Hippity Hoppity..

..I hear, is a genre of music, wherein people wear pullovers too large for themselves and wear their pants too low for them to be of any conceivable use and start off by talking rhythmically & rudely about how all isn't well with their trailer-park-street lifestyles and after a while, talk rhythmically and rudely about how their million dollar lifestyles suck as well. And then there's the drumming that sounds like the drummer has one arm, one leg and one drum. Possibly because that drum cost him an arm and a leg.

Now, music is a miracle to me. I live on it, and not just adrenaline of the rock: All of it.. The sheer genius of the fusion, the mathematical brilliance combined with the bhavam of the carnatic, everything. Because, everything has a different mood to it. Everything is brilliantly unique. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why the genre is so successful. Obviously the fans can't be beaten, literally or figuratively, because they all have very large muscles, and the instinct of self preservation comes first. I have tried listening to their music, and have even managed to like the first 5-10 seconds, but that's what repeats all through the song, anyway. Music, to me, is a retreat. I listen to music when I need to get away from everything. And try as I might, I can't imagine why anybody would want to listen to someone else's drunk mother, or abusive father, or someone else's poverty. My sympathies to him, of course, but that's all. 

So, on the whole, hippity hoppity has been rubbish, and on the whole, I've ignored it. But now, there are Indian hippity hoppity music-making chaps. Dressed just like their blacker, taller and more muscular counterparts from the west, They are all the thing in the Tamil movie industry today. Every film seems to need a hippity hoppity song. There's this particular chap called Yogi-B, I think, which in itself stumps me entirely. Yogis are supposed to give up everything and meditate half naked in some ball-freezingly cold place. This chap seems comfortable enough, surrounded by young women with minimal foliage in the appropriate places, in various impossible angles and performing pointless stretching maneouvers. And then there's "B". What the devil's that supposed to mean? Is there a Yogi-A somewhere? or does he want to "B-e" a Yogi? Its all inexplicable. And for some inconceivable reason, he's always wearing shades, even indoors. And there's a certain song about Indian girls that he's made, about sigappu udhadugal and and thick black hair and everything, and he asks if they'll love him if he has no money, and so on and so forth. 

Which, when you think of it, is bewildering. What's an Indian girl? Girls from every part of India are unique, and to this chap, "Indian girls" means, Tamil girls. Because the only Indian girls he's seen are the ones in his country, who are all Tamil. And what the devil does he mean,  his Indian girls?The lyrics are ignorant, the music is rubbish, and he'll make a living out of it because the tamil film industry's paying to have him perform his music for movies. And more introverted kids with unsmiling faces and no friends will listen to him and make music like him and become successful and hire more "Indian" girls to perform stretching exercises near them.

 Largely inexplicable. But then, that's life for you. Conveniently, if someone asks me if Yogi-B, or for that matter, anyone I'm not proud of, is from India, I'll say, No, he's Malaysian. Just like I do when someone asks me where I'm from, when I'm caught misbehaving. 

Amen.