MUMBAI: Picture this, Palash Sen singing Maeeri, Shaan singing Tanha Dil, Ankur Tewari singing Sabse Peeche Hum Khade and Rahi singing Maahi – that’s what went down on a YouTube livestream where an all star line-up got together to have a conversation around bringing back real music and celebrating the Indi Pop era.
The ‘90s were the golden years of indie pop music with musicians taking centre-stage, some of them becoming household names for a lot of us growing up! Musicians like Dr Palash Sen, Lucky Ali, Alisha Chinai, Daler Mehndi, Shaan, Shubha Mudgal among several others are still some of the biggest superstars in music the country has seen!
To celebrate these glorious years, Big Indie Bang came up with a livestream called ‘Where Did Real Music Go?’ and brought legends into the room. The 90 minute livestream was hosted by entertainment and music lawyer Priyanka Khimani. The show, high on nostalgia, featured Shaan, Dr Palash Sen, Ankur Tiwari and Rahi who chronicled their journeys, shed light on the state of Indie pop music and shared fun anecdotes about their personal and professional lives.
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Going down memory lane, Shaan talked about putting together his solo album, Tanha Dil, which became an instant success soon after its release. The singer said, “I felt that if you are doing your own music, you have to be a part of it. You can’t have someone write the song and someone compose it. The Indie pop situation at that point was all about other people doing the real work and the face would be of somebody else. That’s when I started writing my own stuff.”
Drawing a comparison between the music industry in the ‘90s and that of the contemporary era, Dr Palash Sen of Euphoria said, “I have been educated to be a doctor. I don’t think anybody in my family or around me was expecting me to go and do music professionally. Music was something that was done for fun. We are now in a business called the music business. And that’s something that young boys and girls coming in will have to understand. Music just got itself an MBA”
Upcoming talent, Rahi, a Kashmir based artiste, who has been lauded for his latest composition, Maahi, says that indie pop is all about emotions. “When you think about composing a song, it has to come from deep within you. You shouldn’t think about what’s the latest trend. Indie music is all about your emotions. I come from Kashmir and there are lot of hardships that you have to deal with. But I thought that not many people know about the positive side of Kashmir and so I wanted to project that through my song,” he shared.
Music composer, lyricist, producer and supervisor Ankur Tewari talked about his initial years as a musician in Delhi and chronicled lending his vocals to the underground hit Sabse peeche hum khade hai that went on to be covered by Silk Route.
The conversation was punctuated with fun music-centric games and involved a lot of batter amongst these musicians who seemed to have been catching up after a long time. The stream ended with all of these legends singing their famous track, which sent us all a trip down memory lane! If you’re a 90s kid who grew up on this music, this one’s a must watch!
