Shaan of India

Shaan will feature on the soundtracks of all of this year's big Bollywood films, but P.Ramakrishnan finds him unexpectedly modest.

When reminded of his first encounter with fame, Indian singer Shaan bursts out laughing. The 35-year old performer, born Shantanu Mukherjee, was appearing on television with his indie-pop group Oorja back in the early 1990s when a gaggle of female fans tried to grab his vest.

"Surely you're confusing me with someone else,"he says. "Girls have never been that interested in me. I was never cool."

His ever-present smile and long hair (shorn since he got married) seem to have ensured that he would attract teen fans, but Shaan feigns ignorance. "That wasn't me. I've never been a heart-throb."

Shaan, who will perform in Hong Kong next week, was born into a musical family. His father was music director Manas Mukherjee and his sister Sagarika is also a singer. He started singing jingles and trying to make it as an independent singer without joining the ranks of behind-the-scenes Bollywood playback singers.

"We wanted to be a pop group, but it never took off," he says. "The first album did relatively well, but the Indian pop scene is nowhere as strong as Bollywood film albums. I sang for a few films - not the big-budget ones, but smaller movies with new casts. Although the films didn't do brilliantly, the music did. And somehow I kept getting calls to sing for Hindi films."

Having won just about every award for best male playback singer for last year's song Subhaan Allah, from the film Fanaa, Shaan's career is now rock solid. As the host of a reality TV show, he's better known than most of his contemporaries. His appearances on TV and in film ("which I did for a lark - and never again!") haven't dulled his desire to remain a singer.

"I love singing in stage shows for the reaction - you know what the audience likes and what's popular," he says. "I mostly sing for a younger crowd as the music that's in clubs today - the film songs - cater to youth. But at the same time I also love to sing old numbers with great lyrics and melodies.

Despite appearing in front of a live audience every week for his television show, Shaan says he doesn't get nervous. "I've heard of singers who don't speak for 24 hours before they go on stage to save their voices, or don't sit near air-conditioning, or have strange diets. But if I had to not speak for a day, I'd go mad.

"I pray that I didn't get a cold or a cough on concert nights, but somehow I always pull through. I guess I'm lucky"

What's been his most memorable performance?

"Years ago, I was on a stage somewhere and a gun was shot in the audience. I have to wear specs, I have poor eye sight, but I don't when I go on stage - so I had no idea what was going on and I kept singing. A bullet was fired somewhere. I thought it was part of the act by the producers aand I kept going. With the stage lights and without my glasses, I couldn't see anything and kept thinking, "Well, the show must go on."

Shaan has landed work singing for nearly all the major Indian films in the coming year, and he's booked for concerts throughout Asia, the US and Britain.

He has been voted one of India's most popular singers by his peers, and never appears in the tabloids.

"That has more to do with the times than me," he says. "Gone are the old days when singers were constantly competing against each other. Now, there are hundreds of films being made and thousands of songs to be sung. There 's work for everyone. So why bother back-biting and bitching?

"It isn't just me. My contemporaries feel the same way. We all steer clear of controversy and fights in print."

Shaan has just one complaint about the music scene. "I do wish singers were a bit better trained. I can always tell a good singer from a great one, when they've studied music, learned the craft and their voices aren't as scratchy or they don't break when they hit the high notes."

His own vocal range is wide, and he performs love songs, rock'n roll and melancholy numbers with equal ease.

"May be there's a trend towards a variety of voices, so the new generation craves a different sound - and I'm fine with that," he says. "But with strange videos and technological inputs, there's little actual singing involved."

Thursday, August 23, 2007