Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Rabbi Shergill - The Man!

I was going through the videos on YouTube and i saw one nice video of the song Bulla Ki Jaana sung by one of Our Sikh Brothers with Dastaar and Beard. The meanings of the song was "hair standing". I am very proud of him. I decided to find out more about him. Below is his biodata taken from Wikipedia
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Rabbi Shergill (born 1975) is an Indian musician famous for his debut album Rabbi and the chart-topper song of 2005, Bulla Ki Jana. His music has been described variously as rock, Sufiana, and "semi-Sufi semi-folksy kind of music with a lot of Western arragements."Rabbi himself has been called "Punjabi music's true urban balladeer".

Rabbi's father was a Sikh preacher. His mother is a college principal and a Punjabi poetess. Rabbi is an alumnus of Khalsa College, Delhi. He started at the Fore School of Management but dropped out after a year. He did ad jingles for a while, including for Nova ghee, Yamaha RX-T motorbikes, and Times FM.

He struggled for many years to get his debut album published. He was working with Sony Music for a while, but Sony later backed out. He then approached Minty Tejpal, brother of Tehelka's editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal, who liked his music and offered him a contract. After Tehelka's first sting operation, the company ran into financial problems. Magnasound also offered him a contract, but the company became bankrupt before the album could materialize. Rabbi was offered decent money to include his songs in Hindi movies such as Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part II, Dubai Returned and Paap, but refused. He was finally signed on by Phat Phish Records, who brought out his eponymous debut album, Rabbi, in 2005.

His fans famously include Amitabh Bachchan and Sir V. S. Naipaul, who said of his music, "I didn’t understand it but it was very, very soulful, very deep."Mira Nair compared him to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Rabbi's music has been inspired by rock as well as Sufi and Punjabi folk music. His lyrics are deeply philosophical, most of them his own, though his most famous song was written by the 18th century Punjabi poet Bulle Shah:

Na maen bheth mazhab da paaya / Secrets of religion, I have not known
Ne maen aadam havva jaaya /
From Adam and Eve, I am not born
Na maen apna naam dharaaya /
I am not the name I assume
Na vich baitthan na vich bhaun /
Not in stillness, nor on the move
Bulla , ki jaana maen kaun /
Bulla, I know not who I am!
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This is a video on the interview done with him. Very well done interview




This is one of his famous song Bulla Ki Jaana Maen Kaun. The message from this song is from a Sufi Muslim Poet "Baba Bullha Shah". What a great message against the proudness of Humans and also that God is One.



This is another of his popular song Jugni. Damm sad song but has beautiful meanings in it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey nice post, but his music has been out very long ago ready, if i am not mistaken around 2005.
But anyway its nice to hear his songs again.

havocsingh said...

Yeah i know that, but i just got a chance to hear his songs and i liked it, so i decided to share it with everyone.

Jagjit Kaur said...

this is something new.. thanks for sharing it.. :)