MANMOHAN WARIS
Music all the way

After Bhangra-pop, the ultimate fascination for the Indian music industry, with new voices and new styles rising every fortinght, seems to be a never exhausting source of music for the Indian audience. It is now for the masses to decide what is going to last and who will be the survivor in the long run. Yet another entry, though not a new one, to hit the scene is Manmohaan Waris.

He is very much the son of the soil, the Punjab da munda, who has finally emerged on a wider scale, after having remained confined to the audiences in the North for about five years, where he is as big as one could get. His album Husn Da Jadu released by Tips is a product of Indian music, composed and recorded in Hollywood, picturised in South India, and finally launched on a national level, quite an example of musical confluence and national integration.

The album has 10 songs. Seven dance numbers, two sad songs (sad songs are Manmohan’s speciality) and one pure Punjabi folk. All composed by Sangtar, Waris’ younger brother, and the only Indian owner of a recording studio in Hollywood (Santa Monica).

Though, Manmohan’s generation is the first one in the family to get into the music business, it has been a successful one so far. Sangtar, the second one who owns a studio and composes jingles, and works with local musicians, and Heer Kamal, the youngest of the three brothers, who also has a bhangra-pop album to his credit. In fact, Heer Kamal had his first maajor experience with live music when he plaayed the harmonium on stage, at the age of ten, with Ustad Nuasrat Fateh Ali Khan. Hence the influence of the latter’s music on all the three brothers is not surprising.

Manmohan started as a stage performer. He got his first break as a singer along with Hans Raj Hans, and with him, Manamohan performed all over North America. “It was a golden opportunity for me and this gave me the encouragement to opt for a career as a solo singer in the field of bhangra-pop,” says Waris.

He faced problems in the beginning, where his music was confined only to the North Indian public. He tried a lot to get exposure on a national level, to be heard and seen on a music channel, and his association with Tips got him his dream opportunity. His album has been released with three videos, two shot in Mumbai and one in the Ramoji Rao Studio down South.

“I trained in Hindustani classical vocal from Ustad Jaswant Bhanwra (the same composer, who had composed the music for Gurdas Mann’s first album) and graduated with classical music as my subject from Punjab University,” he says.

Talking about the bhangra-pop scene, he says, “There’s a lot of crowd in the scene presently and the one to emerge successful will be the one who has a voice for for singing along with all other stage qualities.”

Waris’ earlier albums had been heavy-duty Punjabi ones, hence he has gone light on the language in the current one, so that it can catch-up even with the non-Punjabi masses. “Though, the language used in the songs is easy-to-follow, I have not fallen down on the standards, that is I have not used cheap and degrading lyrics, which a lot of singers are doing these days.”

Waris, who is a lover of music, says that he would like to be known as a better singer than just a performer. “It is the voice quality that matters and that captures the audience. My audience comes to listen to me when I am performing live, they do not come to look at me perform stunts on stage. And I hope they keep coming back to me everytime and that I am able to satisy their musical wants.”

Lopamudra Bhattacharya

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