Brooklyn-based electronic duo Baalti and Punjabi-American producer Lapgan have released the music video for “Romance,” the lead single from their collaborative album Threads. Directed by Kevin Rathod, the video was filmed in Kolhapur’s historic Motibag Talim, following the daily routines of Pehelwans within the centuries-old Pehlwani wrestling tradition.
The setting is about as masculine as it gets: men train together, wrestle in the mud, stretch, and spend much of their day in close physical proximity. However, "Romance" skips past the aggression wrestling is usually associated with and lingers on what surrounds it: the touch, trust, and companionship between men, and what that might have to do with romance in the first place. A hand on a shoulder, bodies pressed together during a match, someone helping another person steady themselves - ordinary gestures within the akhanda, made more interesting by how closely the space is tied to strength and traditional masculinity.
Photo: YouTube/Nowness
Rathod's camera treats the talim itself almost like a third subject, lingering on the mud, the worn training equipment, the rhythms of a routine that has repeated itself for generations before any of this was ever filmed.
“Pehelwans in our culture represent the ultimate form of cis masculinity,” Baalti and Lapgan say. “So, it’s really fun to flip that with this juxtaposition.”
That flip has cultural roots. “Male intimacy in India can be expressed very differently to the West,” the artists say. “Touch is not stigmatised in the same way.”
The collaboration itself mirrors that blending of worlds. Baalti and Lapgan built Threads during a songwriting retreat at Joshua Tree in early 2024, flipping Bollywood and Hindustani classical samples into hip-hop beats and electronic production.
Across Threads the two artists move through decades of South Asian sonic memory, playing with the sounds while holding onto their regional character rather than flattening them into something generic. “Romance” is one of its more intimate moments, and pairing it with Kolhapur's wrestling tradition gives that intimacy a physical, lived-in place to sit - one shaped by history rather than staged for the camera.
Tags:
Baalti
|
Lapgan
