And now, it's Kannada Rap!

Something is completely right with the way the usage of Kannada is increasing in register after linguistic register. The doomsayers are being proven wrong again. Yeah, we've now got Kannada Rap, a new form of music to most Kannada listeners.

A band called "Urban Lads" based in Basavanagudi, Bengaluru, has come out with an ultra-cool "Kanglish" rap album which is making waves all over the world even before the album is out for sale, before the lads have a website and even before there's more concrete proof than the circulating mp3 that they actually exist. You could listen to the song in the player below:

To those who think "these fellows are destroying the beauty of Kannada", our message is that the whole philosophy that the Kannada tongue needs to be "protected" from other languages unto death is flawed. These experiments are what keep the language alive. These experiments are what keep the language current. No language can live in isolation. Kannada is no exception. And the rise of Kanglish rap is a positive, not negative development.

As Kannada Rap evolves, and evolve it will like the now absolutely hip Kannada film music, the Englishness of Kanglish will evolve towards more Kannadaness. One remembers Dr. Raj's "If you come today, it's too early" as an early example of the thinking that anything hip around Vidhana Soudha needs to be in pure English -- a thinking which Dr. Raj himself never shared, but was led to make believe by directors (according to his own words). Now, Kannada songs are whole lot hipper, and the hippest of 'em a whole lot Kannada-er.

To the brand of purists who are convinced that rap itself is a degradation of music, our message is that they've probably reached a wrong blog post thinking we talk about the fineties, subtleties and otherties of music. We don't.

The number of linguistic registers in which Kannada is being used is on a steady rise. We got Kannada TV channels, putting an end to the Hindi drudgery we went through during the days of DD. We got FM radio after putting up with a brief period of lapse of reason in the programmers' camp. We got good newspapers who have finally started breaking loose of the clutches of the purists and are coming up with catchy headlines. We've started to get ads on electronic media (although they remain cheap translations of Hindi or Tamil). And now, it's Kannada Rap.

By the way, the first Kannada Rap number was Auto Soori, not this one from the Urban Lads. Take it down as a history trivia question for 2020!