“Being visually challenged has not deterred us from believing in ourselves and being a mainstream commercial band,” says Deepak Soni, who started Udaan Entertainment group four years ago. What started out as a hobby soon grew into a career option for Soni who has learnt music in school. “When I decided to start a band, I gathered visually challenged students who had an interest in music and trained them professionally. Today the band has given over 100 performances on different grounds and auditoriums. Udaan Entertainment Group, founder and co-founder, Keval Haria and Deepak Soni, like others in the group, come from Happy Home School for the Blind, the school of the visually impaired.
Though the band was formed only in 2005, the operations for documentations and performances had begun as early as 1999. The band consists of 40 members among which 80 per cent are visually impaired members. Haria takes care of the marketing, management and public relations while Soni is a singer with the band. Udaan, which is a 40 member band consists of vocalists, musicians and dancers. Though they have performed at different events, most of the requests they get are for charity shows. Soni says, “A lot of times people just offer us charity shows. They do not treat us as equals while there are also some who don’t even let us realise that we are different. The reactions are also varied. Some of them enjoy our music and by the end of the concert have tears in their eyes while some of them tell us that we need to improve. We are open to both encouragement and criticism because we are willing to improve and learn.”
Their forte being Bollywood music, the band also performs at college festivals and other social gatherings. It was playback singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya, who first spotted the group and offered them a show during the Durga Pooja celebrations. The band is also indebted to Salman Khan for having recommended them to T-Series honcho, Kishan Kumar. “On Salman sir’s insistence we got to record our music album. He once heard us perform at an event and suggested we come out with an album. Back then we faced a major paucity of funds but somehow arranged the required money. Coming out with an album was a dream come true for us”, says an ecstatic Soni.
On a parting note Soni says, “Coming out with an album and that too with a big name like T-Series itself is a big achievement for us. We want to reach out to the audience through our music. But our only request to everyone would be to treat us as equals. We want everyone to motivate and encourage us because we want to just be like any other music band.”
