Making her mark with Mehendi

This singer from UK, seems all set to take the music scene by storm. Vibha Sharma, the UK based girl, who is already popular with the Indian music directors, has now released an album. Having signed a three year contract with HMV, in the final year of the contract, she has finally cut her album Mehendi.

The album released on June 12 was being aired on various music channels, prior to the release. The music video has a very colourful look and of course there’s a lot of mehendi happening. Talking of the video directed by Bobby Khan, Vibha says “Mehendi as in henna has a very traditional appeal, so in this video the director thought of making sort of a fashion statement through mehendi. The song was chosen because it had a folk flavour and we all agreed that it also had a mass appeal.”

Having stayed in London all her life, Vibha is very much fond of Indian music. “My parents are great lovers of music. My father has this great liking for Hindi songs hence I too developed the hobby,” explains Vibha. After winning a competition which had about 800 Indian participants from all over UK, Vibha decided to take up music seriously. She started learning Indian classical music from Purshottam Kapila in London. When she came to India she got trained under the guidance of Pt Ajay Pohankar.

How did the song for Ishq happen? “I was in London at a friend’s studio where I chanced to meet Anu Malik. He heard my voice and asked me to come to India. After sometime, I came to Mumbai and met Anu Malik, at that time he was recording for Ishq. That’s how the song happened.” It didn’t stop at that, Vibha went down South and recorded songs for both Ilyaraja and Karthik Raja. In the film Naam Iruve Naam Kirve she sung two Tamil songs. The bhajan Vaishnav Jano to from Hey Ram has been sung by her.

Her present album has eight songs which have been written and composed by music director Anand Raj Anand. This is not the first time that she is working with Anand Raj, in the film Hadh Kardi Aapne Vibha has sung for him. She is also working with Saajid Wajid for a Vikram Bhatt film. Presently she is concentrating equally on film as well as non-film music. “I have a voice which is suited for playback, but I want to do albums too because in non-film albums, I get to do my kind of songs, romantic ones.”

Lopamudra Bhattacharya