Rough Guide To Bollywood Gold (CD - 2007)

It's hard not to be beguiled by classic Bollywood, whether it's the visual spectacle of the films or the music, which is often overpowering enough by itself, sweet and spicy, but never cloying. The 15 tracks here are the cream of a very large crop, covering a lot of ground, from "Aaja Aaja Main Hoon Pyar Tera," with its twangy guitars and mutated boogaloo beat veering off into alien territory, to the fairly pure beauty of "In Aankhon Ki Masti," where Asha Bhosle (who, along with sister Lata Mangeshkar, is one of the country's leading playback singers -- the vocalists who voice the musical tracks) performs a gorgeous ghazal. It's quite apparent that while the women often sound quite kittenish, the men are supposed to be definitely masculine, as you can hear in the voices of Mohammed Rafi and Mukesh -- the roles of the sexes are strongly delineated. While always ineffably Indian, there's such a variety of music here, pulling from so many sources and influences that it becomes the ultimate musical melting pot. ~ Chris Nickson minimize