Saturday, September 27, 2008

Video - Challa on Youtube finally

The much awaited video of Challa is finally avaliable on youtube. Enjoy!!!

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Similar Challa

When I heard Challa in the latest album by Rabbi Shergill - Avengi Ja Nahin - I found the music familiar than usual. I remembered that there was an old song by Gurdas Maan on the same lines. A quick search gave me the desired results. Here are both versions for you. Similar music, different lyrics but same soul of Punjabi folk music.

Gurdas Maan:


Rabbi Shergill:

Note: Any further insight on these songs and their relation will be much appreciated. Thanks.

Rabbi Shergill's Interview - I might have to do Bollywood

"I might have to do Bollywood". 

I feel it can be stated that very few artists today think about these things and see the world the way Mr. Rabbi Shergill does. I wish him luck and hope he never has to do something he does not want to and keeps producing extraordinary music the way he has been. 

Some excerpts from the interview are below.

I do this because I love this. I don't do this because I really need to become busy, or prove a point. I have to prove no point. What I really want to do is figure out if there are enough songs that I want to put out there. It has to come from within. I need to take my time, I need to do things that I enjoy because that's what gives me my music. I am only as good as the experiences I've had and I want to have real experiences. I don't want to sit in a studio and do assembly line work for some film director or producer and keep out churning empty hits. It was never about that for me.
...
Because the album is just so random, it talks about different things. Even my last album was all over the place. I don't like to have a unifying thread. Tomorrow I might say that I want to do a rock opera so that might be different. But right now, I don't feel the need to have a unifying theme. So the only unifying theme is this peripatetic quality, this thing that I do. Randomness. There's not a single song I could pick out to represent the entire album but if I really had to then I would say Challa. It sets the tone.
...
I don't know. It looks very bleak now because from the way I see it you're going to have to do Bollywood to survive. There's no channel playing independent pop as compared to the early to mid 90s when you had a lot more air time to do independent pop. That today is virtually nil. So if you ask me – I don’t know what's going to happen. I've been able to hold out and I don’t know for how much longer. Maybe tomorrow I'm just going to have to go to a producer and say, 'Okay you want me to do music? Ill do it.' I don't know. But it doesn't look good especially for a young kid who says that he doesn't want to do films, just independent music. The future is not very bright for him.


Saturday, June 21, 2008

Rabbi Shergill - iTunes

I was patiently listening to the complete album and in the end I see that this album is available on Apple itunes.

I couldn't stop my self from posting this just for other contributors of the blog Sameer and AJ. Also, never wanted that the regular readers of our blog to be deprived of this wonderful album.

Simply search it on your iTunes and download the full album for $8.91. In India an Audio CD would cost Rs 149 = $3.48. If you do not have time to go to Planet M or Music world just visit Yashraj Films and order online.

Happy Listening!!!

AJN - Go Grab It

Well its been a long time that I have posted on my favourite blog. To be frank I never had a big story to tell .Now, I feel I am few early ones to grab a copy of the album. Yes, just rush to nearest Planet M. Though I felt bad that the Planet M Guy told me its been out for couple of days. I really felt guilty that I didn't walk upto a store to just have a quick look. Well its never too late I have a copy of amazing album and I couldn't stop myself to post the album covers on the blog clicked from my hopeless Nokia E51 camera.




CD is playing in my laptop while I am writing this post. The CD also contain a insert containg all the caller tunes and Hello tunes for various networks in India and yes US, UAE, Cananda etc.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Avengi Ja Nahin Video

So finally, the video for the title song of the new album was released. The video is embedded below. All credits go to Ankit who has a nice post over at the Maayne blog with the video and lyrics of the song. As a bonus, for those of us who aren't that good at Punjabi, just hover over the difficult punjabi words to read their english interpretation. 



We'll have more on the song soon.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Avengi Ja Nahin - Website

Thanks to an anonymous commenter, we got the link to the official website for Rabbi's new album, Avengi Ja nahin. You can download wallpapers, read the story behind the album, listen to short previews of the songs, and download song lyrics. The last item is interesting, you don't generally see artist websites linking to lyric downloads. I wonder how much of it is due to the popularity of this site, where the major audience still comes to get lyrics of his songs. 

Here's the link: Avengi Ja Nahin

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Avengi Ja Nahin - New Album Details

So as it turns out, our prediction was right, just a bit early. As several people pointed out, Nokia released Rabbi's album for N-Series phones recently. Not a trend that I personally like - but there it is. The public release of the album is due in the first week of May by Yash Raj Music.

The album is titled 'Avengi Ja Nahin', and is targeted against communal violence. 'Bilqis', the song whose lyrics Rabbi shared with us before release, is a song that speaks of the plight of Bilkis Bano, one of the victims of the Gujarat riots.

We're looking forward to hear this new album in May. In the meanwhile, those of you who are in India and do have NSeries phones, listen to the songs and let us know how you like them!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Exclusive: Rabbi Shergill's new album

UPDATE: Our readers have confirmed (Thanks guys!) that Rabbi is indeed releasing his new album. It seems the album is going to be released on Nokia Nseries phones first at the end of March and it will be followed by his album launch in April. We'll be covering the new songs as and when they are released.

With the increasing popularity of this blog (Its a first-page return for a google search of "Rabbi Shergill"), its increasingly becoming possible that Rabbi himself might be visiting this site. While KD has tried to contact Rabbi in person before, he hasn't been very successful. However, day before yesterday, we received a comment to one of our posts that claims to be from the man himself. So, assuming good faith, we are replicating the information from that comment here.

According to the comment, Rabbi is coming out with a new album in April. It has been produced by Italian music composer Mauro Pagani. One of the first songs to be released is titled 'Bilqis'. Here is one of its verses:

Mera naam Bilqis Yakoob Rasool
Mujhse hui bas ek hi bhool
ki jab dhoondte the vo Ram ko
To main kharhi thi raah mein
Pehle ek ne poochha na mujhe kuch pata tha
Duje ko bhi mera yehi javab tha
Itno ne poochha ki mera ab saval hai
(Ki)jinhe naaz hai hind par vo kahan the
Jinhe naaz hai vo kahaan hai

We're all excited by the prospect of a new Rabbi Shergill album, and we're sure that our visitors will be too. So here's wishing him the best for this new venture.

And just to give you a taste of what the Rabbi-Mauro combination might sound like, here is a video of Mauro Pagani performing live: