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Music streaming wants you to throw away your record collection. Don't.

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Today, 10 or maybe 1,000 parties were organised, many of them featuring songs like Maiyya mainu and Kala chashma on different playlists. The tracks got skipped on Spotify. No, you paid the music streaming service your dues but that’s not a guarantee you will be allowed access to all the tracks, all the time. The company says it’s about licensing issues with Zee Music but why should customers who wanted to have the best time of their lives have to pay for it? And it’s not just about Spotify. Tomorrow, some other streaming service may do the same. Day after, an artiste can pull his or her catalogue. In fact, Jay-Z did just that in 2017. You pay a monthly/yearly fee but the music is not yours. One of my few sensible ideas (another being getting a moka pot instead of having to rely on a café) came more than a decade ago – pack all my music into a digital storage and find a safe place for the 5,000-odd vinyl records and 2,000-odd CDs. It doesn’t make sense by way of real-estate space b...
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Why has Apple made a separate app for classical music?

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March 28 is a special day for anyone who appreciates Western classical music. The app Apple Music Classical will make its debut and for subscribers of Apple Music, it’s free to access. This is Apple keeping its promise to offer a classical music app after acquiring the music service Primephonic in 2021. You already know this part but the bigger question is why do we need a separate app for classical music? Aren’t Apple Music or Spotify presenting that successfully? It’s a complicated question that has as an answer… metadata. You are looking for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 on a music streaming service. What you will get is a list of recordings based on the “title track”. It’s unlike the time when we bought the same on vinyl or CD. The list that’s thrown at you on a streaming service will have all kinds of takes on the symphony, even energetic rock performances. The problem is that the metadata considered by streaming services doesn’t take into account the conductor, orchestra and...
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Campa Cola is returning. Will Salman Khan?

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Campa Cola’s return to the public eye is a rare occurrence in the fizzy industry. Rarely does a cola brand get a second shot at being fizzy-licious but Reliance Consumer Products, the fast-moving consumer goods arm and subsidiary of Reliance Retail Ventures, is offering just that. Most of us may have forgotten what the Campa Cola brand stood for but maybe not Salman Khan. Salman was only 15 or 16, oozing the same solo swag he tries to channel now at age 57. Ad film-maker Kailash Surendranath, founder of Kailash Picture Company, was approached by Chaitra Advertising in 1982 to make a campaign for Campa Cola, an ad film that captures the vibe of the youth. Kailash decided to cast some of the most sought after young faces in the campaign which was shot on a yacht and underwater in Andaman. The film-maker chose actress Ayesha Shroff (Jackie Shroff’s wife), model Aarti Gupta Surendranath, models Shiraz Merchant, Sunil Nischol and Vanessa Vaz for the campaign. And Aarti brought in a yo...
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Junior Statesman

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Who remembers Junior Statesman, India’s first youth magazine that was published by The Statesman newspaper in the 1960s and 70s? The magazine had columns by Zeenat Aman, Jug Suraiya, etc... JS was perhaps Desmond Doig’s biggest contribution – except, perhaps, his sketches of Calcutta -- to the newspaper. Anyway, I’ve several issues of the magazine and I still enjoy reading them.
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Homeward bound

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On returning to India, Ferena Wazeir has landed several big projects in the Hindi film industry and one with Oscar-winning director Danis Tanovic. She discusses with Mathures Paul the difference in work culture in India and Scotland After Deepka Padukone, a number of young talented actresses are all set to face the spotlight. Besides Shruti Seth and Shruti Haasan, another contender for a leading spot in the industry is Ferena Wazeir, whose family has strong ties with Kashmir but she was brought up in Scotland. Once she returned to India, it was only a matter of time before she landed important roles in films directed by the Hindi film industry’s leading directors. Wazeir will soon be seen in Ketan Mehta’s period epic Rang Rasiya ~ produced by Deepa Sahi ~ which is based on Raja Ravi Varma’s life. She essays the role of a journalist and the “third love” in the painter’s life. Wazeir has also landed a three-movie deal with a major studio in Bollywood. Adding to her kitty is Sadiyaan, a R...
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Dialogue with divinity

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Dance Routes’ choreographic works include pieces meant for performance as well as films By Mathures Paul Rekha Tandon, one of the foremost exponents of the Odissi, established Dance Routes in 1997 with help from Michael Weston, a musician and film-maker, for experimentation, research and education in Indian classical dance. She was initially under the guidance of SN Jena, and subsequently under Shrimati Madhavi Mudgal, Guru Trinath Maharana and Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Tandon was part of Madhavi Mudgal’s dance company between 1985 and 1992. Dance Routes’ choreographic works have included pieces created for both performance and film, using multicultural literary and musical resources, which retain the criteria of dance being used as a means of dialogue with divinity. Educational initiatives have included workshops both in the UK and India that explore the relationship between dance, yoga and the cultural environments that nurtured these classical traditions. Dhara, one of her recent p...
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In knots and crosses

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Dundee is known for jam, journalism and jute. For a better understanding of the jute industry, which has almost disappeared from Dundee, Hopscotch Films crew was in India. John Archer shares his thoughts on the subject with Mathures Paul The old jute mills that once dotted Calcutta are fast disappearing, only to be replaced by concrete jungles. The importance of the raw material, needless to say, will be understood not before it’s too late. Glasgow-based production company Hopscotch Films set out to make a documentary on a subject that binds Dundee to Calcutta. John Archer was in Calcutta with his large team to film Brian Cox’s Jute Journey, a subject close to the heart of actor Brian Cox. John Archer of Hopscotch Films speaks to The Statesman. What prompted Hopscotch Films to take on a documentary on jute trade? In Scotland, Dundee is renowned as being the city of the three Js ~ jam, jute and journalism. This is such an old cliche that we will not be mentioning it in our documentary! ...
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Waxing Lyrical

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Kiran Ahluwalia’s ghazals have a lot of Western influence, including a harmonic structure based on jazz and Western classical music, writes Mathures Paul Born in India and brought up in Toronto, Kiran Ahluwalia is a musician who doesn’t resist Western music from influencing her vocal style. A trained exponent of the ghazal, she finds inspiration in the poetry of Indian and Pakistani poets living in Canada. After giving us albums like Kashish: Attraction and Wanderlust, she is once again in the studio recording her next effort. In an exclusive interview to The Statesman. As a student of Vithal Rao in what ways do you implement his lessons in your projects? I learned ghazal gaayaki from him ~ basically how to sing a ghazal. Vithal Rao is a maestro and so he doesn’t really have a method of teaching. He simply sings for you and it is up to you to ask and learn what you can. I also learned many things about composition but I am not able to articulate these in words ~ they are more intrinsic...
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Language is not a barrier

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Photograph from the Internet To type in Bengali, Hindi or Nepali, you don’t need to be a scholar By Mathures Paul In a few years time, you don’t need to know English to be on the web. Every major IT company is spending large amounts to develop interfaces in various languages. Using artificial intelligence structure most of these interfaces are being developed. A leader in the area is Tachyon Technologies and its Quillpad. You don’t need to know how to write Bengali or Hindi or Nepali or Punjabi to use Quillpad. On www.quillpad.in simply choose a language you want the text matter to be in and start typing in English. To be more specific, users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into other scripts. If you are unsure of the pronunciation of a word, simply right click and a list of alternatives is provided. Launched in 2000, it took KS Sreeram and Ram Prakash almost four years of planning and visualizing various ...
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Words of wisdom

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"There is something about Kolkata and India that gets into your blood!” J Chloe Braun has been writing articles and short stories most of her life. Having spent 12 years working with underprivileged women and children, her journals and memories gave birth to Hurdy Gurdy, a fictional account of one brave woman’s escape from spousal abuse. Raised in the small Armenian community, one of her aunts by marriage was an Anglo Indian. “Along with my parents she had a tremendous influence on me — encouraging me to read by buying me books, to be always willing to read my work, to study music and to think! Kolkata was a great place to grow up in – with its rich culture and hospitable people. Most of my teachers were Anglo Indians – my English teacher was tremendous. She not only taught us to speak proper English but to love the language as well.” The seeds for Hurdy Gurdy was sowed at a writing competition. “The topic (of the competition) was ‘Unusual customs or practices’, or something like ...
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Simple logic

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The father of a theory that is now the life of many consumer goods, Lothi Zadeh shows no signs of slowing down at 85. Over to Mathures Paul Lotfi Zadeh was born before his time. Whenever he’d come up with a theory, the world wouldn’t readily accept it. But the scientist’s Fuzzy Logic theory has stood the test of time and is now the life of many electronic consumer goods. He isn’t your comic book image of the driven scientist with the unkept hair and manic eyes. But he is 85 and shows no signs of slowing down. Born in 1921 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Zadeh is a mathematician, computer scientist and professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He grew up in Iran, studied at Alborz High School and Tehran University and moved to the USA in the mid-1940s. Since the 1950s he’s been with Berkeley. “Russia has gone down. In America people now speak of China and India. I get my share of news from Radio Liberty. It broadcasts serious news and no propaganda. I wish there was a channel like thi...
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Stretch of imagination

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Mathures Paul meets cartoonist Mangesh Tendulkar Proud of his creations, Mangesh Tendulkar walks around Tilak Hall in Maharastra Nivas explaining to visitors the power of cartoons. An opposite of his renowned playwright brother Vijay Tendulkar, 70-year-old Mangesh is in town to host his first exhibition. You have read much about Anant Pai and RK Laxman. Their contribution to Indian comics and cartoons is immense. But that of Tendulkar is equally important. He is a master in the art of single frames. He doesn’t enjoy the advantage of white space that exists between panels in a comic book. Much can happen between frames — Superman might die, Hagar give up drinking and Charlie Brown win a baseball match. Tendulkar has to tell his story with a single picture and that too without a bubble. “Words make the frame weak. To tell a story without words is difficult,” says the cartoonist. The last time he was in Kolkata was in 1976-77. “Kolkata has allowed me to enjoy great music, poetry, film and...
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Silence is golden, silence is grey

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By Mathures Paul Silence is golden. With every footstep along the less-treaded green grass of South Park Street Cemetery one discovers on headstones names that inspired mortal souls to pen works of labour. In full bloom, branches still hang low over the tombs of the forgotten. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee. Buried in the cemetery, Rose Aylmer’s death inspired poet Walter Savage Landor to write this verse. As a 17-year-old carefree girl, Rose strolled alongside Landor on the mountains of Wales. She arrived in the city in May 1798 to join her aunt, Lady Russell (after whose husband Russell Street was named). But as luck would have it, she died of cholera a year after her arrival. Heartsick, Landor penned his elegy to Rose Aylmer that was engraved on her tomb in 1910. Even in death she remains a mystery for some. A few locals attribute her death to choking on pineapple and a few to an overdose of the fru...
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Provoking debate

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Casually dressed, soft-spoken and a patient listener, Pascal Bruckner is an acclaimed French novelist. Born with an instinct for the fresh, Bruckner belongs to the Generation of 1968, a revolutionary era in the history of France. In town to promote The Divine Child (Rupa France), a novel published sometime back, he is a man who doesn’t divorce politics, culture and sexuality. “There are numerous ways to exhibit the spirit of resistance. In France, everybody wants to resist, some against the government and others against culture. In Divine Child the question that I place before readers is what if a child were permitted to choose, before birth, whether or not to enter the world,” says Bruckner. In the book, Madeleine Barthelemey is pregnant with twins. Doctors advice her to undertake their education in utero. Soon Celine is born. But she has to forgo her eruditeness upon entering the world. Being a spectator of her fate, Louis refuses birth and embarks on a rebellion. In chapters like “t...
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All cracked up

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Renowned stand-up comic Russell Peters visits Kolkata, where his mother and brother were born. He speaks to Mathures Paul about his early career, the elections in America and future projects In North America a growing number of stand-up comics of Indian origin are becoming famous, a popular name among them is Russell Peters, who started performing in Toronto in 1989. These days he lives in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where the environment is ‘just right’ for stand-up comics. After a long break Peters returned to India, which he doesn’t, like many celebrities of Indian origin, loosely calls his ‘hometown’. His show in Kolkata perhaps was just another show for him but his stay here surely was special to him. His father was born in Mumbai and mother in Kolkata. His elder brother, Clayton, was also born in Kolkata, making his stay a memorable one. In fact, when The Statesman caught up with him, he had a few minutes to spare before rushing off to meet his uncles. “I have never seen stand-up ...
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Messrs Fancypants

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Innovating on the spot. That sums up what Helga’s Fun Band is all about. Formed in November 2004, this is a band to watch out for. The group’s four happy-go-luck chaps — Siddharth Coutto (also drummer of Zero), Meghashyam (ex-guitarist of Acquired Funk Syndrome and Zero guitarist), Gino Banks (son of Louiz Banks) and Johan Pais (ex-Vicious Circle) — are always game to come up with a song on the spur of the moment. It’s a mini “supergroup” with seasoned musicians. The “jam” band was formed by Coutto to fulfil his desires to become a singer and mainly because he was bored playing the drums all the time. “We are just a bunch of guys out to have fun. If there’s a gig and you want four fun-loving musicians, think of us,” says Coutto before a performance at Someplace Else. HFC started off as Helga’s Funk Castle but soon dropped the “k” from “funk”. “We were considered a funk band even though we performed all kinds of numbers. To spice up things, we became known as Helga’s Fun Castle. It’s a ...
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Oodles of doodles

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With Indian politicians at work, editorial cartoonists have a bright future, feels Shekhar Gurera. Mathures Paul sketches his experiences While depicting social ills, his pencil earned him several awards. Always making a social or political comment, the winner of Saitama’s Humour Photo Contest (2002), Best Cartoon Award (1990) and Best Cartoonist Award (1992), cartoonist Shekhar Gurera’s humble beginnings won many a heart. “In fact, I was a science student. After completing my BSc from Patiala in 1986, I was studying MCA. But instinct made me switch over to the arts. Thereafter I took admission in BFA in College of Arts (on the basis of the medals and certificates I won while participating in co-curricular activities at the national level). When I was in the first year of BFA, I began my career as a freelance cartoonist. By the time I graduated from BFA, I was an established name in the world of cartoons. By that time I had my page one column in four or five daily newspapers in various...
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Ebony & ivory

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When she rolled her fingers over the piano keys, every note danced in praise of Neda Navaee’s beauty. The weekend crowd at the Calcutta School of Music enjoyed an evening of classical pieces played on the piano by the Toranto-based pianist Navaee. Born in 1973 in Isfahan, Iran, her parents soon moved to Washington, where she received her first piano lessons at the age of five. “With father being a musician, I was unknowingly inclined towards the subject since childhood. We had a normal piano, which I loved playing. When I turned 15, I took up playing the piano more seriously,” said Navaee, who had earlier performed in Mumbai and Pune. “Before I reached India, I was aware of the fact that people don’t get the opportunity to listen to Western classical music on piano as often as Westerners. After the initial bout of anxiety, I was relieved to hear crowds applaud.” The programme, sponsored by the Canadian High Commission and ITC Ltd, featured compositions by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Mende...
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Have wok will travel

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Cookery to Keith Floyd is the result of religion, geography and war. Mathures Paul marinades his career When satellite television arrived in India, two personalities inspired men to enter kitchens — Keith Floyd and Martin Yan. While some men lost a finger or two trying to outdo Yan, others went a bit tipsy watching Floyd sip wine and rustle up delicacies in natural surroundings. After all these years, Floyd, with his bow tie and smooth talk, remains a favourite among television viewers. Floyd’s definition of cooking is best described in A Feast of Floyd: “Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing — love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist — not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sun...
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Everyday’s a Sundae

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Born on a farm and afflicted with asthma, Jim Davis took to cat doodles to while away the time ~ and the rest is history, writes Mathures Paul HE eats too much because he’s depressed. And he’s depressed because he eats too much. It took Garfield years to perfect the vicious circle! Born on 19 June 1978, Jim Davis’ humorous strip is centered round the life of a fat, lazy, cynical orange cat who loves lasagne, coffee, the television remote control, the suffering of his owner Jon Arbuckle and the other house pet, Odie. And nothing has changed in the past 28-odd years. “I always say Garfield is a human in a cat suit. Garfield deals with two subjects that are universal — eating and sleeping. We all eat and we all sleep (with any luck). He’s also an anti-hero. He does everything we humans would like to do if we could get away with it,” says Jim Davis in an exclusive interview to The Statesman. Davis’ upbringing charted out his future. His parents, James and Betty Davis, had a farm which, lik...
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Footloose and fancy free

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Flamenco has evolved over centuries of political and ethnic influences, writes Mathures Paul Grace personified, Laura Gonzalez swirled across the Calcutta School of Music auditorium floor to the amazement of those participating in a flamenco workshop. The very word flamenco conjures up images of intense passion and makes you say “Ole!”. Guitarist Fran Molina, Luis Garcia, percussionist Daniel Parra and dancer Laura Gonzalez gave pointers to the receptive audience gathered at Calcutta School of Music. But they were not averse to learning more about Indian dance forms and the degree to which the two can blend. “Whenever we get the opportunity, we listen to Indian music. It has rhythm. I know an American drummer who learnt the tabla when he visited India. But we have never spared a thought to the proposition of mixing Indian rhythms with flamenco,” says Daniel. Before arriving in Kolkata, the four mesmerised crowds in Delhi, where a sitar was also incorporated into the performance. Like o...
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