Koothu in Hindi!

Move aside Bhangra, Koothu is here! The sound of South India gets another break into Bollywood and its millions of fans thanks to Salman Khan’s recent flick “Bodyguard.” Starring alongside Kareena Kapoor, Salman Khan is back with possibly another hit movie after the success of Ready & Dabangg! The item song is titled “Bodyguard” and is sung by Salman Khan himself and produced by popular Hindi music director Himesh Reshammiya. The video features the stunning and very popular Katrina Kaif dancing to some traditional South Indian beats! Hitting the big screens at the end of August, the movie is a remake of the 2010 Malayalam film of the same title. The Tamil version (Kaavalan) was released at the beginning of 2011.

This is not the first time Koothu has been featured in a Bollywood movie. Just recently another South Indian movie remake titled “Ready,” starring Salman Khan alongside Tamil actress Asin featured the track titled Dhinka Chika. The song has so far reached over 8.5 millions views on youtube alone!

We like to call it Koothu (Dance) and for the international promotion of the music genre we hope everyone adopts the word koothu, if they haven’t already! It is known by different names across the South Indian states. In Tamil Nadu it is popularly referred to as Kuthu, Dapang Koothu or Gaana, with at least two songs from a Tamil (Kollywood) movie being a Koothu track.

Urban Koothu is a new sub genre developing in the diaspora, mixing the 6/8 beat pattern with traditional South Indian instruments and vocals either sung or rapped in English. Pioneering the genre is musician M.I.A aka Maya Arulpragasam who featured two songs on her internationally recognised album Kala. The first was “Bird flu” & the second “Boyz” featuring popular American rapper Jay Z. London has its very own club night called “Urban Koothu” which provides a platform for aspiring South Asian artists & djs, so far including the likes of Charles Bosco, Loven, Arjun, Balan Kashmir, Apache Indian, DJ Biggie & Sasi the Don. We look forward to seeing Koothu grow in popularity across India through its introduction into Bollywood movies.