BAM-boozled by Bolly

The talented Bhuvan Bam will be performing with a number of other famous artists at the Red FM Riders Music Festival (RMF), this December to end the year on a heart-pumping musical note. This show will take place in New Delhi on December 22 and 23 at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. “I will be performing six of my original songs and the rest will be commercial — I mean songs that people have already heard and love grooving to. So it is going to be a mixture and blend of my own songs and Bollywood numbers,” Bam says.

The singer is popular with music lovers for his songs Pass hoon (2014), Teri Meri Kahaani (2016), Sang hoon tere (2018), Safar (2018), Rahguzar (2018) and Pyaar.

“We will also be putting up an act at the Writer’s Festival titled Safar,” he adds. Safar sees Bhuvan performing a play with his friends in a five-piece act. It his journey from being a musician at a restaurant singing to probably 20 people, or even in an empty restaurant to performing for 3,500 to 10,000 people. “We covered our first song two years ago, and starting 2018, we released three tracks. We are also going to be putting up two songs in the first quarter of 2019,” Bhuvan says.

The musician is a huge fan of Lucky Ali and others who are prominent in the independent zone. Mohit Chauhan is one of his favourites too. Thus he will be covering a few songs from their compositions. “It is going to be a mix of all and a journey of music onstage,” he reveals.

About the start of his musical leanings, Bhuvan Bam recalls, “When I was in Grade 4, my mother wanted me to learn classical music. She got me admitted into one of the music schools nearby. It was like home tuition. I used to go to the tutor’s place and she used to teach us, a batch of 11 students. I did that for two to three years. Then studies became the focus, and I lost touch as I stopped going there.”

However music was still a large part of his life, “I used to take part in my school’s extra curricular activities and inter-school competitions. After school, I thought I would work part-time at a pizza outlet as I didn’t want to take more money from my parents. They said I was too young. I even went to a restaurant where a man was singing Karaoke, and realised that it was his day job. So I spoke to the manager about my my passion for music, and requested him to hire me,” he adds.

Bhuvan does not plan for the future, and prefers short term goals. “I have performed everywhere in north and central India. I want to perform down south and in the north-east. My favourite performances have been in Chandigarh, Bhopal and Nagpur,” he replies. As for the restaurant gig early in his career, they said no initially, and he was asked to come back on Navratri. “They heard my music and they loved it and soon I became a regular there. I started composing my own songs. That is where my musical journey began. I used to perform old Bollywood songs by Hemant Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar. I started wanting to write and compose my own songs,” he admits.

The singer and composer has been performing at various festival in New Delhi. “I got chances of playing at festivals. I like to listen to what pleases my senses. There is no particular favourite genre but if you ask me I like Blues, Jazz, especially Coldplay from Western favourites. In India I like Hemant Kumar, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi and all the classics” Bam adds.

The singer believes that music does not have a target audience, and that it should reach out to the masses. The more people it reaches out to, the better. “I feel I haven’t achieved much in music, and I have lot more to do. I have one crore followers out of a country of 100 crore. Once you start, you don’t want to stop. The time hasn’t come when I can say I am successful, yet people know me for a reason. I have a long way to go,” he signs off.