Debojit: India's
New Singing Sensation
Back in India, people say that music is the voice of the soul.
So when Zee Television held one of its most popular seasons ever
of the show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa’s Challenge 2005 contest—a
reality-based music competition much like American Idol—there
was no doubt that the winner was going to be in the major leagues.
And he certainly was. The singer Debojit Saha fell on his knees,
as fireworks exploded, glitter fell and fans erupted into passionate
frenzy at his success.
Saha, who has entered the industry as a “simple
singer,” hails from the northeastern state of Assam and is
better known to his fan-base as “Debo” or “Debojit.”
Saha, the new face to watch out for in the booming Indian music
industry, chatted with ABCDlady in New Delhi, about his rise to
stardom and what’s coming up next.
A civil engineer who formerly worked in the Public
Works Department in Assam, Saha said that the only reason he went
to Mumbai was because of his wife, who wanted to move to the city
to pursue her dreams of becoming a fashion designer.
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Debojit Saha. |
She began encouraging
him to chase his dream of becoming a singer in the entertainment
industry. Throughout Challenge 2005, he constantly thanked her—she
was working to support the couple as he gave fame his best shot.
Starting out as an assistant to Pritam Chakraborty,
Saha had a chance to learn the ways of the industry—often
said to be the hardest in the world to crack into because it mainly
caters to those with old family connections and those who are very
gifted. Saha was dubbed as a talent from his early arrival in Mumbai
and was taken on by music guru, Askaran Sharma, who told him to
participate in competitions to gain experience and exposure. The
small-town boy said he was initially not so sure about jumping into
the public sphere because he was not used to facing large masses
of people. However, he eventually did enter Challenge 2005—and
the results speak for themselves!
Hard work paid off, said Saha, who was in Delhi to perform at the
outdoor venue at Tivoli Gardens. Excited about being on tour, he
expressed his passion for music and even sang a few lines of his
latest hit song “Jeena.”
“I still don’t feel like a star, I don’t ever
want that feeling to come to me,” he said, “I have always
been a common man and would like to stay that way…Sangeet
(music) is a God gift…we can only believe, automatically,
when there is darkness, we can only search—and music is an
anubhav, a sensation, something we can achieve.”
With a love of music that “happened naturally” as he
puts it, Saha started out as a child who loved to listen to music
while drawing. Soon music took over and his love of art developed
in a new direction. Bengali by birth, Saha laughingly acknowledges
that yes, he must be inclined naturally towards the arts like many
Bengalis—many Indian musical and literary figures have roots
from the eastern part of the country.
Despite receiving several recording contracts and maintaining a
current fan-base through a recent career in playback singing, Saha
says that the classical style remains his main passion in music.
This helped him during the contest when his television guru, the
famed Bollywood composer, Ismail Durbar, told him to give his best
shot and no less. “Win or lose, if you sing well, you’ll
get a good job in the industry,” Saha recalled Durbar telling
him. “With playback, one has to fulfill the director’s
requirements,” he added, “but with classical music,
it is one’s own song, one’s own direction.”
Saha is already forging ahead with a Hindi audio release out for
the new Bollywood film, Cabaret, and additional albums
in Assamese and Bengali, two languages in which he is fluent. In
true Indian style his attitude is relaxed towards whatever fate
might have in store for him. “Whatever is meant to happen,
will happen in its time,” he says. Still keeping in touch
with several of the other contestants, whom he says he speaks with
on the phone, Saha has not ruled out the potentiality of working
with them again. Saha also recently returned from a successful trip
to the United States, where he performed with Bollywood stars Saif
Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar and Sushmita Sen in the song and dance show
“Heat” in Dallas, Texas. Happy with the response to
his work in America, Saha is due for a second trip to the United
States and Canada this month, where he will be performing over 20
shows in both countries.
Despite his recent success and a new look, Saha
notes that “who I am will never change, the look is so that
people can say star jaisa lagta hai—he looks like
a star.”
Ambika Behal is a journalist, currently based in New Delhi.
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