BILLBOARD
MAKING WAVES
SHORT TAKES
SOUTHERN SPICE
REVIEWS
ROUGH CUTS
MEMORIES
ARCHIVES
MOVIES CHAT

'I don't need six movie stars, hundred musicians, another hundred dancing girls in varying stages of undress'

Gurdas Mann Click for bigger pic!

He has no sexy dancers pirouetting on the stage with him. He sticks to serious poetry for his lyrics. He is much, much older than the rest and yet Gurdas Mann draws huge crowds and remains the top star of Punjabi folk in the era of bhangra rap.

Mann drew record crowds at Wembley last month and his new movie, Shaheed-e-Mohabbat which premiered on Sony, has bust all records at the theatres. Pritish Nandy spoke to him last week.

Do you think you were ahead of your times? Otherwise, how would you explain the huge gap between your first album in 1982 and the bhangra pop revolution that is now sweeping the discotheques worldwide?

In a sense you are right. I came early. But if you look at the way my songs have done over the years, their popularity, their sales, their audiences, you will realise that the excitement always existed. My songs may not have been exactly setting the discos on fire but wherever you went in Punjab people were singing them. The villages, the small towns, everywhere. It was a change from the usual double entendres, the smut that was popular before. I brought decent lyrics into fashion. The poems of serious poets like Shiv Kumar Batalvi were sung for the first time and people liked it. In the way they like Jagjit Singh.

But you are not as conservative as Jagjit Singh? You prance around the stage and dance and sing?

Gurdas Mann in Shaheed-e-Mohabbat Click for bigger pic!

Yes, but tradition still breathes in my music. I do not use half naked girls as props. I do not lip sync on stage. I do not do minus one track; I always sing live. I have no dancers. I am alone on stage and I hold my audience, I interact with them all the time. That is the soul of my music. Interaction. Live interaction with a live audience. It always works. I had eight shows last month in the UK -- in Glasgow, Leicester, Birmingham, Manchester, etcetera -- and each one was chock full. Including Wembley.

I did not need an entourage of six movie stars, hundred musicians, another hundred dancing girls in varying stages of undress. I sang alone, all by myself and the audience listened. The entire stadium was full. That is my reward.

Folk? Not bhangra pop? Not bhangra rap?

It is difficult to make a difference between one form of popular music and the other. All I can say was that the entire stadium was dancing with me at the end of it. You know where my real tradition comes from? Sufi. Sufi music has inspired me always and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is the composer I admire the most. The great love stories of Punjab have been my inspiration, my theme.

Well, you have just acted in a love story which has turned out to be blockbuster. Where did you find the story of Shahid-e-Mohabbat Buta Singh?

In Dominique Lapierre's book, Freedom at Midnight. It was a two or three page story there, from which we developed the screenplay.

Whose idea was it?

Gurdas Mann Click for bigger pic!

My wife produced the film and my friend Manoj Punj directed it. The story was very simple. It was about this old World War II veteran, who was unmarried and had saved some money to find himself a wife. It was Partition times and riots were raging all over and he rescues this abducted girl from Pakistan, from a village called Birki, and in the process falls in love with her. To rescue her, he gives away all his savings to the abductors, to pay them off. The love between this man and the young abducted girl grows. Finally, they marry and settle down. They have a child.

Later, when he is away from the village for a short spell, the local police come and forcefully take away his wife because this law has been enacted in India, under pressure from Mridula Sarabhai, that all women who were forcefully abducted during the Partition riots must be returned to their homes. There was a police report that Zenab, for that was her name, had been abducted and they traced her to Buta Singh's home and picked her up and sent her back to Birki village.

When Buta Singh returns home, he goes mad seeing her gone. He follows her across the border and eventually reaches her village, where he finds that they have married her off to a relative. He protests, is arrested by the police and brought to court, where he tells his story to the judge.

Meanwhile, the law is changed under public pressure and the new law gives an option to the abducted woman, after a month in isolation, to decide where she wants to go. Back home or to the person who has abducted her. So Zenab now gets a choice. But, alas for Buta Singh, she buckles under the pressure and refuses to recognise him as her husband. The judge, a compassionate man, does not punish Buta Singh. Instead, he lets him off, to go back home across the border and start life afresh.

Buta Singh goes back but only to kill himself, leaving behind his sad tale on a sheet of paper. When people read about his plight, they want to take his body back to Birki so that he can be put to rest there. The villagers of Birki resist and you have a riot instead. It is a very brief, very slight story in the book. We built on it while writing the screenplay.

And you played the key role as well?

Yes, as Buta Singh.

You are also acting, I am told, as Shahid Bhagat Singh in another film. Is martyrdom your claim to fame?

Yes, the crew is now shooting in Scotland. Raj Babbar is making the film, Shahid Udham Singh. I am playing Bhagat Singh there.

Why this obsession for martyrdom?

It is good role. I liked it very much. The film will be ready soon.

I believe Shahid-e-Mohabbat has done very well at the theatres. What do you attribute this to? Your role? The story? The revival of popular interest in Punjabi music, Punjabi cinema?

Well, the film has done very well wherever in the world it has been shown. It is now going to several film festivals starting with the one at Vancouver. The international rights have been sold at an unimaginable price. Considering the fact that no one screens Punjabi films overseas in cinema halls. In Bombay it was in the theatres for four weeks. Not a mean achievement for a Punjabi language film!

But on Sony it was dubbed into Hindi for the world premiere?

Gurdas Mann Click for bigger pic!

Yes. That is why it had such a stupendous response. Johnny Lever called me from here. I was in London, performing on stage. They told me his phone had come and it was urgent. I went offstage and took the call, only to be told by him that the film had a terrific impact on viewers out here. I was absolutely thrilled. I went back on stage doubly energised.

You enjoy positive feedback?

All performers do. That is why I love the stage. I get my feedback right then and there from the audience. The way they shout, scream, ask for what they want. Nothing can quite compare with that.

Not even movies?

No, not even movies. I enjoy being an actor but music is my first love. I love the stage, the footlights, the adulation, the huge crowds yelling for more. Cinema cannot give me that. That is why I travel so much. My next stop is Aurangabad on the 14th. Then Patiala. Then somewhere else. It never ends, this travel. This excitement. It is like a roadshow that goes on and on and on.

EARLIER FEATURE:
Shaheed-e-Mohabbat