........................................................................ Rec.music.indian.misc FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS. ........................................................................ "din hai suhaanaa aaj pahali taarikh hai khush hai zamaanaa aaj pahali taarikh hai pahali taarikh aji pahali taarikh hai!" [Kishore in "Pahali Taarikh"] ........................................................................ 4th year of RMIM FAQ This FAQ has been posted on RMIM for three years now. The very first version of it was posted on July 3 '94. Later, it was made available through RMIM AutoMailer in Aug 94. The current three-part format of the FAQ came about in Dec 95. Its web-version was created in Apr 96. Last modified date: Jul 3, 1997 ........................................................................ As usual, the entire FAQ can be obtained anytime by sending a mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with the subject: rmim faq The recent HTML version of the FAQ can be seen at: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/rmim.html The recent text version of the FAQ can be seen at: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli/faq.txt This FAQ is posted in three parts. This is the first part that has the table of contents. The changes are indicated alongside the question numbers below. ..................................................................... FAQ: Contents ..................................................................... You can find the answers to the following questions in the FAQ. 0.0 About the FAQ 0.1 Intro to FAQ 0.2 Info about the FAQ 0.3 Contributors to the FAQ document 0.4 Related documents. 1.0 CHARTER of rec.music.indian.misc 1.1 I want to post something on the newsgroup, what should I do? 1.2 How do I post if I don't have posting privileges on my newserver? 1.3 How to read RMIM using just email? 1.4 How to read RMIM using WWW? 2.0 Are the RMIM articles archived? 2.1 Where are the articles archived? 3.0 Are the Songs/Lyrics posted in RMIM Archived? 3.1 Where are these lyrics archived? 3.2 I need the lyrics of a song; should I directly post on the net? 4.0 What are P-stats? 4.1 Need details of a song, but am not sure it has been asked before 4.2 Why are they called P-stats? 4.3 What is the P-stats database? 4.4 Where is the P-stats database? 4.5 How can I access the P-stats database? 4.6 How can I contribute to the P-stats database? 5.0 What are Ghazals? Can one discuss them on RMIM? 5.1 What is the definition of a Ghazal? 5.2 Were Ghalib ghazals ever discussed on RMIM? 5.3 Where can I get Ghalib ghazals? 6.0 Is there an on-line Urdu to English dictionary to get meanings of some Urdu words? 6.1 How can I access this Urdu dictionary? 7.0 Can I print song lyrics in any Indian fonts/scripts? 7.1 What is ITRANS Software? 7.2 How to install the ITRANS software? 8.0 What is the ITRANS Song Book (ISB)? 8.1 How do I add songs to the ITRANS Song Book? 8.2 Where can I get the ITRANS Song Book? 9.0 Are lyrics for songs from various Indian languages available? 9.1 Info about Marathi lyrics. 9.2 Info about Malayalam lyrics. 9.3 Info about Assamiya lyrics. 10.0 Are there any general Quizzes on RMIM? [UPDATE] 10.1 What is the RJGK quiz? 10.2 What is the interactive Flo-Jo quiz? 10.3 What is the Chitrahaar Quiz? [NEW] 10.4 What is the Tasvir Aur Tassavur quiz? 11.0 Information about various RMIM series. [UPDATE] 12.0 Information on some Encyclopaedias and various Books. 12.1 What is the Film Music Encyclopaedia? 12.1.2 Where can one get it? How much does it cost? 12.2 Information on book sellers. 12.3 Books On Ghazals. 12.4 Information on Encyclopaedia On Indian Cinema [UPDATE]12.5 Information on books on Lata Mangeshkar. 12.6 Information on other books. 13.0 I want to listen to live songs on the computer. (How) can I do that? 14.0 Were some good biographical articles posted in RMIM before? 14.1 What are the good biographical articles that appeared on RMIM? 14.2 Any general articles other than biographies were posted? 14.3 Where can I get some of the above articles? 14.4 I want to post some articles that I have with me. What do I do? 15.0 Where can I buy music CDs and cassettes? [UPDATE] 16.0 How to access some/all of the information? 16.1 FTP: file transfer program 16.2 IRC: internet relay chat 16.3 What is Mosaic? And what are some of the URL addresses. 16.4 Mail: What is the RMIM AutoMailer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- What others say about us: "This is the place to ask for lyrics to a song you have heard and share your thoughts on either the poetry of the words or how "hot" you think the stars who sing them are. There's a FAQ posted every month that will point you toward archived song lyrics, sound files, a film and music trivia quiz and other Internet resources, such as the newly created alt.movies.indian newsgroup." RMIM in "Netguide", Vol. 2, #8, p. 101, August 1995. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 0.0 About the FAQ 0.1 Intro to FAQ If a common thread binds the tens of thousands of people who, actively or otherwise, participate in the activities of this newsgroup, it is the desire to assuage the unquenched thirst by drinking from the ocean of Indian music. People from all parts of the world come together to share, enhance their knowledge through discussions, quizzes and sometimes flame-wars too. With an understanding that has been rather rarely observed in other groups, people have made reading this newsgroup great pleasure. Many a dull moment in the day of a student has been enlivened by this group, so fondly called "RMIM," just as it has refreshed a working soul sitting on the computer for the whole day. The knowledge is vast but the memory space (both in minds and the computers) is finite. So often do we discuss the matters that give us a feeling of deja vu. New people join in and they are but right in bringing out something that has been discussed by the old nettors not so long ago. Besides, all the articles that are posted on RMIM are archived, which implies same information occupying more memory space than required! We don't want to re-invent the wheel, do we? This FAQ aims exactly at avoiding that. There have been many articles which supply some special information or make interesting reading that have been on RMIM. These should be accessible to the new subscribers too. A few of the old nettors who have seen the proceedings of RMIM for long, have tried to compile some of this information and present it in this FAQ, that could be useful in saving RMIM some common questions, and can avoid banal overdiscussed topics. This FAQ is an effort to channelize all the interesting information that have been collected from the contributions of various posters in this newsgroup. We hope that it will prove useful for the both new and regular subscribers all over the world. It will be posted on the first of every month. The FAQ is an digest-compatible form, and so if you are using rn/trn as your newsreader then you can use "Ctrl-G" to go >from one question to another in this FAQ. All information in RMIM has been contributed with good intentions by the posters, but none of it is guaranteed by the contributors to be accurate. The FAQ and its contents can be distributed freely, provided that that is not done for monetary gains. -Satish and Prince == 0.2 Info about the FAQ Posting day: First of every month. FAQ maintainers: Prince Kohli (pkohli@cc.gatech.edu) Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu) Suggestions/Corrections to: subraman@cs.umn.edu (Satish) The FAQ is posted on RMIM the first of each month. The entire FAQ can be obtained anytime by sending a mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with the subject: rmim faq The recent text version of the FAQ can also be seen at the site: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli/faq.txt The recent HTML version of the FAQ can be seen at: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/faq.html 0.3 CONTRIBUTIONS to the FAQ. INITIAL FAQ: Initial versions of the FAQ were posted by the late Venkatasubramanian K. Gopalakrishnan (KGB), which contained information about the ITRANS and the various ftp sites for song archives. CURRENT FAQ: The current FAQ has answers to various questions that will help a new subscriber to rec.music.indian.misc and was prepared by the team of (in alphabetical order) C.S. Sudarshana Bhat Ashish Bokil Preetham Gopalaswamy Prince Kohli Amin Meghani Samiuddin Mohammed Preeti Ranjan Panda Rajan P. Parrikar Ravi Rai Satish Subramanian (Group Leader). Thanks to Sridhar Venkataraman, Navin Kabra (navin@cs.wisc.edu) and Neeran Karnik (karnik@cs.umn.edu) for providing help and suggestions. 0.4 RELATED Documents: 1. FAQ on the ITRANS Song Book (see question 8) 2. RMIM MiniFAQ (posted every ten days) 3. RMIM AutoMailer - How, What and Why (posted every ten days) ------------------------------ Subject: 1.0 CHARTER of rec.music.indian.misc Newsgroup name: rec.music.indian.misc (unmoderated) Newsgroup line: Discussing Indian music in general. Newsgroups creator: sridhar@asuvax.eas.asu.edu (Sridhar Venkataraman) Date started: Jan 1st, 1992. CHARTER of rec.music.indian.misc (as in CFV). rec.music.indian.misc is an unmoderated group created for the discussion, promotion and exchange of ideas on all aspects of Indian music not related to either classical or film music. It will also accomodate all discussions arising out of a mix of classical and film music. Appropriate topics for rec.music.indian.misc will include: * Any discussions on Folk music, jazz-fusion music etc. * Any other topics related to Indian music not directly related to classical or film music. * To maintain and update a FAQ list pertaining to the newsgroup * "Looking for" and "Test" postings are strictly not allowed. Clarification: Just to clarify the purpose of the misc group, it was formed to discuss indian music not related to classical and film music. But as the proposal for the film newsgroup was rejected, it is entirely the discretion of the readers to decide about the film articles appearing on rec.music.indian.misc. (See addendum below.) Addendum to Clarification (Oct. 2, 1995): As a new newsgroup has been formed especially to discuss Indian movies (rec.arts.movies.local.indian), discussions about films should no longer be held at RMIM. All articles pertaining solely to movies should be posted to the approprite newsgroup(s). 1.1 I want to post something on the newsgroup, what should I do? This is an unmoderated newsgroup, anyone can post anything as long the article posted is relevant to the newsgroup and complies with its original charter. Use your favourite newsreader software to post on the net. 1.2 I don't have posting privileges if I use my newsreader. How do I post? If your newsreader does not allow you to post articles to newsgroups like rec.music.indian.misc then you can use the normal emailing facility to post. Postings can be made by sending mail to one of the following mail-to-usenet gateways:- rec.music.indian.misc@news.news.demon.net (most common one) rec.music.indian.misc@news.demon.co.uk (delay ~3 days?) rec.music.indian.misc@dispatch.demon.co.uk Not all gateways support all newsgroups. You may have to try several to find one that helps you post to rec.music.indian.misc. (Please let us know which ones worked and which did not.) In addition, you can cross-post to several newsgroups by adding the header Newsgroups: with the names of the groups you want to post to and sending it to mail2news@c2.org, or mail2news@utopia.hacktic.nl. Most of the information on these gateways come from two sources: a) "Accessing The Internet By E-Mail," which is Doctor Bob Rankin's Guide to Offline Internet Access and is posted regularly on the news.answers group, and b) Remailer info provided by Matthew Ghio at the address mg5n+remailers@andrew.cmu.edu. 1.3 How can I read rec.music.indian.misc using just email? There are many ways to access the newsgroup using email facility alone. Internet Thru EMail (ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email) The best place to look for the answer to this question is to read the "Accessing The Internet By E-Mail, which is Doctor Bob Rankin's Guide to Offline Internet Access. RMIM Thru Mail (RTM) This facility is designed specially for people who want to receive the RMIM articles through email. All you have to do is send a request to Prince Kohli at pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with Subject: RTM. You will soon start receiving the articles posted on rec.music.indian.misc as and when they appear on the newsgroup. Request for old articles are NOT entertained. This facility comes to you as part of RMIM Automailer by Prince and Satish. To get off the list send a mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with Subject: RTM REMOVE. 1.4 How can I read rec.music.indian.misc using WWW? Yes. There are a few servers that provide access to RMIM articles. You can read RMIM through Zippo.com, at the site: http://drn.zippo.com/news-bin/wwwnews?rec.music.indian.misc You can also read RMIM using the DejaNews site. (This site also allows searching for old articles). http://www.dejanews.com/ Reference.COM is another site where one can read RMIM. It also has sophisticated searching mechanism which can return you articles by mail at the same site. http://www.reference.com/ If you know of any other site that allows you to read articles on RMIM let us know about it. (Thanks to all the RMIMers who have been providing info about various sites they use to read RMIM). ------------------------------ Subject: 2.0 Are the RMIM articles archived? Yes, ALL articles posted in RMIM (with distribution "world") are archived, so please give it a second thought before posting anything on the net. 2.1 Where are the articles archived? Articles are archived in the site: ftp.funet.fi Directory: /pub/culture/music/indian/rec.music.indian.misc Files: The files are named after the date of the first article in them. Maintainer: Juhana Kouhia (jk87377@cs.tut.fi) or (kouhia@nic.funet.fi) Another place of archive is: www.dejanews.com Articles from 1995 have also been archived in the Deja News site. This is a commercial site, that archives articles posted on certain newsgroup. The articles can be searched based on keywords or author names. Try the URL: http://www.dejanews.com for more details on the search. ------------------------------ Subject: 3. Are the Songs/Lyrics posted in RMIM Archived? Yes, the lyrics posted on RMIM are collected and archived. They are available in different forms. The most popular format in the ITRANS format (see 7.0). Postscript printer-ready versions of these lyrics are available too. 3.1. Where are these lyrics archived? - See 8.0 3.2. I need the lyrics of a song; should I directly post on the net? There have been a lot of posting of lyrics on RMIM and they have been collected and stored. It is better to check with the existing archives before posting on the net. See 8.0 on where and how to access these existing information. If the songs are not available there, then go ahead and post your request, some kind and knowledgeable soul will help you. ------------------------------ Subject: 4. What are P-stats? P-stats is the name given to the details of the songs on RMIM, details such as Movie, Singers, Music Directors, and Lyricist. 4.1 I need details of a song, but I am not sure if it has been asked before on RMIM? There is a big collection of such P-stats that has been created by the contribution of various RMIM-ers. Check with this database before posting on RMIM. 4.2 Why are they called P-stats? The original P-stats file was re-compiled and posted on RMIM by Preetham Gopalaswamy, hence the name. Here is an excerpt from the original posting by Preetham (preetham@src.umd.edu) on the P-stats database. \quote{ Here is the list of songs that were originally posted by Mangesh Jain completed as far as I could with help from other netters some of whom are named below. Most of the information comes from the Encyclopaedia of Hindi Music compiled by Harminder Singh and the later volume by a guy whose name eludes me now. Since there was no alphabetical listing of songs for the 50s, I had to rely upon help from other nettors who were able to give me a prod in the right direction with the name of the film. Where the name of the film was unknown for songs from the 50s, I was unable to get the information. I did not have the volume for the 40s and songs in that decade have been unconfirmed. The same was true for songs in the 80s (1979 being the last year in the encyclopaedia). }\unquote 4.3 What is the P-stats database? This is the list of songs with their details, which is stored in the following format: Song: Movie:- *ing:- Singer:- MD:- Lyrics:- 4.4 Where is the P-stats database? P-stats database in not archived anywhere. People have different copies of it. Currently Prince (pkohli@cc.gatech.edu) and Satish (subraman@cs.umn.edu) are correcting and updating this database. It is not available through FTP or any other means. Also this database is too huge to be posted every now and then on RMIM. Original contributors towards the creation of the P-stats database were Sunil Banwari, Dr. Umesh Garg, Preetham Gopalaswamy (compiled modified list), Mangesh Jain (posted the original list), Dharmendra Khanolkar, Prince Kohli, Deviprasad Malladi, Dr. Rajan Parrikar and Suresh Subramanian. 4.5 How can I access the P-stats info database? A simple mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with an appropriate subject will allow you to extract information from the P-stats database. This access to the P-stats database is made available through the RMIM AutoMailer (see 16.4 for further details on the RMIM AutoMailer). You can send mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu requesting for information on a particular song. If the song that you requested is there in the P-stats database, then you will get the reply with the available information about the song. Send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with Subject: song:: Use three or less starting words of the songs. For example if you want a song that goes "yaa dil ki suno", then send a mail with the subject "song:: yaa dil ki" or "song:: yaa dil". The database might have different spellings than the one that you use, so please try different combinations. For example, if the song that you want starts with "ankhon", then try "song:: aankhon" or "song:: aankon" etc to get the correct answer. Moreover, if this song is present in the ITRANS Song Book (ISB), then the ISB song number will be also be displayed. To obtain a list of songs for which the P-stats are available, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: index:: where the ) can be any character(s) from the English alphabet. For example, if the subject of the mail is "index:: ab", the reply will list songs like "ab chaahe ma roothe ya baaba, ab kya misaal dun, ABC ABC," etc. Leaving out the character will send out the entire list; please do not do this too often as it puts a lot of load on the mailer. 4.6 I have some song information with me and I want to add to them to the P-stats database. What do I do? Send them in the following format to Prince (pkohli@cc.gatech.edu) or Satish (subraman@cs.umn.edu). Song: Movie:- *ing:- Singer:- MD:- Lyrics:- ------------------------------ Subject: 5.0 What are Ghazals? Can one discuss them on RMIM? There are some Urdu newsgroups, like alt.language.urdu.poetry, in which one can disuss Ghazals, but since they do not have as wide a reach as RMIM, one can discuss Ghazals on RMIM. Ghalib ghazals and ghazals by Jagjit Singh have been discussed on RMIM before (See 5.1 and 11.0). 5.1 What are Ghazals? [This is a summarised version of an article posted by Abhay Avachat] [see 14.2 for further details about this article] Classical Definition of Ghazal: Ghazal in short, is a collection of Sher's which follow the rules of 'Matla', 'Maqta', 'Beher', 'Kaafiyaa' and 'Radif'. So to know what Ghazal is, it's necessary to know what these terms mean. Ghazal is necessarily a collection of two-line-poems called Sher. What is a Sher ? It's a poem of two lines. This definition is deceptively simple. Please note that, every Sher is a poem in itself ! A Sher does not need, anything around it, to convey the message. All the 4 stanzas in our example are independent poems, Sher's. What is 'Beher' ? 'Beher' is the 'meter' of the Sher's. It can be considered as the length of the Sher. Both the lines in the Sher *MUST* be of same 'Beher'. And all the Sher's in one Ghazal *MUST* be of the same 'Beher'. There are 19 (!!) kinds of 'Beher'. But in simple terms, 'Beher' is categorized in 3 classes. Short, medium, long. What is 'Radif' ? In a Ghazal, second line of all the Sher's *MUST* end with the *SAME* word/s. This repeating common words is the 'Radif' of the Ghazal. What is 'Kaafiyaa' ? 'Kaafiyaa' is the rhyming pattern which all the words before 'Radif' *MUST* have. What is 'Matla' ? The first Sher in the Ghazal *MUST* have 'Radif' in its both lines. This Sher is called 'Matla' of the Ghazal and the Ghazal is usually known after its 'Matla'. There can be more than one 'Matla' in a Ghazal. In such a case the second one is called 'Matla-e-saani' or 'Husn-e-matla'. What is 'Maqta' ? A Shayar usually has an alias i.e. 'takhallus' e.g. Mirza Asadullakhan used 'Ghalib' as his 'takhallus' and is known by that. Other examples are 'Daag' Dehlvi, 'Mir' Taqi Mir, Said 'Rahi', Ahmed 'Faraz' etc. There is a Sher in a Ghazal, the last one, which has the Shayar's 'takhallus' in it. To summarize, Ghazal is a collection of Sher's (independent two-line poems), in which there is atleast one 'Matla', one 'Maqta' and all the Sher's are of same 'Beher' and have the same 'Kaafiyaa' and 'Radif'. 5.2 Were Ghalib's ghazals ever discussed on RMIM? Yes, a set of ghazals of Ghalib was compiled by Mr. P.N.Prakash. These were posted on RMIM by Waheed (hwhfac@umiami.ir.miami.edu). Here is an excerpt (from the original posting by Waheed) written by P.N.Prakash. \quote{ Dear Friends, Here is a compilation of about 35 famous ghazals of Ghalib, along with the meanings of difficult urdu words. I have also included a short version of Ghalib's life story, provided to me by Rajiv Chakravarti of University of Texas. I would like to thank Rajiv for his suggestions and comments during the transliteration of the ghazals. -Prakash P.N.Prakash [old] e-mail : Prakash@anlphy.phy.anl.gov }\unquote 5.3 Where can I get Ghalib ghazals? These are currently available through WWW (see 16.3). URL address is: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html Maintainer: Navin (navin@cs.wisc.edu) ------------------------------ Subject: 6.0 Is there an Urdu-English dictionary to find meaning of Urdu words? Yes there is an Urdu to English compiled by Dr. Dinesh Prabhu (prabhu@amelia.nas.nasa.gov) that is available on-line. 6.1 How can I access this Urdu dictionary? There are two ways in which you can get the Urdu dictionary. a. Through FTP. - to copy the whole urdu dictionary. Articles are archived in the site: ftp.funet.fi Directory: /pub/culture/indian/text/ Files: urdu-dictionary.gz Maintainer: Juhana Kouhia (jk87377@cs.tut.fi) or (kouhia@nic.funet.fi) b. Through WWW - to have a look at the dictionary. This Urdu dictionary can be accessed through WWW. (See 16.3) URL address is: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html Maintainer: Navin (navin@cs.wisc.edu) ------------------------------ Subject: 7.0 Can I print song lyrics in any Indian fonts/scripts? Yes, this can be done. There are a variety of softwares that are available that one can use. The most popular one on RMIM is the ITRANS package. 7.1 What is ITRANS Software? ITRANS is a software package can produce output in various Indian language scripts/fonts. ITRANS is a project that aims to develop a single tool for handling the printing of various Indian language documents, assuming that the input is in some transliterated form. Currently this ITRANS package can generate Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali, or Telugu output from an English transliterated form. The input file is in a transliterated form, each letter in an Indian language is assigned an english equivalent, and the english alphabet is used to construct what will eventually print out in the Indian language script. Software name: ITRANS Creator: avinash@acm.org (Avinash Chopde) Maintainer: Avinash Chopde Price: $0 ITRANS is available from: oak.oakland.edu pub/msdos/tex/itrans32.zip and itransps.zip (for DOS) cs.duke.edu dist/sources/itrans32.tar.gz (for UNIX) chandra.astro.indiana.edu /pub/itrans-4.0 and other FTP locations. 7.2 How do I install the ITRANS software? First you need to get all the related files from the FTP site and then follow the basic instructions that are given in the installation guide for ITRANS. The installation guide is maintained by Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu) and can be got from his WWW site. The URL address for this document is: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs/docs/install.unix ------------------------------ Subject: 8.0 What is the ITRANS Song Book? This is a package that contains Hindi (can also contain Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, or Telugu songs) songs in ITRANS transliterated form, which allows the songs to be printed out in Devanagari script. ITRANS Song Book is a big collection of film songs and other documents. Currently it has Tagore's Gitanjali, Ghalib Ghazals, and around 1300 Hindi film songs and ghazals. It has mostly Indian film songs that have been written in the ITRANS format, so that they can be converted to Indian fonts using the ITRANS software. Postscript versions of the book are also available. Each song is kept in a .s file. The name of each file is .s. Each .s file contains just the song, and some info regarding the song. To print out the song you have to first append a header file to the .s file, and the convert the file using a series of steps to get a printout. ITRANS Song Book is updated approx. once a year. Each release has around 100 to 200 new songs added to the earlier release. Contributors towards the creation of original ITRANS Song Book were, avinash@acm.org (Avinash Chopde) ceindian@utacnvx.uta.edu (C.S.Sudarshana Bhat (Porky)) & late Venkatasubramanian K. Gopalakrishnan (KGB). For more details about this, check out the Mini-FAQ for the ITRANS Song Book in the WWW site maintained by Anurag Shankar. The URL address for this document is: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs/docs/isb.FAQ You can also send mail to Anurag at anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu. 8.1 How do I add songs to the ITRANS Song Book? Most of the lyrics posted on RMIM are collected and transliterated using the ITRANS transliteration scheme. However, if you want to make sure that some song does get added to the ITRANS Song Book, you should email the song to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with "itrans song" as the subject. There are other ways of making submissions, for more details, please check the Mini-FAQ for the ITRANS Song Book in the WWW site maintained by Anurag Shankar. The URL address for this document is: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs/docs/isb.FAQ However, any work you submit must be free of all licenses or restrictions - even GNU license is not good enough - there must be absolutely no restrictions on anyone regarding use of your submissions. 8.2 Where can I get the ITRANS Song Book (ISB)? This ITRANS Song Book can be accessed in three ways, through FTP, WWW and email. a) The whole ITRANS Song Book is available through FTP (See 16.1) at: Anonymous FTP site (USA): chandra.astro.indiana.edu Directory: /pub/isongs/ Anonymous FTP site (FINLAND): ftp.funet.fi Directory: /pub/culture/music/indian/isongs Files: isongs.tar.gz: Archive contains ITRANS Song Book Sources. (0.4 MBytes) isongsdv.tar.gz: TeX .dvi files of all the documents. (0.8 MBytes) isongsps.tar.gz: PostScript files of a few songs. (1.1 MBytes) (Archive is in UNIX tar format, compressed using GNU Zip.) b) If you do not want the whole list of songs and want to look at the lyrics of some particular song then you need to use WWW (see 16.3). This gives the complete index of the songs in the ITRANS Song Book (ISB) and one can choose a particular song, and view it, by clicking on the required song from the list. (See 16.3). You can also copy the song using interactive WWW browsing software. 1. Navin's site. URL address is: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html Maintainer: Navin (navin@cs.wisc.edu) This site gives the complete index of the songs in the ITRANS Song Book (ISB) and one can choose a particular song, and view it, by clicking on the required song from the list. The songs can be displayed in English or Hindi as desired. 2. Anurag Shankar's. [ASCII and Hindi (postscript versions)] This is the home of the ISB. URL address: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs Maintainer: Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu) This site gives you the option of choosing a song from the complete index, plus it lets you do all kinds of searches now. You can search the hindi song archive by songtitle, film, actor, singer, music director, or lyricist. The results of the search produce a song index and you can click on hindi or on ascii to see your favorite songs in Hindi or English. 3. The third site is a mirror of the 2nd site and is provided courtsey of Sridhar Natarajan (sridhar@roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu). URL: http://roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu/isongs 4. Rajiv Shridhar's (rajiv@meceng.coe.neu.edu) mirror of ISB. URL: http://brahma.cdsp.neu.edu/isongs/ 5. Sandeep Sibal's (sibal@att.com) mirror of ISB using JTrans URL: http://bach.ecse.rpi.edu/~sibal/jtrans/isb.html c) Lyrics to particular songs in the ISB are also available via email. If you know how the song you are interested in begins, then send an email To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with Subject: lyrics:: first few words of the song (the "mukhDaa," i.e.) You will receive the song lyrics in ITRANSed format from the automailer via return mail. This service is provided as part of the RMIM Auto-Mailer, with Rajiv Shridhar's (rajiv@splinter.coe.neu.edu) help. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.0 Are lyrics for songs from various Indian languages available? Yes, songs from other languages are also available. Marathi lyrics were collected and archived from postings on RMIM. There are lyrics to Malayalam songs also available. 9.1 Info about Marathi lyrics. 9.1.1 I want some Marathi lyrics. Are they archived? Yes Marathi lyrics have been archived. The initiators of this effort were Mandar Pendse (shirish@wordperfect.com) and Neeran Karnik (karnik@cs.umn.edu). The main contributors to this collection were Niranjan R Pedanekar (pedaneka@ecn.purdue.edu), Kedar Naphade (ksn2@lehigh.edu), Mandar Pendse (shirish@wordperfect.com). 9.1.2 Where do I get these Marathi lyrics? This is available through anonymous FTP (see 16.1). The songs are sorted according to various topics/subjects in this FTP site. Ftp site: ftp.cs.umn.edu Directory: /users/karnik/Marathi. Maintainer: karnik@cs.umn.edu 9.1.3 I want to contribute to these Marathi lyrics. What do I do? If you have the lyrics for any Marathi songs, please mail them to Neeran (or post them on r.m.i.m.), who will put them up for anonymous ftp in the site. Mailing address of Neeran: karnik@cs.umn.edu. 9.2 Info about Malayalam lyrics 9.2.1 Are Malayalam song lyrics archived? Yes! There exists a Malayalam song collection, but these were the efforts of the readers of the newsgroup alt.culture.kerala (ACK) and not from RMIM. Check with the weekly FAQ of ACK for further details about the Malayalam song collection. 9.2.2 How to access these Malayalam Songs? This is how one can obtain these Malayalam film songs. --The Malayalam Song WWW page The other way to look at these songs is using some WWW browser (see 16.0). URL address: http://www.cs.uidaho.edu/~munna/ms.html Maintainer: Adithy [munna@cs.uidaho.edu] 9.3 Info about Assamiya lyrics 9.3.1 Are Assamiya song lyrics archived? The ftp site remains the same, but the directory has changed FTP site: ftp.cstp.umkc.edu Directory: luit/songs Maintainer: Deepankar (dmedhi@aazoli.cstp.umkc.edu) This directory now has songs samples that one can listen to on workstations. Previously there just used to typewritten lyrics in that directory. NOTE: Providing audio files might be a violation of copyright! Here is the readme file from the FTP site: === Start readme == Updated Oct 19, 1994 This directory plans to contain Assamiya songs recorded on workstations under various sound formats. Presently, the following songs are available: Song title BY filename bytes Bistirna Paarore (S1) bistirna 1428526 (P1) Koto Jowaanor Mrityu Hol (S1) koto_jowaanor 1505008 (P1) Mohaa Baahu Brahmaputra (S1) mohaa_baahu 2168218 (P1) Moy Ek Jaajaabor (S1) jaajaabor 1581532 (P1) Xomoyor Ogrogoti (S1) xomoyor_ogrogoti 1938646 (P1) a surprise !! (S1) surprise 670155 (P1) Bihu song - 1 (S2) bihusong1 2228246 (P2) Bihu song - 2 (S2) bihusong2 757036 (P2) Bihu song - 3 (S2) bihusong3 899552 (P2) Notes: (S1) by Bhupen Hazarika (S2) from the cassette titled ' Powalmani bihugeet'. The singers are Khagen Mahanta, Archana Mahanta, Nipul Dutta Kalita, Manajyotsna Mahanta and Anjali Rai Choudhury. Accompanied by Prasen Bora and Bipu Bora in 'Dhol', Parameswar Basumatary in 'pepa', Padma Barua in 'gagana' and Nayan Barua in 'Taal'. (P1) provided by Satyajit Nath, jit@eng.sun.com (P2) provided by Dipankar Talukdar, talukdar@cedar.buffalo.edu The files store audio data in 8-bit mu-law, mono, 8000 Hz format. This format can be played by audiotool in Sun OpenWindows and SoundPlayer on NeXT machines. On a sparcstatin, rename file with a .au extension (e.g. jaajaabor as jaajaabor.au ) i and then use audiotool; on a NeXT machine, rename the file with a .snd extension (e.g. bistirna as bistirna.snd) and then select and double click. There may be other platforms that can play this format. Thanks to Satyajit Nath of SunSoft, CA and Dipankar Talukdar of SUNY-Buffalo for providing the above songs for rest of us to enjoy them. I am providing this anonymous ftp facility for anyone to ftp the files. Note that the sound files should be ftp'ed in binary mode only. Since the files are big, please do ftp preferably during evening or weekend. For any question about running on Sun, please contact Satyajit Nath or Dipankar Talukdar and for running on NeXT, please contact me. Enjoy! Deepankar dmedhi@aazoli.cstp.umkc.edu == end readme == ------------------------------ Subject: 10.0 Are there any general Quizzes on RMIM? Yes there are two quizzes on RMIM, one called RJGK and another Interactive on IRC, called Flo-Jo quiz. 10.1 What is the RJGK quiz? RJGK stands for "Rmim"-Jhim Geeton Ki. RJGK is a quiz in which the clues are lines, both complete and incomplete, from some part of the song, and all you have to do is guess the song. E.g. For the clue "Duniya ne hum ko diya kya, duniya ne humse liye kya" the correct answer would be the song "Dum maro dum, mit jaye gham..." (Hare Rama Hare Krishna). The general format of the quiz has been - 30 clues with the last two questions being the tie-breakers, but quiz masters have changed that at their discretion. The originator of the idea of such a quiz on the net was Samiuddin Mohammed. Anyone can participate in the quiz by sending in the answers to the person who posts the quiz. But remember - never post the answers on the net!! 10.1.1 Who conducts the RJGK quiz? Anyone can compile a set of clues from songs (usually on a particular topic) and post it on the net. It is better to make an annoucement in RMIM that one is compiling such a quiz so as to avoid any sort of conflict later on. Usually the quiz has 25-30 clues that have to be attempted. The last two questions are tie-breakers. The person conducting the quiz usually gives about a 3 to 4 weeks for sending in the answers and after a week or so he/she posts the answers and the names of the winners on the net. 10.1.2 What were the topics of some of the earlier RJGKs? RJGK has become a regular feature on RMIM. After Sami posted the first, Angela Singh conducted the next one. Abhay Avachat, who compiled RJGK-3, had the great idea that each RJGK be set to a certain theme. Hence, RJGK-3 was a Mohammed Rafi special. Here is the list of RJGKs so far and also the ones to hit RMIM soon.. ----------------------------------------------------------------- No | Topic/Special | Conducted by | ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | General | Samiuddin Mohammed | 2 | General | Angela Singh | 3 | Rafi Special | Abhay Avachat | 4 | Kishore Kumar | Vivek Vohra | 5 | Duets | Samiuddin Mohammed | 6 | Lata special | JG | 7 | Mukesh special | Preetham and Rajan Parrikar | 8 | R.D.Burman special | Samiuddin Mohammed | 9 | Gulzar special | Ashish Bokil and Sandeep Joshi| 10 | Asha special | Renu Thamma | 11 | S.D.Burman | Ketan Dholakia | 12 | Yesudas | Anand Natarajan (Nuts). | 13 | Bhoole Bisre Geet | Srinath Ekkad | 14 | Naushad special | Ajay Nerurkar | 15 | Laxmikant-Pyarelal. | Sandeep Joshi and Renu Thamma | 16 | Manna Dey | Ramesh Hariharan. | 17 | Hemant Kumar | Ambrish Sundaram | 18 | Amitabh special | Ajay Divekar, Rahul Herwadkar | 19 | Songs and Raga | Kedar Naphade | 20 | Shankar-Jaikisan | Nitin Joshi | 21 | Non-Mangeshkars (Guldasta) | Neeraj Malhotra | 22 | Sahir Ludhianvi | Guri | 23 | Talat Mahmood | Samiuddin Mohammed | 24 | Lata special | Mahesh Chaubal | 25 | The previous 24 | Renu Thamma | 26 | Bharat Bhraman | Mohan Rathore | 27 | Vividh Bharati Tribute | Shashikant Joshi | 28 | Popular songs Unknown MDs | Ashok Dhareshwar | 29 | Majrooh Sultanpuri | Satish Subramanian | 30 | Tandem Songs | Balaji and Malini | 31 | Khaiyyam | Tanvi Chawla | 32 | Obscure MDs | Kalyan Kolachala | 33 | Title Songs | Shardha and Ambrish Sundaram | 34 | Salil Chowdhury | Pradeep Dubey & Vish Krishnan | 35 | Rajinder Krishan | Neha Desai, Chetan Vinchhi | 36 | Filmi Ghazals | Abhay Avachat | 37 | Memorable Male Solos | Nuts | 38 | Rafi Duets | Pavan Desikan & U.V.Ravindra | ................................................................| 39 | Geeta Dutt | Neeraj Malhotra | 40 | Songs of `life' | Neeraj Deshmukh&Swapna Gokhale| 41 | Theme unknown | Pintu Diwana | 42 | Top Ten songs | Akif Sultan | 43 | Theme unknown | Anil Hingorani | 44 | Madan Mohan | Chetan Vinchhi, Ajay Divekar | 45 | O P Nayyar | Sami Mohammed | 46 | Lovely couplets | Himanshu Gupta | 47 | Roshan | Harish Suvarna | 48 | C Ramchandra | Kalyan Kolachala | 49 | Theme unknown | Balaji & Malini | 50 | Golden jubilee special | Renu Thamma & Neeraj Deshmukh | 51 | Lyricist Shailendra | Satish Subramanian | 52 | Hasya ras ki Puhaar | Chetan and Ashok | 53 | Dev Anand | Anand Tiwari | 54 | Qawwali | Anup Pandey | 55 | Anil Biswas | Snehal Oza | 56 | Theme unknown | Hema | 57 | Virah | Suneeta and Ketan | 58 | Hemant Kumar as MD | Kalyan | ................................................................| The order of the upcoming quizzes could be wrong, or might change in the future. Ikram Ahmed Khan (iakhan@raleigh.ibm.com) would be the person to contact for the exact details. --- RJGK Milestones: 1. Beginning: The series was started as an experimental quiz by Sami and thus started the RJGK. The quiz was held as a friendly competition with scores given for individuals turning in the answers. 2. Specials: The idea of dedicating each RJGK to a person or a theme was suggested by Abhay Avachat and he conducted the third in the series dedicated to Rafi. 3. Two tier and clues: The series went on in the normal format, until the twelfth RJGK, when Anand (Nuts) started the two tier format, which allowed RMIMers to attempt the quiz twice but with a weighted scheme for scores in the second round. This was RJGK 12 on Yesudas. This also had for the first time additional clues to help people get at the correct song. The two tier scheme was never followed in the subsequent RJGKs but the idea of giving additional clues have stuck. 4. Raga clues: Another novel variation of the clue scheme was successfully attempted by Kedar Naphade in RJGK 19, in which he gave the ragas on which the songs were based on. Also this quiz was the second one that was not dedicated to any particular individual but to a certain theme (RJGK-5 one was on duets). All the earlier RJGK's can be found at Sami's home page at url http://www.lehigh.edu/~sm0e/rjgk.html. Or you can contact Sami at sm0e@lehigh.edu directly. 10.2 What is a Flo-Jo quiz? Flo-Jo quiz is a film and music trivia interactive quiz that is conducted on IRC. People log into IRC at the same time and participate (audience included) and conduct the quiz. The quiz master types the question on the channel on IRC and the teams can answer the question in turn. (The scoring pattern and the structure of the quiz changes depending on who is conducting the quiz.) The winner of one quiz conducts the next one in line. There are 2 members in each team. The first interactive quiz was conducted by Nitin Joshi and Mahesh Chaubal, and the second one was done by Sandeep and Ashish. The third was conducted by T. Srinivasaraghavan. 10.2.1 What is the (rough) structure of the quiz? There are normally about 4 rounds in this quiz. But both, the number of rounds and the theme of the round is upto the quiz master. For the 1st FloJo, following were the rounds: 1. Identify movie from graphic description of a famous sequence. 2. Identify song from graphic description of the picturization. 3. Identify song from the given lines (like rjgk, but simpler) 4. Some film trivia. 10.2.2 How to participate? The person(s) conducting the quiz decides the date and time for the quiz, and annouces it well in advance (2 weeks) on RMIM. Interested people can send their team (and member) name to the quiz master. The quiz requires atleast 2 people for conducting and keeping scores. So if you would like to help and have some experience using IRC, then express your willingless to the quiz master before the quiz (or on the channel during the quiz). Help can vary from a) being the Scorer. b) Help with IRC commands and controlling channel. c) Moderating channel and giving voices to teams. Note: Helping does not mean that you can't participate in the quiz. You can do both when you are on IRC. 10.2.3 What is IRC? IRC stands for Internet-Relay-Chat, in which one can 'talk' and 'chat' with other people who are logged in at the same time into IRC. More details are given in the question 16 of the FAQ. 10.2.4 Where can I get the sample recordings of the earlier quizzes? Sample recordings of the first two quizzes are available with Satish (subraman@cs.umn.edu), while the third quiz can be got from Srinivas (srinivas@cco.caltech.edu). o Quiz 1 recording: (nitin) OKAY WE WILL NOW GO ONW TO TEAM 4: SANDEEP...U READY DOOD? (Amit) I am ready! (VandanaM) 20 points for nitin and mahesh :) (sandeep) ok (nitin) THE CLUE IS : (Amit) shoot (nitin) Jidhar nazar mudi udhar suroor hi suroor hai (nitin) YOUR TIME STARTS NOW (Mahesh) Your time starts Now !! (Amit) aap ke haseen rukh pe aaj naya noor haien (nitin) YUP....THATS THE CORRECT ANSWER!!! (Amit) got that, judges? (Mahesh) *CLAP* *CLAP !!!! FIRST ROUND COMES TO AN END.. VANS SCORES PLz..:) (VandanaM) wooo (VandanaM) after round 1 (VandanaM) Team 1 - 0 points (VandanaM) Team 2 - 30 points (VandanaM) Team 3- 0 points (VandanaM) Team 4 20 points (VandanaM) Team 5- 20 points (VandanaM) Team 6-0 points (VandanaM) Team 7 - 15 points ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.3 What is the Chitrahaar Quiz? This is a quiz that was started by Abhay Avachat. In this quiz, the participants are supposed to guess the song given a description of the song's picturization in the movie. This aim (that is given a clue one has to guess the song) and structure (set of 20-30 clues) of Chitrahaar is same as the RJGK quiz (see 10.1). But the clue are different in Chitrahaar. Here is an excerpt from the first Chitrahaar posted by Abhay. Instead of some lines from the lyrics, other aspects of the song are given. You can say that RJGK pertains to the lyrics, while this quiz, Chitrahar as I would like to call, pertains to the Pstats. Or in other words, if RJGK pertains to the audio part of a film song then Chitrahar pertains to the video aspects of it. Mostly the song situation as it occurs in the movie, would be given. Some cryptic and hopefully funny description can also be given. Here is an example. This "friendly" song is from a Mega-Mega-Hit multistarrer movie. Amitabh and Dharmendra are going on a mobike, which has a funny and detachable sidecar. Of course, the famous 'coin' also plays a small and humorous role here. If this is the clue, then it is clear that the song is from Sholay, "ye dosti, hum nahiN chhodenge". There have been 10 Chitrahaars till now. First two were conducted by Abhay (General and a Rafi special), the third one was jointly conducted by Kalyan K and Atul Gupta (on Raj Kapoor songs). The fourth one had each song picturized on a different actress (all Lata songs) and was conducted by Pavan Kumar Desikan and UVR. The fifth one, conducted jointly by Neeraj Deshmukh and Swapna Gokhale, dwells on the songs and music from the 1980s and the 1990s (Naye Zamane Ke Geet) . The sixth on in the series was titled "Badalte Saathi" (the clues formed a logical chain, with the links being an actor or an actress) and was conducted by Prince Kohli and Neeraj Malhotra. The topic of the next one was "Songs from the Golden Era" was conducted by Kalyan. The following one conducted by Surjit Singh was on Dev Anand. The Chitrahaar 9 was on Kishore Kumar conducted by Balaji and Malini. "Ek Aur Anek" (Sadhana) is the title of Chitrahaar 10 hosted by Ikram and Ashok. The 11th Chitrahaar was a tribute to Mukesh and was conducted by Neha Desai. "Background Songs" was the 12th Chitrahaar conducted by U.V.Ravindra and Pavan Kumar Desikan. The 13th Chitrahaar was on the theme of Courtesans (and mujras) by Suneet Donepudi and Indira K. The 14th quiz in the series was on the topic of "Roothna Manana" conducted by Vandana Venkatesan. The currently concluded quiz was on the topic of Waterbodies (Paani Paani Re..) was conducted by Renu Thamma and Neha Desai. All the previous chitrahaar's posted on the rmim can now be accessed at the following URL: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~pkd/chaar/chitrahaar.html The answers to the chitrahaar can be accessed at http://www.cs.duke.edu/~pkd/chaar/chitraans.html Both of which are maintained by Pavan Kumar Desikan (pkd@cs.duke.edu). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.4 What is the Tasvir Aur Tassavur quiz? Tasvir and Tasavvur is an event in which you'll have to let your imagination (tasavvur) run wild and come up with lines from film songs to match the given picture (tasvir). The picture is posted by the host in a web site for the participants. The first one in the series was conducted by Sami Mohammed, Prince Kohli and Preetham Gopalaswamy. For more details see: URL Address: http://www.lehigh.edu/sm0e/public/www-data/raah.html Maintainer: Samiuddin Mohammed (sm0e@lehigh.edu) ------------------------------ Subject: 11.0 Information about various RMIM series 1. "Masters Review" - review of old movies directed by Basu, Gulzar et. al. [Series done by: Amin Meghani (ameghani@bnr.ca)] "Masters Review" was born out of several RMIMers desire to be informed of well-known/well-liked Indian movies, which paradoxically enough, were very hard to find. A list was compiled consisting of (Hindi) movies directed by the venerable trio of popular directors: Hrishi Mukherjee, Basu Chatterji and Gulzar, the so-called `Master' directors of Indian cinema. Most of their movies are not readily available, and to motivate netters to make the extra effort of locating them, the Masters Reviews posts were started by Amin Meghani. These consist of brief reviews of movies taken from the Masters List. No real spoilers are included, just enough info to generate interest in watching the movie. The current list of `Master' director includes, Basu Chatterji, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Yash Chopra, Gulzar and Bapu. Masters Reviews are done only sporadically, depending on the availability of time, and a movie! So far, only Amin Meghani (ameghani@bnr.ca) has posted Masters Reviews. But he invites all interested readers to contribute reviews of their favorite movies, and add to the Masters List or Masters Reviews at any time. 2. "EYE ON BOLLYWOOD" - review of recent movies and listing of forthcoming attractions. [Series done by: Amin Meghani (ameghani@bnr.ca)] (Now this series is revived in the newsgroup rec.arts.movies.local.indian.) "EYE ON BOLLYWOOD" (EOB) traces its origins to the summer of 1992, when the first article was posted. The originator of this series, Amin Meghani, discovered that RMIM did not carry enough discussion of new movies available at video stores, and thought there was sufficient interest to start such a series. EOB is a fairly regular series: a new article is posted about once a week (depending on the frequency of new releases). The post contains a listing of the most recent (Hindi) releases in video stores. In EOB, each movie is listed along with its star cast, director, and MD, and is star-rated (*, **, ***, ****, 0) to help the reader make an informed decision [* Poor; ** Fair/Average; *** Good; **** Excellent; 0 worthless!]. A recent enhancement of EOB includes the addition of a "New Audio Releases" section. "EYE ON BOLLYWOOD" in RMIM has become a regular feature and many readers have become familiar with Amin's criteria for EOB, and expect a certain consistency and standard when referring to it. But if one is interested in contributing and reviewing new movies they may start a new column on RMIM with a different name. Amin Meghani maintains the Masters Reviews, as well as the current (latest) post of EOB, and will email these on request. 3. Collection of Songs from various Lyricists like Gulzar, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir, Shakeel, Majrooh. [Series done by: Dr. Dinesh Prabhu. Contact: Rajan (parrikar@spot.colorado.edu)] This was a series on the lyrics from Hindi films from the master pens of Gulzar, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir, Shakeel, and Majrooh. This was done by Dinesh Prabhu (IISc, Bangalore). [Note: All these songs have found their way into the ITRANS Song Book]. 4. From the Porky Files 5. RMIM welcomes Jagjit and Chitra Singh 6. CountDown to August 15th - Patriotic songs [Series 4,5 & 6 done by: Porky (C.S.Sudarshana Bhat)] The series "From the Porky Files" has lyrics of old Hindi film songs (this series still continues). "RMIM welcomes Jagjit and Chitra Singh" was a series in which some popular ghazals of Jagjit Singh were posted. The third series was "CountDown to August 15th - Patriotic songs" which as the name suggests was a series on patriotic songs. [note: all these songs have found their way into the ITRANS Song Book (ISB)]. 7. Follow The Star [Series done by: Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu)] This was a series of popular songs from the movies of famous film personalities. The film personalities that were covered were Amitabh, Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor. 8. Magic Moments: RD-Gulzar [Series done by: Ashish Bokil (abokil@hubcap.clemson.edu)] This was a series of songs from films which came from the combination of R.D.Burman and Gulzar. This is an on going series on RMIM. 9. NEW HINDI SOUNDTRACKS [Series done by: Dipen (darbard@vax.sbu.ac.uk)] This is a regular on-going series on RMIM, done by Dipen. The latest releases of Hindi film soundtracks are reviewed and given a rating. Each film is listed with its cast, director, music director, singers and lyricists. The soundtrack is rated using the following convention: * Poor; ** Fair; *** Good; **** Excellent; 10. CHAYAGEET [Series done by: Samiuddin (sm0e@lehigh.edu)] This is series that is based on the Vividh Bharati program of AIR called "CHHAYA GEET." Chhaya Geet was a 30 min program in which songs based on a particular theme used to be played. Each post in this RMIM series has 7 songs based on a particular theme or situation. Series catchline: "For every REAL life situation, there exists atleast one REAL song which can be sung in your IMAGINARY world!" 11. RAAG aur GEET [Done by: ksn2@Lehigh.EDU (KEDAR S NAPHADE)] This is an on-going series. This series is an offshoot of RJGK-19 which was titled "Indian Classical music in Films". It is inspired by a couple of requests to post an explanation of the relationship between the song and raag for classical music, and gives the basic structure of the raag, and provides some notation of the film song to demonstrate the likeness between the raag and the geet. This series can also be accessed at: http://www.lehigh.edu/~ksn2/rg.html 12. Pankha Road se Pintu Diwana [Done by: ShashiKant Joshi alias Pintu Diwana (rava0002@gold.tc.umn.edu)] In this series, ShashiKant posts some golden oldies from his personal collection collected from, and as a tribute to, Vividh Bharati. Pankha Road se Pintu Diwana was a constant "sifarishi" of songs on VB, and this is a kind of tribute to him too. Provides a great nostalgic trip down memory lane. 13. A Sher a Day (ASAD) [Done by: abhay.avachat@blr.sni.de (Abhay Avachat)] As the name of the series says, Abhay posts a sher a day in Urdu in this series and explains it and also adds some trivia about it. The entire series can be found at the following Web page: URL address: http://tata_elxsi.soft.net/~uvr/asadindex.html or http://164.164.10.2/~uvr/asadindex.html Maintainer: U.V.Ravindra (uvr@tata_elxsi.soft.net) Also there exists a mirror site for the ASAD archive at URL address: http://grex.cyberspace.org/~uvr/asadindex.html Maintainer: uvr@vnet.ibm.com (U.V. Ravindra) 14. A Year in Hindi Films [Done by: Surjit Singh] In this series Surjit takes an year (starting from 1931) and analyses the important films and incidents related to Hindi films. The entire series can be found at the following web page: URL Address: http://www.lehigh.edu/~sm0e/year.html Maintainer: Samiuddin Mohammed (sm0e@lehigh.edu) 15. Abhi To Main Jawaan Hoon [Done by: Snehal B. Oza] In this series Snehal posts a song a day (mainly from the 40s-60s) and adds his comments on the music of the film and also related films. The entire series can be accessed at: URL: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/ATMJH/ Maintainer: Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu) ------------------------------------- Subject: 12.0 Information on Encyclopaedias. 12.1 What is the Film Music Encyclopaedia? You might notice a few articles in rmim referring to an "Encyclopaedia Of Hindi Songs." Here are the details of it: Exact title of book: Encyclopaedia of Hindi Film Songs (title in Hindi = "Hindi Film Geet Kosh") Author: Volumes 1-4 (Harminder Singh), i.e., 1931-70. Volume 5 (Bishwa Nath Chatterjee) Details of each volume: (the years that it covers are given in parethesis). Volume 1 (1931-40) Total Pages: 726 Total Films: 931 Total Songs: 9000 (approx.) Volume 2 (1941-50) Total Pages: 786 Total Films: 1236 Total Songs: 11000 (approx.) Volume 3 (1951-60) Total Pages: 660 Total Films: 1163 Total Songs: 9000 (approx.) Volume 4 (1961-70) Total Pages: 660 Total Films: 1007 Total Songs: 7000 (approx.) Volume 5 (1971-80) Total Pages: 832 (approx.) Total Films: 1327 Total Songs: 8000 (approx.) 12.1.2 Where can one get it? How much does it cost? Copies are not available at bookstores, only through direct requests from: Mrs. Satinder Kaur, 'Sachdev Niwas', 13/351, (Above Punjab & Sind Bank), Govind Nagar, Kanpur 208 006 INDIA Ph. (91) (512) 217175 In about $100 you can the whole set of five volumes Cost: Paperback: Rs.400/- Deluxe: Rs.600/- NOTE: The prices might have changed. The prices are for each individual volume. NEW UPDATE (as of Feb. 1997) The current address of Har Mandir is: Har Mandir Singh "Hamaraaz" HIG-545 Ratanlal Nagar KANPUR - 208022 Phone Numbers: (0512) 281211 and 217175 New Update: (as of Mar 31 97) Surjit Singh wrote: -- According to the latest issue (#103) of the Listeners' Bulletin, the much-awaited expanded and revised second edition of Hindi Film Giit Kosh, Volume III (1951-1960) has been published. It will be released in a public ceremony in India. Here are the particulars of the vimochan samaaroh: Where: bi.Dalaa krii.Daa kendra, giragaa.Nv chaupaaTii, Bombay. This auditorium is about a furlong from charnii road. When: April 5, 1997, Saturday, between 3 and 7 p.m. The new edition has 736 pages (the first had about 660), has detailed footnotes about trivia and a song index (missing from the first edition). The latest info from indexed song books in print about Mukesh, Lata and Asha, and others in progress about Talat, Rafi and various music directors has been incorporated. The price varies from Rs. 600 (paperback) to Rs. 900 (leatherbound). The airmail registered postage to US is about Rs. 300. As usual, the giit kosh can be obtained from the publisher: Mrs. Satinder Kaur, DREAMLAND', HIG-545, Ratanlal Nagar, Kanpur 208 022 Phones (512)-281211 and 217175 If you are lucky enough to be in India at that time, you should not miss this momentous event. You can meet Har Mandir Singh Hamraaz' and Bishvanath Chatterji, the two compilers of the giit kosh series. They will be available couple of hours before the vimochan samaaroh outside the auditorium. You can buy autographed copies on the spot. Other celebrities likely to attend are: Asha Bhosle, Prem Dhawan, Gulazar, Ravi, Qamar Jalalabadi, Manna Dey, Khayyam, Jagajit Kaur, Naqsh Layalpuri, Gulshan Bawra, Kalyanji-Anandji, Indivar, Ninu Majumdar, Madhubala Zhaveri, Basant Prakash, Mubarak Begam, Snehal Bhatkar, etc., etc. It may be recalled that Vol. III was the first volume of the giit kosh to be published. It came out on basant panchamii, 1980. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ However, you can obtain these volumes from the following libraries in the US (information courtesy Surjit Singh (dussh@ttacs.ttu.edu). If you do not live in these places, you can get them via Interlibrary loan, from the "suppliers." Univ of Texas at Austin TX Supplier Univ of California, Berkeley CA Supplier Library of Congress DC Non-supplier Univ of Hawaii, Hamilton Libr HI Supplier Univ of Chicago IL Supplier Center for Res Libr IL Supplier Univ of Illinois IL Supplier Univ of Michigan Libr MI Supplier Duke Univ Libr NC Supplier New York Pub Libr Res Libr NY Supplier Syracuse Univ NY Supplier Univ of Pennsylvania PA Supplier Univ of Virginia VA Supplier Univ of Washington WA Supplier Univ of Wisconsin, Madison WI Supplier 12.2 INFORMATION ON BOOK SELLERS 1. Dr. J. K. Prashar Books India 9 Swan Ave Strathfield NSW 2135 Australia who is the representative in Australia for the Hindi Book Centre and Star Publications. You can get through them all of the Diamond Pocket Books collections of filmi songs, ghazal, qawaali, rubaaiya and nazm lyrics; as well as all other Hindi books (and Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi etc). 2. Ram Advani's in Lucknow. Has books in English only - 4/5B Asaf Ali Rd, New Delhi-110 002; ph: 23274874, 3273335, 3268651, 3261696; fax: (011) 3273335. The above information was provided by David Windsor 3. The Sri Ram Centre near Mandi House has a small bookshop, and has a few books on Shayari. Worth visiting. 4. The Triveni auditorium, again near Mandi House has a book shop. One can find a lot of books on Shayari, Hindi Poetry. Must visit. 5. In CP there are a few shops which sell Shayari/Kavita stuff. But you have to hunt and you have to have luck. 6. Urdu Ghar and GHalib Institute near New Delhi Railway Station. These are closed on Saturdays and Sundays. So I have not yet managed to enter inside. The above information was provided by Abhay Avachat 12.3 BOOKS ON GHAZALS 1. Deewan-e-Ghalib There are many many compilations of this. Naturally ! It's perhaps the "best-seller" of Urdu Shayari. All the compilations are based on the original by GHalib himself. There are compilations explaining EACH sher in detail, in the price range of Rs 500/-. There are inexpensive ones too. The one I have is by Ali Sardar Jafferey, and costs only Rs 35/-. It's a paperback version in Hindi, by Raajkamal publications. Priniting is excellent. Meaning for all the dificult words is present. A superb book, except that the introduction to GHalib's Poetry is as complicated as the Poetry itself :-) . Go for it. 2. Deewan-e-Mir I know of just one. Again by Ali Sardar Jafferey, in Hindi paperback version costing Rs 35/- by the same Raajkamal publications. It's based on many sources. He also gives very interesting facts about the real Shers by Mir. There seem to be many Shers which are not by Mir, but are still credited to him. Majrooh Sultanpuri has helped him in compiling this. A very nice introduction has been written. Meaning for all the dificult words is present. In all, again a must. 3. Urdu Ke Lokapriya Shayar This is a series of books by Prakash Pandit. Each book contains representatives of all types of poetry (Nazm, GHazal, Rubaai) by one popular Shayar. Not all the work of the Shayar can be found here, but his choice for selection is fairly good. All the books contain some biographical notes. Printing is OK. While giving the meaning, some words have got omitted. The paperback versions cost Rs. 20/- each and the hardbound versions cost Rs. 35/- each. Some of the prominent Shayars in this series are Sahir Ludhiyanavi, Shakeel Badayuni, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Zauk, Iqbal, Hafeez Jalandhari, Zafar etc. All these are worth buying. It is from such books, you can trace origins of some film songs. eg. Sahir's book will give you the original versions of many songs like "kabhi-kabhi", "taajmehal" etc. 4. TalKHiyaaN This is Sahir's first book and he shot to fame overnight with it ! It's a must buy, but quite difficult to obtain. I yet to have a copy for myself. There have been 11 editions of this, and it has been translated into 14 different languages, including some European languages too !! You can find a lot of his film songs in this book. 5. Other books There are a lot of compilations by Prakash Pandit, like Shers grouped by certain themes or featuring one poem by all the great Shayars. These are neither great nor bad. There are some books in English too. Here the GHazal is presented in English script, sometimes alongwith Hindi or Urdu script and English translation is given. I personally do not like these translations at all. But the discussions given in the books can be interesting. My recommandation is - have a close look at the book and only then buy - if you are sure that you will like it. 6. Dictionary With all these books, you will benefit a lot by having a dictionary with you. There are again many. From Urdu to Hindi or Urdu to English. Some give the words in Urdu script, some in Hindi and some in Roman script. >From my experience these are difficult to find. The one I have is from Urdu to Marathi, and is published by Maharashtra State Govt. No idea, how to obtain it. There is one interesting 'Lughat' (transliterated dictionary) from Urdu to English, which also gives a few hundred Shers at the begining. I saw it in a shop in CP, but did not buy, due to the price. (Rs 400/-) 7. Aaina-e-GHazal This is a real treasure ! It gives meanings of the most commonly found difficult words in Urdu Shayari. It's NOT a dictionary in the normal sense of the word. But the words are arranged according to the Hindi Alphabet. The complete book is in Hindi and English script. It's writen by Dr.Vinay Vaikar (a medical Dr by profession) and the late Dr. Zarina Sani ( a Shaira herself). Some salient features of this book are. 1. Meaning of over 7000 words. 2. Meaning of each word is given in 3 languages. Hindi, Marathi and English, thereby making the meaning really clear. 3. With each word there is one great Sher, to emphasize the meaning ! There are over 6000 unique Shers. This makes it a great collection of Shers too ! Most of the Shers, in this series have been taken from this book alone. 4. There is a superb essay at the end "GHazal Kya Hai" . The definition of Ghazal present in the FAQ is due to this. The essay of course has much more than just definition. 5. There is an alphabetical index for the word-begining. This makes the search fast. ie. it's given at the begining at which page words begining with 'ka', 'kaa', 'ki' etc. are. 6. I have the very first edition. In the later editions, I believe, sketches of famous Shayars are also given. 7. Excellent printing, binding and paper quality. 8. I bought it only for Rs. 75/- !!! This was more than a decade ago. The current price is around Rs. 250/-. Still very affordable. 9. Jagjit and Chitra Singh have given a warm review and introduction at the begining. Isn't all this very attractive ? If you buy this book, you will thank me for the rest of your life :-) One problem you might face is the difficulty level of the Shers. Not all are easy, in fact the average level is quite high. But this is not a bug, rather a feature ! Remember that each Sher is a classic. I do not know if this book is available in Delhi. But it should not be difficult to obtain it from Bambay/Pune/Nagpur. The publication is Amit Prakashan from Nagpur. So if you know anybody from Nagpur, you can request him/her to get a copy for you. The above information was provided by Abhay Avachat Some more Urdu books that you might want to look at are: 1) Rupert Snell and Simon Weightman, Hindi, Teach Yourself Books (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989). Cassette of dialogues from the book also available. 2) Richard Barz, and Yogendra Yadav, An Introduction to Hindi and Urdu, 4th ed., (Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1991). This has been published in India, but I don't know the publisher (but I think it's Munshiram Manoharlal). 3) R. S. McGregor, Urdu Study Materials (Delhi: Oxford, 1992). This book also has an introduction to the script. 4) Christopher Shackle, and Rupert Snell, Hindi and Urdu Since 1800: A Common Reader, SOAS South Asian Texts No. 1 (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, U of London, 1990). Above information provided by : daw601@leonard.anu.edu.au (David Anthony Windsor) Another Urdu Ghazal book: 1. Urdu for Gazal Lovers by Sultan Nathani. The book has a collection of poems in Urdu and Devanagari side by side. (So you can practice reading urdu.) And then it has a rather large dictionary of urdu words most likely to be used in gazals. (Cost around Rs. 25) The above info was provided by Helen Abadzi (HAbadzi@worldbank.org) 12.4 INFORMATION ON ENCYCLOPAEDIA ON INDIAN CINEMA * Title: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema * Published by: British Film Institute and Oxford University Press, 1994/1995. * Authors: Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen * Price: (approx) $40 to $50 in US and Rs. 1000 in India. Format of Encyclopaedia: Biographies of Personalities (partial fimographies). Review of significant movies only (chronological). Lot of statistics. Features: Decent index. Lots of pictures. All periods are covered till 1991-92. Problems: Coverage is not complete for any period/any person/any language. Tries to cover too many languages and did not do a good job. Lot of omissions. No song info anywhere. The above information was provided by Satish Subramanian 12.5 INFORMATION ON BOOKS ON LATA MANGESHKAR. 1. "In Search of Lata Mangeshkar". by Harish Bhimani. It contains information about her family and many anecdotes. Has a lot of pictures. Harish Bhimani has been the compere of many of Lata's shows abroad and had traveled extensively with her. The book published by Indus, the comprador division of Harper Collins, and the ISBN is 81-7223-183-0. 2. "Lata Mangeshkar - A Biography", by Raju Bharatan. The written by the well known film music critic Bharatan. The book traces the development and major influences on Lata's singing career. 3. "Lata Mangeshkar Gandhar Svaryaatraa 1945-1989". Edited by: Vishwas Nerurkar. The publishers' information is: Mrs. Vasanti P. Nerurkar, 2/15, Kailash Parwat, Gilbert Hill, Andheri (W), Bombay 400 058, India. (Ph: 22-624-3587) 4. "Phule Vechita" (Marathi) by Lata Mangeshkar herself. This book written by Lata was organised from various sources by Madhuvanti Sapre, former journalist and a Ph D student. The price is Rs. 50. It is published in Marathi script. 12.6 INFORMATION ON OTHER BOOKS 1. Listener's Bulletin, a monthly, edited by Hamraaz Saahib and published by the Secretary, the Flying Listener's Club, Kanpur. 2. Limca Book of Records, 1993 edition, edited by Vijaya Ghose, published by Bisleri Beverages Limited. 3. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats, by Patrick Robertson, published by Guinness Books in 1988. 4. Star-Portrait, by Harish S. Booch and Karin Doyle, pub- lished by The Lakhani Book Depot, Girgaon, Bombay in 1962. It cost Rs. 4/- in those days and is probably out of print now. 5. Mukesh Geet Kosh. by Harish Raghuwanshi. A compilation of the FULL TEXT of each of the 992 songs (info about 2 bangla songs was obtained after the publication of the book) and all the relevant info about the song, like the movie, year, MD, lyricists and co-singers, if any, was published by Mr. Harish Raghuwanshi of Surat, Gujarat in a 684-page book called "Mukesh Geet Kosh" in 1985. The book is out of print now, but Mr. Raghuvanshi is working on the second edition. He has recently published an authoritative and comprehensive 412 page encyclopaedia of 599 Gujarati movies (1932-1994). He can be reached at: Mr. Harish Raghuwanshi Vision House Sagrampura, Near Putli SURAT - 395 002 Gujarat 6. "The Indian Film," perhaps the Ph. D. thesis in India on the subject of movies. The writer, Miss Panna Shah, was awarded the Ph.D. degree working with the eminent Professor G. S. Ghurye of the University of Bombay in 1950. Reprinted by Greenwood Press, West- port, Connecticut in 1981. The above information was provided by Surjit Singh 7. 'Lehren: 80 Glorious Years of Indian Cinema, 1913-1993', Rajendra Ojha, ed. (Bombay: Screen World Publications, 1994). ISBN-81-800258-1-3 Price: paperback Rs.1500/- US $150 hardback Rs. 2000/- US $200 Screen World Publication Prakash Photo Studio, 295, N. C. Kelkar Road, Dadar, Bombay - 400 028 Tel: 806-2244, 805-2758 Screen World also puts out Annuals, which they claim contain 'correct and updated addresses and telephone numbers of every person and concern in the entertainment world'. They also have an information service, which I suppose is a sort of commercial PSTAT thingy. If you have no luck through Screen World, the bookstore through whom the library here in Canberra got the book is: Hindi Book Centre, 4/5 Asaf Ali Road, New Delhi-110002 Phone: 3274874, 3273335, 3268651, 3261696 Fax: (011) 3273335 The above was provided by David Windsor (David.Windsor@anu.edu.au) 8. Pilgrim of the Swara - K L Saigal by Raghava R Menon Clarion Books, New Delhi, 1978 Second edition of the book came out in 1989 under the banner of Hind Pocket Books. Info provided by Ashok Dhareshwar (adhareshwar@worldbank.org). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13.0 I want to listen to live songs on the computer. Can I do that? If so how? Yes it is possible, if you computers have audio capabilities. There are a few samples (not complete songs) of Hindi (film songs and ghazals), Tamil and Telugu songs available. Details about where one can get these song samples are given below. This faciltity may not be permanent. NOTE1: Providing audio files on the Internet may be a copyright violation! NOTE2: Do note that these files are HUGE! So please do not FTP them frequently. Also do the file transfer only at OFF-peak hours. Juhana (the site maintainer) has kindly agreed to archive these files there, so please do not misuse the facility and risk losing it. There are two FTP sites from which you can get audio files that you can listen to on the computer. 1) Ftp site: ftp.funet.fi Maintainer: Juhana Kouhia (jk87377@cs.tut.fi) (kouhia@nic.funet.fi) Directories: /pub/culture/music/indian/samples /pub/culture/music/indian/samples-telugu (this site has songs in various languages). 2) FTP site: ftp.cstp.umkc.edu Directory: luit/songs Maintainer: Deepankar (dmedhi@aazoli.cstp.umkc.edu) (this site has songs only in Oriya, see question 9 for more details on this Oriya songs FTP site). Juhana writes about some of the samples files available: \quote{ Here are some music samples. They are not meant to be entire songs, just a samples. I hope that people will recognize them and maybe write lyrics for them and send lyrics to me. I have no intend to keep these samples very long here; I would like to make room for further samples instead that I waste disk space and barely get just few songs here. I have recorded all music from radio and these are sampled from the tape copy of the tape; I don't carry my good tapes anywhere and don't play them in the 'walkman' player I have here, so I have to copy. Samples are playable in Sparcstations by using 'play', 'xsoundtool' or 'cat file > /dev/audio'. I suggest to use at least 'play' because you can set the volume with it. Please do use 'binary' mode in your FTP program when you transfer these files. If somebody put these samples or part of them to other FTP site please tell me -- it's more appreciated if US people can load these from US site. Juhana Kouhia jk87377@cs.tut.fi kouhia@nic.funet.fi } Info and names on some of the files that are found in this FTP site. File darshan1.au: "Hari om Hari om." Mohd Rafi, BaijU BAwarA sabarmati1.au:"de dI hame.n AzAdi binA khadaga binA DhAla sAbaramatI ke santa tune kara diyA kamAla" tamil.au: "rakamma kaiyathattu" from Thalapathi (Tamil: Rajnikanth) yamaho: "yamaho ni yama yama andham" from JVAS (Telugu: Chiranjeevi and Sridevi) sample1 == Indian film music: Inderjeet movie by Amitabh, song "main na jhoot boloon....". The second song (or part of it) is the beginning of the song by Chitra Singh. sample3 == Indian music This piece is in Bengali and it deals with the Indian epic "The Ramayana". Initially, the speaker gives an introduction to the epic, and later the lyrics of the song cover the important events of the epic. I think, I have heard the song in Bengal. sample4 == Indian music; Again this is a Bengali song, but with a difference. In Bengal, the wandering "bauls" have made famous this type of "baul songs" which is mostly heard in rural Bengal. In actual rendering of the baul songs, the only accompaniment is an "ektara" - a simple string instrument made out of dried and hollowed out pumpkin shell. sample5 == I think this might be Indian music; but surely is it not Bollywood music, guess. First portition is very short but from the same singer. NOTE: Be courteous and do not go overboard and try to ftp all these files. There are many other sites that are not listed in the text version of the FAQ. Look for them in the question 16 in the HTML version of the faq at: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/faq.html ------------------------------ Subject: 14.0 Were some good biographical articles posted in RMIM before? Yes, there were some good articles transcribed from various sources that were posted on the RMIM. 14.1 What are some of the good biographical articles that appeared on RMIM? The list of some good articles can be got by sending a mail, To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim article list (see the RMIM AutoMailer question 16.4 for more details on this). When you send a mail you will get a reply that will contain a list of articles available, as well as instructions on how to obtain it using the AutoMailer. To get a small description about the article, send a mail, To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim article details 14.2 Any general articles other than biographies that were posted before in RMIM? Yes there were some articles of general nature that appeared on RMIM. To get a list of these articles follow the same procedure as mentioned in the previous question 14.1. 14.3 Where can I get some of the above articles? There are many ways to get the above articles. (i) RMIM AutoMailer. See above (question 14.1) or question 16.4 below. (ii) WWW page maintained by Sami (sm0e@lehigh.edu) Most of the articles mentioned in the FAQ are put in the music page of Sami's WWW home page. Use xmosaic or other software to get to his home page and browse through these articles. URL address: http://www.lehigh.edu/~sm0e/sami.html Maintainer: Samiuddin Mohammed (sm0e@lehigh.edu) This site in addition to the articles mentioned in the FAQ has other interesting information and articles from RMIM. Also there are a lot of pictures of singers and music directors which you might want to take a look at. (iii) The RMIM Article Archive All the articles in the RMIM automailer are now available on the Web at the RMIM Page site. URL address: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/rmim.html Maintainer: Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu) (iv) If none of the above work then send mail to the person mentioned as the poster of that article and request a copy. They'll be happy to oblige. Or look them up in the rmim archives. If all else fails, ask Satish or Prince. 14.4 I want to post some articles that I have with me. What do I do? Before doing so please make sure that there are no copyright violations in posting these articles. Also check with the above list so that you don't duplicate the effort. ------------------------------ Subject: 15.0 Where can I buy music CDs and cassettes? Many establishments sell CDs, look around your neighbourhood. If not, you can try one of these establishments. Only some of the companies mentioned here are on-line. (Look for other on-line companies in the question 16 of the HTML version of the RMIM faq at the RMIM page http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/faq/16.html) NOTE: The names and addresses given below have been got from satisfied customers. They are not meant to be an advertisement for the respective establishments. DISCLAMER: Neither RMIM nor the maintainers of the FAQ take responsibilty by the act of providing the following info below. No endorsement of product or services is implied. 1. Asmara [Only CDs] Asmara Compact Disc House 5568 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City CA 90230 E Mail : indiacd@netcom.com asmara@netcom.com Tel: 310-390-8339 Fax: 310-390-5250 Ftp site for further info: ftp.netcom.com Directory on FTP site: pub/asmara 2. Shrimati's. [CDs, cassettes and LPs] 2011 University Ave Berkeley, California. CA 94704 Ph: (510) 548-6220. Sometimes they send photocopies of the CD cover notes which are very helpful in selecting the CDs you want. Prices depend on the label. Range from $16-$18. No volume discounts. $2.50 shipping per order, regardless of the number of CDs you buy. Seem to have the biggest selection. Also sell cassette tapes. 3. Maharani [CDs and Cassettes] MAHARANI GIFT CORNER (Importers & Distributors) Audio, Video & Gift Center 7333 Harwin #125 One Regency Plaza Houston, TX 77036 Diwan Gurbani Off: (713) 782 6553 Fax: (713) 782-4203 4. Vista 1628 Oak Tree Rd. Edison, NJ 08820 PH. (908) 494-9155 Their catalog is free. 5. Taj Mahal Video 1594 Woodcliff Dr., Suite G Atlanta Ga 30329. (404)-321-0116 Contact: Bhavna. 6. OMI Music Inc. 71, Rosedale Avenue, Unit A-10 Brampton, Ontario-L6X1K4, Canada They will send you their multi-colored catalog if you write to them and include a cheque for $5. 7. Raag Email : raag@netcom.com (contact Nagam Rao) phone : (310) 479 5225 Order Line : (310) 479 RAAG postal address : RAAG P.O.Box 252012, Los Angeles, CA 90025-8911 A copy of the selection catalogue of one's interest can be obtained by e-mailing a request to the given address. 8. Private Music 220 East 23rd Street New York, NY 10010 (212)-684-2533 Ask for their catalog. They have a few Indian music selections. 9. Oriental Records, Inc., PO Box 1802, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10017 (516)-746-0140 Ask for their catalog. They have some very interesting Indian music selections. Especially Carnatic music. Also available are LPs. CDs cost $16 plus shipping. 10. India Emporium (Gulmohar Imports) 10195 S.W. Beaverton Hillsdale Highway Beaverton, OR 97005 (503) 629 5501 (tel) (800) 603 6538 (tel) (503) 690 6831 (fax) buyindia@aol.com Volume discounts. 1-2 Cds $17.95, 3-4 CDs $16.95, 5 or more $15.95 each. Also sell cassette tapes. Shipping $2.00 per order. 11. Khazana Nicollet Mall (downtown), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA email: khazana@winternet.com. (612) 339-4565 12. Electric Fetus, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. (located on Franklin and 5th (??) in Minneapolis. Check World Music selection section. 14. Raga Records http://www.raga.com PO Box 635 New York, NY 10014 E Mail: raga@tiac.net Fax: 212-620-5980 Concert recordings of Indian classical music. Numerous photos, articles, interviews, sound samples. 15. BuyPost 39 Song Street Narre Warren Victoria 3805 Australia Tel/Fax: (03) 9704 7370 They sell Hindi, Bhangra Bengali and Telugu cd's and cassettes. Prices as at 17.12.95 (all in Aussie dollars) are: single cd $17.50 Golden Collection cd's $37.50 Ghazals and Classical cd $19.00 Cassettes $4.50 Posting: $2.60 for 2 cd's or 4 cassettes; $1.50 for each additional cd or two cassettes. 16. Kumud Electronics 1053 E. El Camino Real #4 Sunnyvale, CA 94087 Ph: 408-249-7343 (Closed Monday) 17. Some more with limited info available: World Music Inst. New York City (212) 545-7536 Ali Akbar College of Music San Rafael, CA (415) 454-6264 Neelam Audio Video Philadelphia (215) 969-1232 (eve) Green Street, East Ham, London, England Broadway, Southall, London, England Ealing Road in Wembley, London, England Brick Lane London E1, England (mostly Bengali) ------------------------------ Subject: 16.0 Information access. 16.1 FTP: file transfer program All the information can be accessed through anonymous FTP. In all these sites, login as "anonymous" and give your login name and machine (like xyz@abc.edu) as the password. 16.1.1 ITRANS software. If you want the software that helps you convert ascii files written in ITRANS format to Devnagari script that you can print, then: (.zip for DOS and .tar for UNIX) FTP site 1: oak.oakland.edu Directory: pub/msdos/tex/ Files: itrans32.zip and itransps.zip FTP site 2: cs.duke.edu Directory: dist/sources/ File: itrans32.tar.gz 16.1.2 ITRANS book. If you want the ITRANS book that has the collection of songs then. ITRANS Song Book Version 3.0 is available from: FTP site: ftp.funet.fi Directory: /pub/culture/music/indian/isongs Files: isongs.tar.gz: Archive contains ITRANS Song Book 3.0 Sources. isongsdv.tar.gz: TeX .dvi files of all the documents. isongsps.tar.gz: PostScript files of a few songs. Anonymous FTP site (USA): chandra.astro.indiana.edu (129.79.160.69) Directory: /pub/isongs/ 16.1.3 Marathi Lyrics If you want Marathi lyrics, then they are archived at: Ftp site: ftp.cs.umn.edu Directory: /users/karnik/Marathi Maintainer: karnik@cs.umn.edu 16.1.4 Live songs samples If you want songs that you can play on your computer: FTP site : ftp.funet.fi Directory: pub/culture/music/indian/samples pub/culture/music/indian/samples-telugu 16.1.5 Urdu dictionary. FTP site : ftp.funet.fi Directory: /pub/culture/indian/text/ Files: urdu-dictionary.gz 16.1.6 Oriya Songs. Ftp Site: ftp.cstp.umkc.edu Directory: luit.dir/songs.dir 16.2 IRC: internet relay chat 16.2.1 What is IRC? IRC stands for Internet-Relay-Chat, in which one can 'talk' and 'chat' with other people who are logged in at the same time into IRC. 16.2.2 How do I use IRC? What are the commands that I should know? Invoke "irc" from the command line. If it does not work ask people at your place about this. This program may be not available at all sites. Some of the important commands to use, after you get into IRC are: /join #channel Allows one to go to a channel, whose name if "channel". Some of the valid and relevant channel names are #india #sangeet /query #sangeet Allows you to talk on channel whose name is #sangeet. /msg nick_xyz Will send a private message to whose nickname is "nick_xyz". (everyone can have a nick name. By default this name is your login id) /who will show you the name and other details of the person. (works only if that person is in the same channel as you). /whois will show you the name and other details of the person. (will work from any place) /nick will change the nick name of yours. /quit to quit. 16.3 What is Mosaic? NCSA Mosaic is a networked information discovery, retrieval, and collaboration tool and World Wide Web (WWW) browser developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Mosaic provides a hypertext interface to the global Internet. Hypertext is text which contains highlighted links, called hyperlinks or anchors, to other texts. Each highlighted phrase (in color or underlined) is a hyperlink to another document or information resource somewhere on the Net. Single click with the left mouse button on any highlighted phrase to follow the link. To follow a link, in this sense, means that Mosaic will retrieve the document associated with the selected hyperlink and display it. NCSA Mosaic is implemented for three platforms: Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and the X Window System on UNIX systems. The Mosaic client communicates with HTTP servers. HTTP is the HyperText Transfer Protocol of the WWW (World Wide Web). Mosaic can also communicate with more traditional Internet protocols such as FTP, Gopher, WAIS, NNTP, etc. (Here is more information on these protocols.) THE ONLY POINT TO REMEMBER IS: To navigate the web of information, single click your left mouse button on the words or images shown in color or UNDERLINED, which are the hyperlinks between documents. You need to know URL address (similar to FTP sites addresses) of the sites were the information that is stored. 16.3.1 How to access the song information through xmosaic? Read the basic instructions given below (See 16.3.3). Before following the basic instruction, note that you need to have two things with you, they are: a) You need to have the software "xmosaic," "netscape," "lynx" or other such web browsers at your site. "xmosaic" and "netscape" are the Xwindow versions of Mosaic. And "lynx" is the ascii equivalent of it. There are versions in Macintoshes and MS Windows also. b) You need to know the URL address for the various music related home pages. 16.3.2 What are the URL addresses for the various music related home pages? a) The five sites listed below have the ITRANS book in various forms. You can copy individual songs or search for a particular song in some of the sites. URL address is: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html Maintainer: Navin (navin@cs.wisc.edu) URL address: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs Maintainer: Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu) URL address: http://www.engin.umich.edu/~luxi/songs.html Maintainer: Lakshminarayanan Chidambaram (luxi@quip.eecs.umich.edu) URL address: http://ndsun.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/www/rrai/songs.html Maintainer: Ravi Rai (rrai@isc.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu) URL address: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs/docs/isb.FAQ Maintainer: Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu) The above URL address gives the information about the ITRANS Song Book and how to access it. This is posted in RMIM from time to time. URL address: http://roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu/isongs Maintainter: Sridhar Natarajan (sridhar@roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu) This is a mirror of Anurag's site. b) The Malayalam Song WWW page. URL address: http://www.cs.uidaho.edu/~munna/ms.html Maintainer: Adithy [munna@cs.uidaho.edu] This site has a huge collection of Malayalam songs that were collected in the newgroup alt.culture.kerala. c) Sami's Music home page. (to see various RMIM articles) URL address: http://www.lehigh.edu/~sm0e/sami.html Maintainer: Sami Mohammed (sm0e@lehigh.edu) This site has a lot of interesting information and articles from RMIM. Also there are a lot of pictures of singers and music directors which you might want to take a look at. d) The Bhangra page (for various Bhangra-related news) URL address: http://yucc.yorku.ca/home/sanraj/bhangra.html Maintainer: Rajesh Duggal (cs932256@ariel.cs.yorku.ca) This page has lots of information about Bhangra, like new releases, radio and TV shows and more. e) The Kishore Kumar page URL address: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/verma/Kishore.html Maintainer: Arun Verma (verma@cs.cornell.edu) This site has a lot of KK-related stuff, plus points to a huge listing of KK solo songs (http://roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu/~sridhar/kishore.html). f) The FAQ, mini-FAQ and the automailer page URL address: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli Maintainer: Prince Kohli (pkohli@cc.gatech.edu) This address has the latest copy of the FAQ, the mini-FAQ and the AutoMailer FAQ available. g) Avinash Chopde's ITRANS Package URL address: http://www.paranoia.com/~avinash/itrans.html Maintainer: Avinash Chopde This page contains information about the ITRANS software package for transliteration, including what and how to obtain the package, transliteration schemes etc. h) Hindi MIDI files URL address: http://ndsun.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/www/rrai/hindi/midi.html Maintainers: Surendra and Ravi Rai. Information about Hindi songs MIDI files. (You can play these files on any PC/MAC which has a sound card which supports General MIDI. Or you should have a MIDI interface connected to your keyboard/sound module to listen to them.) i) The ASAD home page. URL address: http://tata_elxsi.soft.net/~uvr/asadindex.html or http://164.164.10.2/~uvr/asadindex.html Maintainer: U.V.Ravindra (uvr@tata_elxsi.soft.net) The 'ASAD Web Page,' comprising all (60) articles of Abhay Avachat's popular RMIM series "A Sher A Day [ASAD]," is available at this location. The sixty articles contained in this page were written and posted by Abhay Avachat on the RMIM newsgroup. Besides providing an interesting analysis of several common and not-so-common shers, these articles also go a long way in increasing the readers' appreciation of GHazals, sher-s and shaa'iri. j) The A.R.Rahman home page. URL address: http://web.sunbelt.net/~as4603rhkbat/Rehman/ar.html Maintainer: Rohit Karn Batra (as4603rhkbat@sunbelt.net) This home page has articles on music director A.R.Rahman. It also includes a list of his movies and reviews of some of the songs from his films. k) The Tamil Film Music home page There is a Tamil film music home page located at these URLs. The first one is a main URL (this is meant mainly for users on ERNET and may not be up during off-peak hours in India.), the second one is a mirror of the first (a mirror for non-ERNET community). . URL: http://photogenix.ee.iisc.ernet.in/~rajram/tfm URL: http://www.strath.ac.uk/~cbas153/tfm Maintained by: K. Rajaraman (rajram@expertix.ee.iisc.ernet.in) l) The Urdu Poetry Page This contains a collection of poetry by Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz, Sahir, and others. An attempt has also been made to provide explanations for difficult sheyrs as well as the meanings of difficult words. URL: http://enuxsa.eas.asu.edu/~shoeb/poetry/urdu.html Maintained by: Shoeb A. Bhinderwala (shoeb@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu) m) RMIM Page. URL: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/rmim.html Maintainer: Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu) What you can find here: RMIM: FAQ WWW version of the frequently asked questions and answers of the newsgroup rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM). You will also get to see a wealth of ftp and web sites related to Indian music - Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malay- alam, Assamese, Bengali and Kannada song & music pages, Bhangra pages, CD Stores, Indian Classical Music pages and much more. RMIM Article Archive (Searchable) List of interesting articles related to Indian music, that have been archived from rec.music.indian.misc. Along with the articles it also includes a set of pic- tures. You can also search for specific articles (by supplying search keywords) in this archive. Song Info Searches Here you can search for information on songs from a database of songs. Searches for songs can be made based on the song title, movie name, singer, music director or lyricist of the song. The lyrics of the song can also be got (if it is present in the ITRANS Song Book) by selecting the song title from the result of each search. You can also search the raga that songs are based on. The songs can be from Hindi, Telugu or Tamil films, or classical compositions of Thyagaraja, Dikshitar, Shyama Sastri, and Mysore Vasudevacharya. ================================================================== You can find a load of other music related Web pages at http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/faq/16.html ================================================================== 16.3.3 BASIC INSTRUCTIONS TO ACCESS Mosaic: I. Menu based access: If you have access to Mosaic a) Run Mosaic b) Somewhere in the "File" menu, there should be an "Open URL" option. Choose that. c) This will pop up a window asking you to enter the URL to open. Here you type the URL address: (you can use other URL addresses mentioned in the previous question) http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html d) Click on the appropriate UNDERLINED item to get either Avinash Chopde's ITRANS archive of Hindi Movie Songs, P.N. Prakash's archive of Ghalib's Ghazals, or Dinesh Prabhu's Urdu Dictionary. II. Short cut through command line. If you don't want to use the menu you can type the following from your command line prompt. a) xmosaic http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html OR b) lynx http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/india.html 16.3.4 If you don't have access to Mosaic. The Mosaic software is in public domain. It is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in both source and executable binary form. Ask your system administrator to port it to your site. 16.4 Mail: Information access through normal mail facility. 16.4.1 What is the RMIM AutoMailer (RAM)? The mailer facility allows you to get some interesting information through mail. You have to send mail to "pkohli@cc.gatech.edu" with some appropriate subjects to access the information available through the mailer. Here are some of the things you can do with "The RMIM AutoMailer": Send mail to the following account to receive information automatically. (Note: The archives examine only the Subject line for processing your request.) Account: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu Valid subjects are: Subject: rmim faq Subject: rmim faq n Subject: rmim minifaq Subject: song:: <1-3 words from the start of the song> Subject: index:: Subject: lyrics:: <1-3 words from the start of the song> Subject: lyr_index:: Subject: rmim article list Subject: rmim article n Subject: movie:: Subject: raag:: Subject: song_raag:: Subject: urdu:: Subject: chords Subject: notes Subject: rmim automailer Subject: singer:: 16.4.2 Are there any mailing list related to music? 1. Bhangra Mela by Subir Grewal A mailing list that allows one to discuss current releases, encourage reviews and keep abrest of the latest in Bhangra. Hope it will also encourage cooperation among the maintainers of the various Bhangra web sites out there. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: with _only_ the word: subscribe in the message _body_. ========================================================================== The details of what these subjects mean are given below: 1) To auto-magically obtain a copy of the full version of the rec.music.indian.misc's FAQ, send mail, To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim faq (Case - capitals or small - is not important in the subject.) ........................................................................ 2) There is also a mini version of this FAQ that is posted every ten days on RMIM. This miniFAQ contains just the questions, the answers for which are found in the full FAQ. This miniFAQ has the information on the latest updates to the FAQ, so you might want to check it out >from time to time. You can obtain a copy of the RMIM miniFAQ by sending mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim minifaq (Case - capitals or small - is not important in the subject.) ........................................................................ 3) If you need to obtain the answer to just one of questions in the FAQ, let's say question number n, then send a mail, To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim faq n To obtain the appendix, use a or A instead of the number. For example, to know what P-stats are you would send a mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with Subject: rmim faq 4. If you make a mistake, the return mail should tell you what the error was and you can try again. Also, there is no provision to obtain answers to sub-parts of a question. For example, even if you give the subject as "rmim faq 14.1", you will still receive the full answer to part 14. ........................................................................ 4) To obtain the P-stats (singer, movie, lyricist, MD, actors) of any song, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: song:: For example, to get song info about all songs starting with "piya", you can send a mail with the subject as "song:: piya"; to obtain the P-stats for, let's say, just the song "piya piya piya mera jiya pukare", the subject would be "song:: piya piya piya". This can be used in conjunction with #5 below if one is not sure of the words of the song. Moreover, if this song is present in the ITRANS Song Book (ISB), then the ISB song number will be also be displayed. To find out how to access the songs in the ISB, check out the item #6 below. Also read the RMIM FAQ or the ISB FAQ for more info on the ISB. ........................................................................ 5) To obtain a list of songs for which the P-stats are available, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: index:: where the ) can be any character(s) from the English alphabet. For example, if the subject of the mail is "index:: ab", the reply will list songs like "ab chaahe ma roothe ya baaba, ab kya misaal dun, ABC ABC," etc. ........................................................................ 6) To auto-magically receive the lyrics of any song in the ITRANS Song Book, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: lyrics:: If the song is available in the ITRANS Song Book , you will receive the lyrics of the song, in ITRANSed ASCII format, automatically via email from the automailer. Again, if you are not sure of the words of the song, then option #7 below will help you in doing that. ........................................................................ 7) To obtain a list of songs available in the ITRANS Song Book, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: lyr_index:: where the can be any characters from the English alphabet. For example if the subject of your e-mail was "lyr_index:: a", you will receive a list of all songs in the ITRANS Song Book whose titles start with the letter a or A. ........................................................................ 8) To obtain some of the biographical and other interesting articles previously posted in rec.music.indian.misc, send mail, To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim article list That should return with a list of all articles that we have in our database as well as a little description of each. Each article will have a pre-assigned number. To get a particular article in the list, send a mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim article n where n is the number of the article that you want. It should return immediately with the article that you desired. ........................................................................ 9) To obtain a list of the songs in any movie, send a mail, To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: movie:: That will return with all the songs in all movies that match the pattern provided. For example, sending a mail with 'Subject: movie:: hum' will return with the all songs and their P-stats which are in our database from the movies Hum Dono, Humjoli, Mere Humdum mere dost, Humsaaya, JHumroo, Hum kisi se kam nahin, Dil bhee tera Hum bhee tere and MadHumati. This can be extremely useful in many situations. However, please do not use any numbers as part of the movie name (like in kabhi-2; just kabhi will do as nicely). ........................................................................ 10) To obtain a list of (Hindi, Tamil or St. Thyagaraja) songs based on a raag, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: raag:: For example, a mail with Subject: raag:: malhar will return with the songs in our database that we believe are in raag malhar. Currently, both Tamil and Hindi songs might be returned. ........................................................................ 11) To obtain the name of the raag some song is based on, send a mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: song_raag:: For example, a mail with Subject: "song_raag:: ja re badara" will return with "yaman." ........................................................................ 12) To obtain the meaning of any Urdu word (assuming it is in our database) in English or the Urdu equivalent of an English word, send a mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: urdu:: You should obtain the required equivalent via return mail. For example. sending a mail with "Subject: urdu:: lovely" provides the Urdu words "dilbar" and "maHboob" (acts almost like a thesaurus). ........................................................................ 13) To obtain the chords for the few songs that we have, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: chords You should get the complete file in return. ........................................................................ 14) To obtain the notes for the few songs that we have, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: notes You should get the complete file in return. ........................................................................ 15) To obtain the latest version of this FAQ, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: rmim automailer ........................................................................ 16) To add the lyrics of any particular song to the ITRANS Song Book, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: itrans song This will make sure that the song eventually finds its way into the ISB. Please provide as many details about the song as possible. The complete P-stats for it would be very welcome. The contributor will also be credited for the song in the ISB. ........................................................................ 17) To obtain the songs that any combination of singers has sung, send mail To: pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with, Subject: singer:: This part of the mailer is courtesy Nuts (nuts@virginia.edu). Please direct all comments or queries to him. You may inquire for songs by singers by specifying the singer's name as a full word that is part of the singer's name or a cryptic code. For example, singer:: kishore singer:: kishore-kumar singer:: kkg are valid queries for solos sung by Kishore Kumar. If you do not remember the cryptic code, no problem. Just send a mail with just singer:: in the subject header. That will return you all the singers for whom the data exists, as well as other useful information. Combinations can be found by separating the singers with '+' marks. For example, Kishore-Asha duets can be found by specifying singer:: kishore-kumar+asha Combinations with more than two singers are also possible. Order of the singers in the query is unimportant. Multiple queries may be made by separating them with spaces, as in: singer:: bhupinder shamshad+talat-mehmood This should return all Bhupinder solos followed by duets featuring Shamshad Begum and Talat Mehmood. Queries may also contain wildcards. Wildcards are denoted by the '_' character. An example query with wildcards is singer:: rafi+_ to give all duets featuring Mohammed Rafi. The order in which the singers and wildcards appear is unimportant. ------------------------------------- End of part 2/2 of FAQ. -- The FAQ is posted on RMIM the first of each month. The entire FAQ can be obtained anytime by sending a mail to pkohli@cc.gatech.edu with the subject: rmim faq The recent text version of the FAQ can also be seen at the site: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli/faq.txt The recent HTML version of the FAQ can be seen at: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/faq.html -- Prince (pkohli@cc.gatech.edu) Satish (subraman@cs.umn.edu)