You’ll recall that in Daddy Yankee’s seminal Hindi-reggaetón mashup ‘Mírame (Look At Me),’ singer Deevani’s Hindi is better than her Spanish, though she sounds pretty good in both. But here’s the weird thing: she’s not a native Hindi speaker doing Spanish. She’s a native Spanish speaker doing Hindi (via SM). What a mind fuck.

After ‘Mírame’ took off, Deevani recorded another fierce hinditón track with Beenie Man and Tito El Bambino, ‘Flow Natural.’ She shows up in the video in chudiyan and salwar:

(lyrics)

Original track, ‘Chadh Gayi Chadh Gayi’ from Chor Machaaye Shor:

She also sings on ‘Dancing’ by Johnny Prez (listen here), again in near-flawless Hindi.

Adalgisa Inés Saldaña-Rooney, a.k.a. Deevani, is Dominican and grew up in Puerto Rico. She learned Bengali and Hindi from her Bangla ex-husband. They were high school sweethearts, and she has three Bangla-Dominican kids. In her spare time she runs Luny Tunes’ record label:

“The first language I started learning was Chinese, Mandarin. I taught myself. I also had a lot of friends who spoke Mandarin so that helped a lot. Next I learned Japanese. After I learned Japanese I met my husband at the time, who was my high school [sweetheart]. I was married to him for 10 years. He is from Bangladesh and spoke 5 languages and taught me those 5 languages; Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Gujrati, Punjabi and Arabic because you have to know it to read the Q’uran…

“There is a song that I sang to Luny many years ago, and the song is called ‘Deewana, Deewana’…” [Luny] would later return to the memory of the song his sister sang to him and ask her to collaborate on a song we now know as “Mírame”…

Reggaeton fanatics both in the United States and Puerto Rico as well as other countries around the world mistakenly thought that she was Indian. For a year Deevani worried that her true fans really did not know she was Dominican… “Many Indians… think that I am Indian, so that’s a huge honor for me…” [Link]

She’s hired a desi friend as COO for the label:

“Simran Singh… is now Chief Operating Officer for Mas Flow and manager for Luny Tunes…” [Link]

Here’s the track that started it all. Skip to 2:40, listen to the langugae transition, and tell me that the Hindi doesn’t sound better than the Spanish. Kudos!

(lyrics)

Original, ‘Eli Re Eli’ from Yaadein:

Now Deevani and Rishi Rich are working on an entire album called Bhangratón. God save Queens — so many good things come from cultural intersections. A couple of desi DJs have experimented with bhangratón, though the results haven’t been as catchy. Soundtheory did a track called ‘Charka (Bhangratón mix)’ (listen here), and Lil Jay remixed the bhangra track ‘Kawan.’

SM has more.

Related posts: High aspirations, Two genres birthing a third, Filmi salsa, Karmaputra