Yeh khabar chhapwa do akhbaar mein...Shweta Shetty is back!
The ‘90s Indipop diva is all set to win back her fans with a concert, and this time she also has a band of her own!
If you are still grooving to the foot-tapping Poster Lagwa Do Song from Luka Chuppi, we have some good news for you. The singer of the original song starring Urmila Mantodkar and Akshay Kumar (Aflatoon), is back and is all set for a fresh innings in the industry.
Shweta Shetty, the robust voice behind chartbusting ’90s songs like Mangta Hai Kya (Rangeela) and Rukmani Rukmani (Roja), had been on a hiatus for 20 years. Although she came back to India in 2015 and was part of a theatrical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice called Reth, Songs Of The Sand, she is finally back to doing what she loves the most, singing!
“It is a dream of mine that is finally coming true after almost 20 years. I had shifted to Germany but whenever I would come to Bombay I would always have this yearning to sing on stage as part of a band!” quips the 49-year-old curly-haired indipop diva who still gets every ’90s kid swooning to hear songs.
Her upcoming concert, Soul2Soul: A Nostalgic Evening of Pop, Retro and Jazz, is scheduled for this Saturday at the Royal Opera House, Mumbai. “I always wanted to perform at this amazing venue. I always believe that God has strange ways to make your dreams come true!” she smiles.
A collaboration with veteran composer and Jazz pianist Louiz Banks and actor-singer Dalip Tahil, the band also has Gino Banks on drums, Rhys D’souza on saxophone, Avishek Dey on bass and Kush Upadhyay on guitar. And Shweta is bubbling with excitement. “I call Louiz Banks butter fingers! He doesn’t just play the instrument, he makes you swoon! I had worked with him when I was starting off and now I am doing a show with him! Life seems to have come a full circle of sorts! Rhys is Merlin D’Souza’s son and the last I had seen him, he was still inside his mom’s womb!” she smiles.
It is a motley group of talented musicians and Shweta is excited: “It is only a month we have been rehearsing for this. We have all age-groups but when you are doing music, it hardly matters. It is all about music and our collective love for it. Thankfully, no one is calling me aunty yet!” she laughs out loud.
She points out that it has been a long time that she has done a live show and she is making sure everything is perfect. “We all know that we can’t have a second shot at the first impression. So we decided to do the best out of what is available to us. I will be singing songs of the likes of Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Mariah Carey, Beyonce. I have chosen some big and difficult songs for the show because I want to prove the point that we Indians can to do justice to these big songs. There are very few who can do justice to these mighty singers. If you have to copy someone, be a good copy. There is nothing worse than a bad copy.”
She will also be doing a few of her own songs like Deewane and Johny Johny. “Because people will expect those songs since I am coming back on stage after so long,” she says adding, “I would have loved to do my Bollywood classics like Mangta hai kya and Rukmani Rukmani…but we realised that it will require a lot of permissions from a lot many people. And since this is just a debut show, we decided to keep those for a later date.”
Shweta hopes that this will just be a beginning to her new inning as a singer. “We have founded this band because we want to travel with it. I am hoping we would!” she says. But she is also looking at Bollywood. “There comes a point in life when you want to experiment with new things and I think I have returned to India at a very interesting time with newer avenues opening up every day. Hopefully soon I will find the inroads to Bollywood that has been another long cherished dream.”
She is optimistic about making an even bigger splash in Bollywood this time around. “We have to keep up with Bollywood. They have really upped their game in the past few years and become very experimental in their approach. Now Bollywood is also doing the kind of music I did 20 years back and which was then maybe ahead of times. So I think the timing is just perfect for me to make a comeback. Also, the young audience is educated and exposed to quality stuff from across the world. You can’t fool them. Anything mediocre will eventually get rejected. But if you have talent, nothing can stop you, not even global warming! ” she signs off.
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From HT Brunch, May 7, 2019
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