Frenchman Pascal Héni sings classic Hindi, Tamil and Bengali filmi songs phonetically:

… he is bedecked in “wild 100-rupee shirts, a chrome belt, a junk 50s watch, Madras fish-skin shoes, glitter trousers in raw silk…

… his singing of… Mukesh, Mohd Rafi and, especially, Kishore Kumar, has astounded the purists. “He cannot speak Hindi, but will sweep you off your feet with his perfect inflexions and sonority”… with the help of his teacher, Usha Shastri from the Sorbonne…

… his version of the classic “Johnny D’Jone (Jana Jana)” by Indivar/Kalayanji-Anandji is perhaps the most probing example of his cross-cultural references - yet, at times, they even suggest the tremolos of Algerian singer Khaled… [Link]

… [he] breaks into the cheery ‘Zindagi ek safar hai suhana’ — the song he first heard while day-tripping in Malaysia a decade and a half ago and which set him on the Bollywood route… Pascal of Bollywood has 13 songs recorded with assistance from Pyarelal of the legendary composer duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal. A couple of songs like ‘Jaane jaana’ are bi-lingual, with French lyrics by Heni. The surprise here is Nida Fazli’s translation of ‘La vie en rose,’ Edith Piaf ’s timeless classic, where Heni’s Indian co-singer, Smriti Minocha, sings in French as well as Hindi.

Heni’s Hindi pronunciation is surprisingly authentic (down to the desi enunciation of ‘Paris’ in the title song of An Evening In Paris), but the album has a cover-version, Jhankaar-Beatish flavour. [Link]

Remember An Evening in Paris, the 1967 Shammi Kapoor hit, where Sharmila Tagore cavorted in a sensational swimsuit? Remember its title track sung by Mohammed Rafi?

Who would have imagined a French singer crooning the same number in New Delhi 36 years later. Or, for that matter, yodelling like Kishore Kumar in ‘Zindagi ek safar hai suhana’ in the 1971 blockbuster Andaaz…

“It is my dream to sing in Hindi movies,” he declares… Soon, he had bought about 2,000 CDs from the music shops of Paris and London, the latter especially for Bengali songs. “It was an orgy of buying,” he says… The French singer believes it is possible for him to make a living singing Hindi film songs in France. [Link]

Héni has performed in India and at the London Mela. At least he’s got the dress sense right