In my recent rundown of the new M.I.A. album Kala, I said track four, “Jimmy,” sounded like Boney M; turns out I was both way off and weirdly close. The track is in fact a spot-on cover of “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja,” by Parvati Khan and Mithun Chakravarty, off the soundtrack to the 1982 Bollywood musical “Disco Dancer.” Actually, it pretty much sounds like M.I.A. just sampled the whole song and sang over it. The reason it was confusing to me is probably because both this and Boney M were huge in Russia—er, the Soviet Union—back in the ’80s and ’90s. By the way, how weird is Russia’s obsession with super-gay disco? Army of Lovers, anyone? That song was inescapable back in 1990 when I was studying over there, and it’s basically like full-on trannies covering “Haveinu Shalom Alleihem.” Seriously. Anyway, like most Bollywood stuff, “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja” is super super duper awesome, and you can buy it on iTunes, watch the video below, or grab an mp3 at Gorilla vs. Bear who tipped me off on all this.
“Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja” from “Disco Dancer”