this was shared with me by rulzz (mr. kaizen) from ta.
basically the story starts off with one guy accidentally buying a record by Charanjit Singh in a store and listening to it when he realized that it was acid house music but the record was actually from 1982 which was 5 years before when people thought the acid house music actually emerged:
it's proven in this documentary about acid house and TB 303 doc from 2005 (if you'd like to watch)
Charanjit Singh doubtless stood out as unusual in the Hindi film industry of the 1960s and 70s. Veteran of countless Bollywood soundtrack orchestras, Singh was the sort to turn up at session with the latest new synthesiser, acquired at great expense from London or Singapore. He was not, however, widely regarded among his country folk as someone "pushing things forward". His band, the Charanjit Singh Orchestra, made their rupees touring weddings, performing the hits of the day, and while he played on many popular Bollywood recordings, Charanjit Singh was never a household name.
In 1982, though, Singh did something unusual. Inspired by the sound of disco imports from the west making waves among Bombay's hipster cognoscenti, he went into the studio with some new kit – a Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard, a Roland TR-808 drum machine and a Roland TB-303 – and decided to make a record that combined western dance music with the droning ragas of Indian classical music. Recorded in two days, Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat garnered some interest, excerpts finding their way on to national radio, but it was a commercial flop and was soon forgotten.
"In 2002, record collector Edo Bouman came across Ten Ragas in a a shop in Delhi. "Back at my hotel I played it on my portable player, and I was blown away. It sounded like acid house, or like an ultra-minimal Kraftwerk." But it was the date on the record that shocked Bouman. Released 1982, it predated the first acid house record – often regarded as Phuture's Acid Trax – by five years. Bouman tracked down Singh to Mumbai. "He was most friendly and surprised I knew the album. I remember asking him how he got to this acid-like sound, but he didn't quite get my point. He didn't realise how stunningly modern it was."
Eight years later, Bouman is reissuing the record on his label, Bombay Connection. Even today, it sounds like some strange kink in the dance music continuum, but Bouman is amused at speculation Ten Ragas is a hoax, cooked up by some Aphex Twin-style techno joker (the label has released Singh's conventional soundtrack work before, and besides, one can't imagine a respectable Bollywood reissue label pulling such a prank).
Now in his 70s, Singh is, as Bouman puts it, "more a musician than a talker," but he understands Ten Ragas might have been something accidentally, unusually prescient. "He made close to 10 albums, but they all were cover albums," says Bouman. "He told me, 'Frankly, this was the best thing I did. Other albums are all film songs I just played. But this was my own composition. Do something all of your own, and you can make something truly different.'"
here's the track from 1982:
if you are familiar with older productions you can clearly hear that he using TB 303 (acid baseline) TR 808 drums and Jupiter 8 synthesizer.
here's an actual interview with the guy after he was located:
this is such an incredible story to me, the early house/acid house whole history is pretty much changed now after this discovery, the fact that acid music was first invented in a way in india and not in the states like it was thought of before. You can actually now buy a repress of this very rare record now, i actually think of getting it :D
and another recent article in the guardian if you'd like to read more:
Originally posted by geroin
here's the track from 1982:
What a song!
Great post.
kaniz
If your interested in some early music that has an influence on modern techno/electronic music you should look into Delia Derbyshire/BBC Radiophonics Workshop and the documentary Alchemists of Sound - think you can find it on Google Video / YouTube.
Her releases as White Noise were pretty good, I love the track Love Without Sound (1968).
Allot of that stuff was done with reel-to-reel recordings / analog tape - amazing the sounds they were producing with such limited technology.
I wonder how many early techno/house pioneers were inspired by the sounds of Dr. Who
Moral Hazard
HOLY SHIT THAT'S IN' AMAZING!!!! SOMETHING EXISTED A WHOLE 5 YEARS BEFORE WE PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT... I MEAN 5 WHOLE IN' YEARS!!!! MIND = BLOWN!!!!!!!!!
kaniz
Funny, sometimes you see on TA people bitching about how 'people don't care about the history of the scene'.
Someone posts something about the history of the music that they found interesting, and sure enough someone pipes up to piss all over it.
Moral Hazard
quote:
Originally posted by kaniz
Funny, sometimes you see on TA people bitching about how 'people don't care about the history of the scene'.
Someone posts something about the history of the music that they found interesting, and sure enough someone pipes up to piss all over it.
Lighten up, man. I'm just find the use of the word "amazing" to be over-selling it a little. "Interesting" would have worked, "cool" would have been fine, even "substantial" or "significant" would have been reasonable to use but if "discovering" a track that wasn't previously well known and happens to predate the earliest known similar track by a couple of years is "amazing" then I fear the test for "amazing" is pretty low.
geroin
quote:
Originally posted by Moral Hazard
Lighten up, man. I'm just find the use of the word "amazing" to be over-selling it a little. "Interesting" would have worked, "cool" would have been fine, even "substantial" or "significant" would have been reasonable to use but if "discovering" a track that wasn't previously well known and happens to predate the earliest known similar track by a couple of years is "amazing" then I fear the test for "amazing" is pretty low.
i don't really think you understand the importance of this to even comment on my original post. In my opinion it is amazing since for almost 30 years people have thought that the first acid track emerged in 1987 where as the unit it was made on/invented on came out in 1982.
quote:
Originally posted by kaniz
Funny, sometimes you see on TA people bitching about how 'people don't care about the history of the scene'.
Someone posts something about the history of the music that they found interesting, and sure enough someone pipes up to piss all over it.
agreed.
ChemEnhanced
quote:
Originally posted by geroin
i don't really think you understand the importance of this to even comment on my original post. In my opinion it is amazing since for almost 30 years people have thought that the first acid track emerged in 1987 where as the unit it was made on/invented on came out in 1982.
so how would you describe discovering a new species?
I'm bad for it to but we, as a society, are really dumbing down the English language.
Moral Hazard
quote:
Originally posted by ChemEnhanced
so how would you describe discovering a new species?
I'm bad for it to but we, as a society, are really dumbing down the English language.
Exactly my point... "amazing" should be reserved for something that renders someone dumbstruck... something revolutionary... not coming to realize that something one previously thought was 24 years old is actually 29. Is it interesting... arguably, but amazing... no.
culorut
Have you stopped to think that it doesn't seem amazing to you because you yourself are not "dumbstruck" by it?
Moral Hazard
quote:
Originally posted by culorut
Have you stopped to think that it doesn't seem amazing to you because you yourself are not "dumbstruck" by it?
Anyone dumbstruck by something so trivial has problems.
