Any chance YRF will release a 2-CD pack of this with additional tracks, bgd music, etc?

Music is suppose to be out by thursday or friday of this week. It doesn't look to be a 2CD pack, it just seem to be a 7 song CD going by initial information. It doesn't matter to me personally, as long as Rahman continues to rule the scene.

On a related note, I also came across of this interesting read, so check it out


Family problems

As the Aamir Khan starrer The Rising, based on the life of Mangal Pandey, nears its release, at least three different families are making an attempt to bask in its glory by claiming to be the freedom-fighter's descendants

Three families in Nagwa, a tiny village in Balia district of Uttar Pradesh, will compete amongst themselves to see Aamir Khan's The Rising when it hits the big screen in the middle of June this year. They are anxiously waiting to see precisely which Mangal Pandey has been portrayed in the bilingual film, directed by Ketan Mehta.
If one goes by the claims and counterclaims of these families, there were at least three Mangal Pandeys in Balia alone; all three gunned down their British army officers and triggered the first war of Indian independence against the East India Company in 1857. While two of these families belong to Nagwa, one family hails from Haldi, a village not very far off. All three claim to be "exclusive" descendents of Pandey, the sepoy of the 35th battalion in Barrackpore/Barrackpur (near Calcutta, now Kolkata), who is regarded as the first martyr of India's independence struggle.

All three have family trees where Mangal Pandey figures, with different parentage, siblings and descendents. And all three families have dredged up stories of his valour, patriotism and passion for freedom. They even have different takes on how and why the country's first freedom-fighter got into a conflict with his English commanders. Their stories are as different from each other as chalk is from cheese. While two of the families swear that he never married, the third says he was much-married.

"I'm his great grandson. We (five brothers) are his true descendents. All the others are fake," declares Yadunath Pandey, a clerk at a girl's school, sitting in the sprawling front lawn of his house in Nagwa (population 8,000). He draws his family tree, showing Mangal Pandey as his grandfather's brother. Ask him for any other evidence to prove his claim and he dredges out a painting of the sepoy cut out from an old weekly magazine. And plenty of excuses.

"Nagwa was set on fire by the British after Mangal Pandey raised the banner of revolt against them. There were also number of floods in the village and our old mud house where we had preserved all the documents on Mangal Pandey was swept away by the Ganges," Yadunath says, adding that some members of his extended family had shifted to Chhapra, a district in Bihar, which is not very far from Nagwa.

Recalling Mangal Pandey's martyrdom, he says that the sepoy was bathing on a well when a person from the Scheduled Caste community asked him for water. According to him, when Pandey refused to give him water, the latter taunted him about cow's fat in his cartridges. This led to Mangal Pandey, a devout Brahmin, butchering his commanders. Yadunath has no idea whether Mangal Pandey gave a lecture on freedom before his execution on April 8, 1857. He says that his village was terrorised so much by the English after the Mutiny that his family members did not even come forward to claim Pandey's ashes, who he claims was married.

With a gun slung over his shoulder, Yadunath threatens to ventilate all other claimants of Mangal Pandey's legacy. He says that he will soon bring the records from Barrackpur to silence the other claimants. To buttress his claim on his lineage, he says that, like Mangal Pandey, his family of 26 keeps off garlic and onions.

Yadunath's claim, however, is contested by many in the village. Om Parkash Tiwari, secretary of the Mangal Pandey Memorial Committee (MPMC), an association that has built a statue of the freedom-fighter and is planning to establish a library in his name in the village school, accuses him of cooking up the story to get land and other benefits from the government and glory in the media.

According to Tiwari, Anil Pandey is the real descendant of the freedom-fighter. Anil also drew his family tree in support of his claim. "The entire area knows that we're the real descendants. Yadunath and others have nothing to do with him and are dreaming up stories because they're jealous of us," he says. Anil, an employee at a local sugar factory, said he was prepared for a DNA test to prove his lineage. When asked about any documents that could help bolster his assertion, he, too, claimed that they had been washed away in the floods.

And then, there is the village of Haldi, not far from Nagwa. Villagers here have for years claimed it to be Mangal Pandey's birthplace. In April this year, Haldi's residents boycotted the inauguration of the freedom-fighter's bust in Nagwa by state Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, on the grounds that Mangal Pandey was actually born in their village and not in Nagwa. Shivji Yadav, sarpanch of Haldi, showed an old map of Balia where Haldi was marked as Mangal Pandey's birthplace.

Hoda Pandey, a widower who stays alone in a very dilapidated house, claims to be the great grandson of Mangal Pandey. When asked why the families in Nagwa made similar claims, he said the freedom-fighter's mother had, in fact, been born in Nagwa. The villagers of Haldi have formed an organisation called the Mangal Pandey Janmbhoomi Sanrakshak Samiti (Mangal Pandey Birthplace Protection Committee) and are threatening to launch an agitation.

Besides the three families in Balia, there is also a committee in Faizabad, Ayodhya's twin town, which has staked a claim to the freedom-fighter's legacy. It held a grand function at the Faizabad railway station in 2003 after a school textbook mentioned the town as Mangal Pandey's birthplace.

Although Anil Pandey's claim appears to have more takers in the MPMC, Balia's administration is as confused as it gets. When asked who the real descendants of the freedom-fighter were, Additional District Magistrate of Balia Ramsurat Yadav said that Mangal Pandey fired at the English officers in Meerut, and that only the records at Meerut could put an end to the controversy.

There are many reasons why the pedigree is being claimed by so many families in Balia, the district that is otherwise known for being the Parliamentary constituency of former prime minister Chandrasekhar. Foremost among them is the fact that there are no documents available to prove Mangal Pandey's real genealogy. Whatever little is available has been written by historians and school textbook writers. Mangal Pandey, being a bachelor, left no direct descendents behind. And considering that Nagwa was frequently devastated by the Ganges in the past, many of the original inhabitants of the village settled in Bihar and other places in the country.

The poor villagers in Nagwa and Haldi are obviously aware of these lacunae and are, therefore, making claims that might or might not be true, but which surely help them bask in reflected glory.


Supposed Descendant of Mangal Pandey

http://zulm.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7842&highlight=

Mangal Pandey's music launched

Onkar Singh in New Delhi | July 15, 2005 16:29 IST


Chief of Army Staff General J J Singh released the music of Aamir Khan's Mangal Pangey at Priya PVR Cinema, New Delhi, on Thursday night.

The much-hyped film is produced by Bobby Bedi.

Bedi presented the first copy of the music to filmmaker Yash Chopra, whose Yash Raj Films holds the rights to distribute the film and music in India and aborad.

Aamir, who plays Mangal Pandey, the sepoy who revolted against the British colonisers, said he hoped the younger generation would learn from the film and the illustrious freedom fighter.

"This is the right time for the release of a film like this because whether it be Afganistan or Iraq, we see foreign powers trying to impose their administration on local people," the star said. "I feel privileged to have accepted the film and having done the role of Mangal Pandey. (Director) Ketan Mehta has done a wonderful job and it is wrong to say that I was an invisible director," he added.

The film also stars Rani Mukerji, Amisha Patel and British actor Tobey Stephens.

Rani, who plays Heera, a prostitute, in the film, said, "The role demanded that my body language be different and the movements be spontenous. I wish that they (prostitutes) were treated with more respect. If I ever get a chance to do something for them, I would not hesitate from helping them."

"I would like to express my gratitude to the Indian film industry for recreating the period of 1857, which marked the beginning of the Indian Independence movement," General Singh said. "Mangal Pandey was a righteous character and he rebelled against the British and ignited the sparks that helped us overthrow the British," he added.

The film hits theatres on August 12, with an eye on the Independence Day weekend. "With a long weekend, we hope to do good business in the first week. This started as a large project and continued to grow larger and larger," Bedi said.

Javed Akhtar has written the lyrics of the seven songs and A R Rahman has composed the music.

"If you take out the songs, there is nothing left in the film," Rahman said. "I wanted to have a large orchestra and I told Bobby about my requirements. He said I could record the songs anywhere in the world. They were finally recorded in Prague. The most difficult composition in the film was the mujra."

Aamir also sings a song in Mangal Pandey. "It's Rahman's fault," he laughed, "He felt I should sing. Whenever something goes wrong, we blame Rahman for it!"

Interestingly, the last time Aamir had sung for a film, it also starred Rani. And Aati Kya Khandala, from the film, Ghulam, had been a rage.

Here is the first review of the film in this month's Total Film Magazine.

In 1857, the British East India Company ruled over India with all the cultural understandings if Bernard Manning.

It's an era unsurprisingly skirted over in the UK schools with the Brits ridiculing age old customs, calling their subjects dogs or niggers and prostituting local women.

But when the contemptible rulers issue cartridge papers smoothered in the grease of meat sacred to the locals, rebellion is at hand.

Leading the uprising is Mangal Pandey(Aamir Khan), but he's pally with English Captain William Gordon (Die Another Day's Toby Stephens)

Ketan Mehta's epic drama is unquestionably a lavish labour of love. At Two and a half hours, though The Rising is sometimes tough going with occasional lapses in Bollywood style dance fervour interrupting the action.

But Khan is intense and charismatic enough to hold your attention, the scale and ambition impress and peering into Blighty's murky past proves intermittently fascinating

*** out of *****

Bring it on I Say

Mangal Pandey - The Rising

By Joginder Tuteja, July 15th, 2005 - 1045 hrs IST


A producer who believes in creating nothing BUT original....
A director, who brings alive a chapter from history NEVER told before on the silver screen....
A musician who is FAMED across the globe....
A lyricist who believes in delivering nothing BUT the best....
A distributor whose production house is the BUSIEST and MOST successful today.....
An actor who would be seen on BIG screen after 4 years.....
An actress who is at an enviable numero uno position this year....

And a movie that is touted to be the BIGGEST on this side of the millennium.

Mangal Pandey - The Rising.

One expects spectacular experience from the celluloid dream called 'Mangal Pandey - The Rising', a Bobby Bedi - Deepa Sahi production directed by Ketan Mehta and distributed by Yashraj Films. With Aamir Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Amisha Patel and Toby Stephens in the lead, 'Mangal Pandey - The Rising' has music by maestro A.R. Rehman and lyrics by Javed Akhtar saab. From a movie produced at such a large scale, one expects nothing but a grandeur musical score that would transcends all boundaries.

Kailash Kher begins the album with the explosive title song 'Mangal Mangal' that is played while the title sequence is on. A song picturised on a group of four men atop an elephant while chanting the song across the 'galis' and 'mohallas', it is a lively track that brings alive India of the 19th century. For this short track, Kailash Kher goes completely rustic in approach and renders with full conviction. Get ready for the 'taalis' and 'seetis' in the auditoriums when this number heralds the beginning of an Aamir Khan movie after an endless wait for years.

Kailash sings two more versions of this track - 'Agni' and 'Aatma'[with Sukhwinder Singh]. The rhythm and overall musical arrangements are still the same [with 'Aatma' being a slower version] but the lyrics are different. With the look of things one assumes that all these three versions would be picturised on the same set of men atop an elephant at different situations in the movie, hence taking the story forward.

In the first ever 'mujra' of her career, Rani Mukherjee appears in 'Main Vari Vari', a highly rhythmic track that is easy on ears and extremely foot tapping. Set as a 'private mujra' for the Englishmen during their rule, it is sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy and Reena Bharadwaj. Kavita, who is heard lesser and lesser these years, is good yet again in this 'mujra' that is choreographed more as a mischievous track rather than a class appealing one, a la 'Umrao Jaan'. Tantalizing and inviting, this track brings to screen yet another facet of Rani Mukherjee!

The opening music of 'Holi Re' appears to be an amalgamation of the base rhythm from the title songs of Rehman's own 'Daud' and Shankar Ehsaan Loy's 'Bunty Aur Babli'. Since the base color of the movie is 'yellow', the holi in this track too primarily revolves around the yellow color, unlike more traditional red and green. The song is picturised well but it doesn't appear to be of the kind that would add on to the list of most memorable holi tracks ever churned in Bollywood. Udit Narayan, Madhushree, Srinivas and Chinmaye sing the number with Aamir Khan too chipping in a little intermittently.

An item song set in the 19th century! Well don't be surprised as this is what you get in 'Rasiya', a song of 'seduction, love and wait' choreographed as a 'banjara' song on two women who leave nothing to imagination. Richa Sharma and Bonnie Chakraborty render this medium paced number that also has passing shots of passion getting ignited between Toby Stephens and Amisha Patel while Rani Mukerjee is shown dancing and falling all out in love in her own private world. All this while Aamir Khan looks on the dance while letting his hair down and joining the proceedings towards the end. Surprisingly, it is one of the most lukewarm tracks ever by Rehman as it neither excites, nor titillates with the visuals too being just about passable.

This world is a 'bazaar' where you have everything for a 'price'. This is the theme of the philosophical track 'Takey Takey', a brilliantly written song by Javed Akhtar saab that is sung with a punch by Sukhwinder Singh. There is an emphasis on the terms 'Takey Takey' throughout the song hence emphasizing on the fact that everything from friends to honesty to righteous virtues are available for just a 'taka'! Kailash Kher and Kartick Das Baul join in this rhythmic fast paced number set in the outdoors, but it is Sukhwinder who walks away with all the honors.

A.R.Rehman, Kailash Kher, Murtaza and Kadir get together for 'Al Maddath Maula', a situational track set in a mosque. While the track is on, Aamir Khan along with some other characters are shown exchanging glances with each other as if preparing to execute a plan. In the movie's narrative, it may sound exciting but as a standalone devotional track, it is hardly of a kind that one would want to play repeatedly either at home or on drive.

A different album by all means due to the demand of the subject, it obviously didn't require any love songs or any other typical situations that form the basis for a Bollywood music album. 'Main Vari Vari' is the only track that caters to all segments of audiences and hence succeeds the most. 'Takey Takey' is another track that could get popular, mainly with children. Rest of the numbers are mainly situational tracks that should take the story forward, but do not appear exciting enough while being just played on. Effort of A.R.Rehman and Javed Akhtar saab shows in each and every note and word, but the tracks are of the kind that appeal more with the visuals.

With just about four weeks to go before the movie hits the screens, extensive promotion of the album would be required to notch up good sales figures that otherwise appear only average for now.

Rating: **1/2

**What a JOKE!

Rising: Not Rahman at his best

Sukanya Verma | July 18, 2005 13:40 IST


The most consistent aspect of A R Rahman's music is its gradual appreciation.

There is a smug assuredness to his composition, the maestro requiring familiarity from his listeners. One needs to be used to his music.

Ketan Mehta's highly awaited Mangal Pandey: The Rising demands a level of concentration and discipline from its listener.

Mangal Pandey music launch

Woven in the rustic fabric of Javed Akhtar's eloquent metaphors, Kailash Kher's bouncy singing and Rahman's inspiring notes, Mangal mangal is the album's lead track. It has three versions: Mangal, Aatma and Agni.

These three pieces expound on the three states of a revolutionary's mind, drawing a parallel between the rising sun and Mangal Pandey. The first articulates the simplicity, beauty and purity of daybreak, when the revolutionary is born. Then comes the aggressive Agni, where he emerges forth. In Aatma, he graduates to a martyr, and is met by approval and applause.

Rahman says the 'mujra song' was his most difficult composition. But the effort pays off richly. Main vari vari, with its splendid orchestra boasts of overwhelming classical character. Kavita Krishnamurthy's curvy crooning is suitably seductive and ably supported by Reena Bharadwaj's subdued refrains.

Heavy on arrangement, the playfulness of Holi re's verse does not tread on catchy grounds. In the end, it's just a boisterous piece of music, which expresses symphonic chaos, but lacks the rhythm of mischief.

Secrets of the heart are passionately revealed in Rasiya re. Uniquely, this is intense, not dark and flirtatious, not flippant. Be warned though, Rasiya is not easy listening. It will try your patience. Give it some space to grow on you.

Life is a bustling market with a price tag for everything. So goes Javed Akhtar's simile in Takey takey. Sardonic and scoffing, Takey takes on the dishonest society. It is more of a visual song that tries to make a point without really being entertaining.

Emotions run high in Rahman's penetrating rendition of the magnificently staged Al maddath maula.

Once the album gets over, there is a lingering feeling of disappointment. There are times when the soundtrack rises to escalating heights only to limp awkwardly later. Though the score is monumental, it is not Rahman at his best.

Got it from BWT

I agree, though an okay ARR album is miles ahead of most MDs' "pretty good" albums.

Sales of Rising is very dull. Its better than Bose, but not even close to Yuva or Swades. Hmmm.. I bought HUGE quantity hoping ARR-Amir would go in and rock.

I listened to ARR's Ah Aah promo clip. All ARR fans would quote this as "Great/Exceptional/Beyond comparision", but this also didnt appeal to me after multiple listening. I could find many similarities with his old songs and hate to say (and specially DragunR2, this will upset you), but one song is there where you would think it is a typical IR song for a villiage based movie (Thabla or whatever sound that irritates you, typical Chinnathambi type of song)

Where did you hear the Aa Aah promo? Is it online?

That is Rasiya song, that I have been asking you guys is very typical, sleezy southish seductive tune, with some gypsy flavour!!

It is getting better with me with listening!! Esp, now today, thanks to DU I got my Orig CD!

I totally agree!! This soundtrack will serve very well to screen play, if? screen play is GOOD?
I just read the guy who did Kisna screen play was hired? IMHO, Kisna was terrible!

Maen Vari, is such an INTRICATE composition, it is heavier 1000x over garden variety good compositions of same genre!! AR has taken Mujra to a new, previously unknown dimensions!!

I totally agree that this album, is no way to selling calibre of Lagaan, Taal, Dil Se or Saathiya!

But it is no way, inferior than Swades! that imho, had severe, Lagan hang over it!!

If you ask me, I will rate Qualitative basis Bose, ahead of Mangal!

It is no way like any other album, and still, personally feel that will contribute very well to strong visuals, if Mangal has those?

I wont compare this to IR work! But rather compare to other Period films of simillar genre and Rehman's own albums!!

This is NOT 9-10/10, but atleast 8-8.5/10. I personally liked it better than Swades! though! But Swades sold better! So, should be better..I dont buy!

DU, you are sounding to me like Taran yaar! My apologies!

You must have outsold, Bewafa, MJS, and will sell more BARSAAT than this one!! Hang in there!!

I thought GADAR was SO DRY! but once film came out!! it was hard to find CD!



**1/2 expecting average sales!!

I didnt review the product/song. I am just listing the sales figure. As far as the songs goes, I liked it. It is slowing glowing and will grow for sure.

DragunR2, I watched the promo VCD that one of the distributor here got. This will be widely available in online in a day or two. Checkout indiaglitz.com for trailers. They usually update pretty fast, since htey are the one who make them.

http://karty2k.free.fr/Ah_Aah_trailer.wmv

Its also on SunTV now.

yeah, the guy who wrote Kisna wrote Mangal Pandey. i just hope that it was Subhash Ghai that screwed up that film and not the writer, or else we're in for a majestic piece of crap.