When life was a song…

Gurnaaz Kaur

College time poetry, old-word charm, simplicity, a tune that tugs at your heartstring… Ik Sufna by Jasbir Jassi is all that and more. He recorded the song before the lockdown and the plan was to just put an audio or a video of his with holding a mic on Facebook, but thank God the lockdown happened.

“Since there was so much time to think and do things differently, when my friend Mukesh Chabbra heard the song and suggested to shoot a video for it, I instantly agreed.” The reason for Jasbir to have given a nod was not only because he had time on his hands but because it brought a chance to experiment. “It had to be an online shoot but we did it with a professional team. Navneet Kaur Dhillon was roped in. While she shot from Chandigarh, I did my part from my home in Delhi. It was all on Zoom. It was all so different.”

Views don’t count

To be liked by masses is every singer, rather every celebrity’s first wish. Now when Jasbir has come out with a new song, how much does the number of views on the video matter? “Views aren’t so important; it is more important that your work reaches people. There are songs with 300 million views yet people don’t know about them. It’s a mafia for fake publicity; it has been there, against the right parameters, promoting fake art. I don’t care about who has viewed my songs or not.”

Who doesn’t like a novel experience, especially for a song that is close to one’s heart for more than one reason? “This song was a hit during our college days, say in the 1990s. It’s written by a senior named Ram Singh, who is now in administrative services in Punjab. We would sing it or he would recite it as poetry whenever our group got together. It makes me nostalgic, brings forth all the beautiful memories of the time when we would sing while playing the harmonium. Things were so relaxed,” he says.

Obviously, he did this song for himself. “I wasn’t sure if people would like it, so I did no marketing. Suddenly there were so many people appreciating it. I am quite surprised. I think the lockdown has changed their taste in music, made it more reflective and refined. Earlier, they only focused on beats and what is trending; all the violence and abusiveness in the songs was the ‘It’ things, thankfully, there is a shift,” he says.

Since Jasbir Jassi wasn’t too sure about the song, he released it under his banner thereby reviving his production company. “There is a sense of freedom when you are running all the risks. With another company, one has to follow what the audience likes but Ik Sufna is special and I wanted to do justice to it.”

The singer agrees that he has been into commercial songs, but poetry, Heer, Baba Bulleh Shah have always been a part of his vocabulary. He says, “I think the lockdown was the right time for this song since I gained the maturity level for such work. It is during this time that I got back to reading. Economically, it has been a difficult time, not just for me alone, but it has been an opportunity to connect with self, go back to my roots and cherish all things plain and simple. Thus, I can confidently say Ik Sufna has been a successful experiment.”