Bollywood isn’t really an industry, it’s an extended family: Sona Mohapatra
Singer Sona Mohapatra on being trolled for speaking up against Salman Khan, on the clique that is Bollywood and why she’d rather be a performing artiste than a playback singer.
Singer Sona Mohapatra considers Bollywood as an extended family
Singer Sona Mohapatra on being trolled for speaking up against Salman Khan, on the clique that is Bollywood and why she’d rather be a performing artiste than a playback singer.
Raman Raghav 2.0 has an inventive soundscape and your song, Qatl-e-aam, is quite unique in the way it merges ghazal with trance. What was the brief given to you by your husband, music composer Ram Sampath?
If you’ve trained in Hindustani ghazal, like I have, you would have that one odd class with your guruji, where he would want you to not attempt raagdaari and sing a complex, intricate ghazal. Recording Qatl-e-aam felt like one of those sessions. The love story in the film is very unusual and twisted, a straightforward approach wouldn’t capture that musically. Ghazal is almost a 900-year-old form and has various nuances. Varun’s (Grover) lyrics fall in the classic format — there’s a rhyming couplet, a refrain and a certain way in which it flows — and there’s Ram, who turns the piece on its head with hard trance and much craziness.
Recording the piece was great fun. The joy of working with Ram is that I’m there from the beginning of the project. I don’t go to it like a session artiste, where I have been given a song to sing. He gives me the script, the colour and contours of the film and I go into the song space knowing those. These things affect the music.
This is the first time that Anurag Kashyap has worked with you and Ram. How was the experience of collaborating with him?
Anurag is the kind of guy who sees other creative people as genuine collaborators and believes that’s the only way to get the best out of them. He doesn’t stifle you. He tells you his vision but doesn’t try to do your job for you. He is the captain of the ship and has a childlike excitement for the music of the film. In this case, he let Ram be. There was no pressure to cast a particular musician because that’s what the director wanted. It’s been a long time since Ram’s been allowed to be himself. The best work comes out when that happens.
You’ve courted a lot of controversy on Twitter, especially after speaking up against Salman Khan’s comment about feeling like a “raped woman”. Then, a few months ago, police complaints were filed against you for reinterpreting Sambalpuri cult folk song Rangabati for Coke Studio. What do you feel is the role of the artiste in today’s time? And how do you handle trolling and criticism?
We are in 2016. The real issue of women’s rights is at a flashpoint. In a land where women are burnt and thrown acid at, any man who has a brain will stand by them and not call himself a “raped woman”. As for the trolling after the Salman issue, which is still on, I’m not concerned about it. From morphed naked pictures of me to threatening me with rape in every way possible; from perverted messages to being called absolutely talentless, it’s all been done. It reflects the society we live in and I really don’t care. You want to bully me, you want to intimidate me, please do. I’ll be just fine without the patronage of famous families.
As for Rangabati, I wanted to showcase the music of Orissa, the place I come from. Folk is the true pop of our land and there needs to be more than just Punjabi and Rajasthani folk out there. Something special came out of that piece. A conversation came out of it — art reinventing itself and finding a different contemporary direction and becoming relevant. What is not liked can be avoided. Why does one have to be outraged? I would like to push boundaries. I don’t want to sing just love songs and wait for my next playback offer. Some people love controversy. Negativity has more traction and that’s the unfortunate truth of today.
Does it bother you that the industry operates on the basis of proximity to stars or star families? Has the Salman issue been a wake-up call of sorts?
I don’t believe it’s really an industry. It’s an extended family. It’s the reason why my so-called liberal and progressive peers in the industry will have a point of view on just about everything, but when it comes to one of their own, nobody will open their mouths. As for me, I’ve never really felt a part of the industry. I’ve never been in the inner circle anyway, and never wanted to be either. I want to do good work. What I feel happy for are two things — the ones who work with us are the ones who believe in talent and merit and not who’s sucking up to whom. And there are people who believe that you are equal collaborators in creating art. Most of us in the industry operate out of fear and fear is not a great driving force for creativity, evolution or growth. What I’ve observed and felt in my last 10 years in the industry is that there is this deep-rooted hierarchy in the way things operate here. There is a caste system. You are supposed to stay in your aukaat (place). It is sometimes overt and sometimes covert, but it’s there. I’ve never believed in this aukaat business.
A lot of your successful work has come from your collaboration with Ram. But why do you have such few songs with other composers? The ones that exist haven’t really caused a blip on the charts.
The thing with Ram is not complex to understand. We spend a lot of our time together, we influence each other, engage with our socio-political environment and it influences us. We are constantly pushing each other to look at things we aren’t interested in. He makes me listen to things I never used to hear earlier and I make him listen to folk — something he didn’t hear much of before.
The opportunity to collaborate with others are few and far between. I have stopped trying to figure out why there are only 20 out of 100 songs for women to start with. There’s always a male singer phase. Someone is an icon. There was Kailash (Kher) once, then Sonu (Nigam), now it’s Arijit (Singh). There is no ‘great’ female singer being celebrated. Secondly, I’ve stopped thinking it’s anything to do with people not liking me. It’s a complex I’ve gotten over.
There is also this humiliating space where one song is sung by five singers and one is picked. I’ve sung twice for Pritam and someone else’s version was kept. It’s weird when they tell you that Sunidhi (Chauhan), Richa (Sharma) and some other singer has sung it and I have to, too. The director will take a call. Is this a lottery or what? You don’t know how to place yourself in that song then. I would rather do my own thing than sing like this. Thankfully, things are changing. Producers are interested in great writing and great voices. It will change.
You’ve always loved the idea of being a performing artiste than being a playback singer, haven’t you?
In Ram’s words, I’m 100 times the artiste onstage as compared to being inside a studio. My fantasies have always been about being on stage with audiences roaring. I’ve done 57 shows in the last seven months in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Two lakh people show up and I don’t have to sing my Bollywood songs and get done. I get to take their folk music and reinvent it. I want to be the artiste and the voice that bridges the ancient and the contemporary. I never wanted to be a chameleon who can sing every kind of song. I never wanted to be someone who can do everything. It lets you push your boundaries, but you have to be true to yourself. I admire sessions artistes, but I have always wanted to be more that just a voice singing songs. I want to tell stories that excite me, reinvent a ghazal format. For example, Jiya laage na (Talaash, 2012) has the spirit and soul of a thumri, but marries a drum and bass with it. I can’t sing to a converted audience in a club.
You pretty much speak your mind. Is that why there have been more brickbats than bouquets in your career?
I don’t worry about what people say. I have to say what I have to say. I am not always right, but I will speak my mind and I will stand by it. If I make a mistake, I will apologise and there is no ego in that. There is no facade here. What you see is what you get. I have built a small but committed fan base and I love that there is no gatekeeper. I live in an age where I can converse with them directly. But that said, nobody is doing me a favour by being a fan. You are listening to the music that you are, because you like it. If you don’t, you should move on. Personally, I have a huge issue with the celebrity culture. People are not holding them to the same standards as everyone else, which is unacceptable.
Tell me something about the kind of music you listened to while growing up. How has the journey from being a marketing executive at Marico to a musician been like?
My parents were music buffs and there was a lot of ghazal, RD Burman, Mehdi Hasan playing in the house. After my engineering and MBA degrees, I joined Marico but I knew I wanted to sing. Coming to Mumbai and working was also a way to keep the singing dream alive. I went to Orissa to meet my relatives and cut a demo there because it was cheaper to do that in Orissa than in Mumbai. I showed it around and people thought that I was way too naive to have songs by Shubha Mudgal and Lata Mangeshkar on it. There was no quick, interesting and quirky piece on it. But somehow, I landed an album contract first with Virgin, which didn’t work out, and then with SaReGaMa. The pop industry collapsed right then and the album eventually came out with Sony Music. The album was noticed and the slow process of finding my footing in the industry began.
What are you currently working on?
There are songs I have sung in Bollywood, but until they come out in my voice, I cannot be sure if I am the singer yet. But what is really exciting me is my project, Sona Sings Meera, where Meera’s spirit will be presented through a music travel documentary first, and then, an album. I will present Meera’s music, look at dying art forms and introduce other artistes. I will keep putting out singles. It’s music seeking an egalitarian world.
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