Program #67, 23 August 2001: Asian voices/Dialogues with Asia series, part II: Soundtracks, part 1 of 3.

This week I began a three-program survey of soundtrack music, in this case co-extensive with the second installment of the Asian voices/Dialogues with Asia series. After playing a couple of pieces chosen primarily to underscore two of the main kinds of expectations people seem to have regarding what Asian film soundtracks should sound like (but also worthy in themselves), I then explored a small handful of soundtrack suites varying from mildly to somewhat avant-garde, before moving on to play two soundtracks in their entirety: The somewhat stark, fairly-un-Bollywoodish Bandit Queen soundtrack co-composed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (and very timely, given the recent murder of the film's real-life subject), and Ryuichi Sakamoto's partially electronic, rather avant-garde soundtrack for the Francis Bacon biographical film Love is the Devil.

I changed my plan for this program again and again -- considering many pieces of music and approaches to them before settling on a final playlist (and, incidentally, deciding to bump the originally promised Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack to the next week's Big Hits program). In the end I think I made so many changes that I didn't quite follow any of my plans; although I enjoyed everything I played, I was left with a certain dissatisfaction about how this particular show turned out, and I think this is connected to the fact that I ran way over my allotted time, in my zeal to pack lots of stuff in. But all that zeal really indicates is that there was just more great music to share than could be played in three hours, and all that means is that I'll just need to keep doing so later -- whether that takes place within the context of a soundtrack show, an Asia-centered show, or just whenever it can happen.