Mer’s experiences at home and overseas have helped to shape her music. But most of all, she has her father in mind. He was a freedom fighter who died exactly one year before independence on July 9, 2011. Mer says she wants to honor him in her own way.
“There’s a struggle, and even being home now, things are not easy. And if we sit and wait in the name of enjoying the fruits of corruption, what’s the point of our parents and our previous grandfathers and mothers who died in the war? What is the point of the war if we’re not focused in making it well now?”
Many of the artists in this country that is so new and so unknown say they want to take their message to the world. I’m Mario Ritter.
You are listening to As It Is, from VOA Learning English. I’m June Simms.
Red Baraat Band Brings Bhangra to Brooklyn
New York’s multicultural environment is a hot spot for new art and music. Red Baraat, an eight-member horns and percussion band from Brooklyn, is a product of that environment. The group mixes northwestern Indian and Pakistani bhangra music with jazz, funk, hip-hop and other forms of music. One critic calls it an “explosively happy meld of bangtastic funk, Bollywood drama and marching band swagger.”
Bandleader Sunny Jain is a first-generation Indian American who grew up in Rochester, New York. He formed Red Baraat in 2008 after looking for a traditional Indian bhangra band to play at his own wedding. The jazz drummer and singer fell in love with the musical instrument, the dhol, on a trip to India in 1997. The booming double-sided drum is used in bhangra and in Bollywood musicals.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25