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.