They Lied to Me in Song
August 4, 2015 6:39 PM   Subscribe

The Indian Government will pay 3000 Mumbai beggars to sing about its initiatives. All-India Radio will help with training, though most singing beggars are apparently trained in music, up to degree level.
posted by Segundus (5 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
The last link says that they sing a devotional song, a qawwali or a melodious Bollywood number and the Wikipedia entry on qawwali says
the longest commercially released qawwali runs slightly over 115 minutes
Whoa.
posted by XMLicious at 6:59 PM on August 4, 2015


Brilliant! Even though I am an alienated, apolitical sourpuss, I'd much rather hear gummint propaganda on my morning commute than some crackhead croaking through "Under The Boardwalk."
posted by the hot hot side of randy at 7:18 PM on August 4, 2015


This reminds me of a certain quest in The Witcher 3.
posted by exogenous at 7:25 PM on August 4, 2015


This is one of those things, like... you know, when white people do it, we call it busking. And maybe not everybody likes it, but the implications are very different. Nobody's surprised that a busker is a competent musician. People are surprised that "beggars singing in trains" are competent musicians. White artists enjoy an entirely different sort of poverty, apparently.
posted by Sequence at 8:18 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


not "our" perceptions of race

Pretty sure everything is about us.
posted by aramaic at 5:42 AM on August 5, 2015


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