle for us, at least not yet. We'll be back in April, and content ourselves until then with her recordings and the movies in which they feature. And watch this space, because I'll be back here to report on the concert to the GOAT faithful. Until then,
दम मारो दम |
मिट जाए ग़म |
बोलो सुबह शाम |
हरे कृष्ण हरे राम ||
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