All right, long post!!
eskandar wrote:Here's a Marwari (Rajasthani) song I can hardly make heads or tails of. I'm curious as to whether it's more intelligible to people who have stronger Hindi skills:
I don't think it has as much to do with Hindi skills as it does with just familiarity with Marwari or just with different Indo-Aryan language varieties. Knowing Gujarati would probably help a lot more here than knowing Hindi because Marwari is a Rajasthani language and Gujarati is closely related to the Rajasthani languages. AFAICT it's a modernized version of a traditional Marwari wedding song. (Holi is considered an auspicious time for weddings in North India IIRC).
I clicked on CC to see the Romanized lyrics, looked up lots of stuff, pondered over it, and now I think in Khari Boli, it might be translated more or less like this:
ہولی میں اڑے رے گلال
آئ رے منگیتر رے
میری رے منگیتر چوڑی والی
گاڑی والا رے نواب
آئ رے منگیتر رے
میری رے منگیتر مورنی والی
موچھ والا رے نواب
آئ رے منگیتر رے
مان لیا میں نے صورت سے
لگتے نواب جی
دل کے ہو کیا راجہ تم؟
دو یہ جواب جی
اوه تیرے طعنوں کی جو ہیں غلیلیاں
میری دھاہین تو اٹھتی پھرہریاں
دھانی دھانی چنری تیری اڑ اڑ جایی
یہ دل کی ریاست وہیں پے لٹ جایی
میری رے منگیتر مورنی والی
موچھ والا رے نواب
آئ رے منگیتر رے
ہولی میں اڑے رے گلال
آئ رے منگیتر رےAnd here's my attempt at a somewhat loose translation into English:
Here comes my fiancée
As red powder flies on Holi,
My fiancée with the bangles!
Hey, bigshot with the carriage,
Here comes my fiancée,
My fiancée with the nose ring!
Hey, bigshot with the mustache,
Here comes my fiancée!
My lord, it seems
I have accepted your image.
Answer this:
Are you the king of my heart?
Oh, the taunts of your pellet-bows*
Raise my cries and fears;
Your light-green sari flies away.
You stole my heart while struggling for it.
Hey, bigshot with the mustache,
Here comes my fiancée,
My fiancée with the nose ring!
Here comes my fiancée
As red powder flies on Holi!
*I had to look this word up in English. It's apparently some kind of crossbow.
غلیل apparently just means something like 'strong love' in Persian, but
Platts translates it exclusively as 'pellet-bow' in Urdu.
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So here are some more songs, not from Bollywood movies but rather from (the descendants of) Indians in Guyana and Fiji! The song in this clip is just an old Bollywood song "Chaha Hai Tumhi," but the video is from Guyana, and the dancing is veeeery Caribbean-style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5-UuM1whLkThis seems to be an original composition by the same artist called "Uska Wine Gyal."
"Wine gyal" is just a common term in Caribbean English-based pidgins; I think it's basically from
wind +
girl (i.e. a girl who winds up her waist while dancing). The lyrics seem pretty simple (
maine tumse pyar kiya,
tumne mujhse pyar kiya,
tumhare bhai/baap/... kya bolega?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7iBl4XErh0This is another less pop-y (but still with very clear Caribbean influence) song from Guyana by Boodram Holas called "Thar Gori Jamunai":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF9_qi7vTyYThis is a Fiji Hindi version of "Aati Kya Khandala" called "Ka Bolti Tu?" with English subtitles. It's "aati kya Labasa" instead of Khandala in this version.
It's mostly about the all-too-familiar experience of an Indian girl being too scared about what her parents will say if she goes out with her boyfriend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSELZr5pkJIThis is a traditional folk song/
lok geet from Fiji, I think an original composition in Fiji Hindi sung by Anita Prakash. The clip may have been filmed in Australia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FC1GpUNufcThis is a really interesting clip (although there are many others like this one). It's a performance of
therukoothu, which means 'street theater' in Tamil, and that's basically what it is. It's a few hundred years old in the Tamil-speaking world (a.k.a. Tamilakam). However, this has more recently arrived in Fiji, where it's called
tirikutu...and is in Fiji Hindi! So this clip is from a Fiji Hindi tirikutu performance in Australia, and apparently, the main character in this scene (with all the pink paint) is the Hindu goddess Durga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJXI5JSga5E