The Siege of the Car Trip & My Musical Memory

My younger sister is the one who should have a blog. She is funny, and she works in PR. She is the perfect candidate for blogger-to-be, but instead, one of her great accomplishments has been the creation of a Facebook group called "My Cousin Is a FOB."

While I am, in fact, her sibling and not a cousin, I take responsibility for her aversion to FOB behavior. In case you don't know, FOB stands for Fresh Off the Boat, and describes immigrants (largely Asian) who arrived in this fine country wearing tight Levi's and matching denim jackets. While some FOB criteria have changed, negative stereotypes remain. If you are not an actual FOB like me but can be described as being "fobby," you're in trouble. My sister was inspired by mine and my cousin's (yes, we largely talking about 1 here) raging fobbiness. She made us officers of this Facebook group, and we wear our titles proudly.

One of the many fob criticisms I have received is that my level of knowledge about Indian/Hindi music is far beyond acceptable or normal. It's true that I have an amazing music inventory in this little head of mine, and I have often pondered why. The answer lies in car trips.

Yes, one too many family car trips. If it hadn't been for the Family Car Trip growing up, I may never have been exposed to long hours of Pankaj Udhas, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar in the '80s and general Bollywood obnoxiousness in the 1990s while traveling I-95. I may never have actually liked any of that stuff either. But my musical memory is rooted in these tunes, and they formed the early soundtracks of my life.

An innate attachment to making sense of life through poetry and lyrics in a language other than English, classical dance lessons, and accessibility further set me on this treacherous path. By age 9, the History of Dance & Nostalgic Jams was in the works. At age 13, I bought discount CDs at the Indian grocery store and knew the name of every up and coming DJ. In college, I rapidly downloaded both the old and new to create a vast Indian music library.

Don't be alarmed - I listened to Boyz II Men, Nirvana, Greenday, and Mariah Carey just like everyone else back in the day, did my fair share of the club set, and love some alternative music. But I was never quite able to latch onto a genre or artist that particularly spoke to me even later in life. I generally have liked the same qualities in all music that I appreciate in Indian music - a solid melody or beats, something I can dance to, meaningful lyrics. An entirely different soundtrack developed during the teen years, during which I also frantically made mix tapes or bought my special "friend" a Savage Garden single, and lately, I'm dating John Legend. But none come close to my relationship with Indian music (although John Legend is trying really, really hard). Even the entrance of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack just post-Pankaj Udhas couldn't salvage the situation.

Aside from my general tendency to boogie whether the music be Punjabi or Portuguese, I argue that this has much to do with language. For all practical purposes, English is certainly my first, but there is a certain unease with this. My earliest memories are again set to a chorus of Hindi, and as a child I experienced moments of transition in which I temporarily lost my grasp on one or the other, or both. On occasion, in a particularly unguarded or intimate moment, I have the urge to speak it with someone I ordinarily wouldn't. Somehow, Indian music (traditional, fusion, folk, dance, pop, you name it) latches onto and invigorates a neuro-psych pathway - one with diminishing influence and relevance in my life - that only it can keep alive. Compelling stuff if you ask me. Perhaps no excuse to listen to a song called "Desi Girl," but nonetheless, I think others might share a similar sentiment.

And so the result of the siege of the Car Trip is that if anyone ever has any song requests or needs song info, you now know who to go to. I'd be more than happy to offer my FOB services.