Manooghi Hi on the front page of The Bombay Times
Today, Seattle-local band Manooghi Hi was featured in a front-page article of The Bombay Times. I work in sales with their drummer, John Hollis, who showed the article to me this morning. It seemed like his mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around the absurd significance of such a feature. Mine couldn’t really either.
On the one hand, it’s a publication that nobody here has ever heard of; an obscure paper in an obscure part of the world that we are totally disconnected from, except for maybe when we’re having computer trouble.
On the other hand, there are the stats. Apparently, The Bombay Times is actually a tabloidesque entertainment and pop culture insert in the Mumbai edition of The Times of India — the world’s most widely circulated English language broadsheet newspaper. For perspective, their readership is roughly twice that of The New York Times.
That’s cool, I guess.
As it turns out, the lead singer of Manooghi Hi — Mehnaz — is something of a pop celebrity in India, indicated by the fact that the paper only has to mention a first name for people to know who they’re talking about.
Here’s what the Times had to say:
“The band, we hear, is a super-duper success in Seattle.” That’s right. Super-duper. Apparently Indian newspaper writers learn their colloquial English from old episodes of Leave it to Beaver.
The band also “…has performed at music festivals worldwide, including the recently concluded SXSW Music and Media Conference.” Considering that South by Southwest seems to be the furthest the band has performed from home, that might be a bit of a stretch, but I’ll go along with it. Everyone’s allowed to inflate their resume a little bit. And it’s totally okay if the world’s most widely circulated English-language broadsheet newspaper does it for you. I mean, if anyone ever calls you out on it, you actually have a reference to cite.
Anyway, all of this seems to be leading toward an Indian album release sometime at the end of the year. That’s cool, because it seems like the only thing that could be better than striking it big in a country with 300 million consumers is striking it big in a country with 1 billion consumers.
For realsies, though, you should check them out. They’re really good.
I appreciate your kind words about the band, thanks very much, indeed we are working very hard.
But I GOTTA disagree with you here:
“…a publication that nobody here has ever heard of; an obscure paper in an obscure part of the world….”
To refer to India as “obscure” is dismissive of science, physics, literature, economics, history, art and most accepted forms of rational thought. Recognition of India’s modern cultural significance is widely shared and growing at an alarming rate, especially here in Seattle, the greater Pacific NW, and particularly in my basement studio!
I also take exception to your notion that the ‘Times of India’ and it’s daughter pub ‘Bombay Times’ has no visibility, it simply is not true, there are many people in my own community aware of it’s stature and impact.
Lack of familiarity in a thing can sometimes give one the impression that a thing is insignificant, when in reality the thing may have been influencing events all along and it is the observer who must rise to significance.
hehehe.
And BTW colorful words do not presuppose lack of intellect, they are emotional expressions and in this case speaking to an audience that may not share the same snarky, dry sarcastic wit that prevails in Jet City USA. Thank goodness there are other ways of saying something is “cool” without saying “it’s cool”.
Cool is dead.
“SuperDuper”. Now THAT gets me outa bed in the morning.
JH