Pascal of Bollywood

The Paris-born singer first plunged into the complex scales and rhythms of Hindi music back in 1989. “While in Malaysia I chanced a colourful cassette called “Hindi Film Songs,” he explained in a 2004 interview. “I felt a real sensual electro-shock when I heard them and said: ‘This is what I’ve been looking for!’”
Fifteen years later, the 41-year-old has become something of a superstar in India where he’s known as “Pascal of Bollywood”. His singing of classics by the greats from India’s Golden Age of cinema, Mukesh, Mohd Rafi and, especially, Kishore Kumar, has astounded the purists. “He cannot speak Hindi, but will sweep you off your feet with his perfect inflexions and sonority,” enthuses music critic Yogendra Bali. “From the melody, rhythm to the unfailing accent – he may be easily mistaken as a professional Hindi film playback singer,” adds Suruchi Mazumdar of the Asian Age in Calcutta.
In November 2004 Pascal released his first CD in France, choosing 15 rocking and lilting Bollywood numbers out of his repertory of 500 songs. And don’t let the outlandishly kitsch cover put you off. As he describes it himself in the sleeve notes he is bedecked in “wild 100-rupee shirts, a chrome belt, a junk 50s watch, Madras fish-skin shoes, glitter trousers in raw silk and fragmented Indian-film body language....(I’m) hamming it up....It’s all there. All my world in one!”
The album is the fruit of eight years of Pascal’s total immersion in Hindi music. He has plunged into the essence of every word with the help of his teacher, Usha Shastri from the Sorbonne University. His version of the classic “Johnny D’Jone (Jana Jana)” by Indivar/Kalayanji-Anandji is perhaps the most probing example of his crosscultural references – yet, at times, they even suggest the tremolos of Algerian singer Khaled, on a better day. To cap it all, the orchestration is lush and brought together by one of India’s best maestros, Pyarelal.
“It is Kishore Kumar come alive in the Frenchman’s soul,” proclaims Bali. With France falling more and more under the charms of Bollywood cinema and music, the Naïve music label has brought out this dancy, often tongue-in-cheek, gem at a most propitious time. “Très à propos.”

November 17, 2004

Daniel Brown