Here's an interview of the legendary and the golden voice of Indian music industry, Sonu Niigaam Ji..................................................................................
Where have you been all these months?
I have been in Los Angeles. For a long time now I have been seeking silence. I have wanted to move to a place that was quieter, perhaps a farmhouse. At that time, I didn’t understand that peace of mind ought not to be sought from outside. You don’t need the silence to feel silence.
So, if silence is to come from within, why LA?
I have known for the longest time that music is only a by product in my life, it’s not my whole life. I’m not supposed to die just a singer. My aim in life is not to just sing 25,000 songs. There’s much more to me. This is the direction my thoughts had taken, when something happened and Chaka Khan came into my life. Chaka is a legend, the American singer who has sung I’m every woman. She is the person responsible for my new life.
How?
Chaka heard my album in which I had sung some classical and jazz stuff, she really fell in love with me and wanted me to come to America to make music together. Last year I went there and she introduced me to the people who have made music for Janet Jackson including the song Scream for Michael and Janet Jackson together.
I didn’t do too much with Chaka and Judi Jam and Terry Louis, but I created my own space there. I also realised that I wasn’t too keen to do anything in Mumbai. I applied for my green card and in fact for the first two months I didn’t even let my wife come there, I just wanted to be alone.
I lived in a small room in my friend’s huge house with not even a TV. I had nothing to do, I just had some books and my laptop and I would just sit and look at the walls. I’ve never done that in my life I’ve never sat doing nothing. In those two months self-realisation happened.
What did you discover about yourself?
I’m not me. This is not what I am. I don’t want people to call me mad but I died last year. I don’t exist because what I thought existed, never existed. I realised last year that I’m an eternal creature. We say that life is eternal, the soul is eternal, and God is eternal. Do you really understand the magnitude of this statement that I will never die and I will live for ever and there is no separate God. There is no superior God. I’m not an inferior creature. I’m just a limited vision because I’m trapped in this body. If you pinch me I get hurt, close my eyes, fifty per cent of it is gone, close my ears another forty per cent of me is gone, what am I left with, only ten per cent of taste and pinching. What kind of world does that create outside me and around me. I realised that everything is about perception and I heard the silence and the noise within. It’s a very contradictory thing. There is something happening inside which is silence but you can hear it and it’s only when you sit within or around yourself, that you realise that there is nothing.
This realisation couldn’t happen in Mumbai?
I just wanted some space within myself. When I am in Mumbai, I work all the time. People call up, and there are social obligations. When you go to a place where nobody knows you, you get that space. There is nice mix of nothingness and everythingness.
So what happens to work, to singing songs, your primary job?
I work over the internet. I did at least forty five songs over there during this period. The tracks were sent to me, I would book a studio and then over skype for video conferencing, with me and my mixers on laptops I would record the songs. I recorded Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and English songs.
You got your green card within a few months...
Yes, in two and a half months. Even my lawyer was surprised. There was no interview, nothing. Evidently the authorities just googled me, saw my credibility, noted that I don’t have litigations against me and no controversies either. And so, on Diwali I got the news that my green card had been approved.
What is the sort of work you will be pursuing in America?
Multi genre work, actually. There is this very famous rapper called Mr. Vegas, who heard of me and sent me a song. He said can you add something to it. Normally these guys take a lot of money. It’s a reverse thing. You have to pay them money, if you want to collaborate with a big artiste. This guy googled me, saw my stuff and asked me what I could do with the track. I reprogrammed the song and that song is creating havoc everywhere in UK and USA.
If you have achieved a oneness with yourself why do you keep changing the spelling of your name?
It implies that other factors matter. I did that nine years ago. If I had an option, I wouldn’t do that today but nine years ago, I was not where I am today and that’s when I changed the name, so now whether I rechange it or I keep it, doesn’t make a difference to me.
Your marriage has been the subject of many rumours and innuendos. What is the truth actually?
The truth is that marriage is never a happy story. You can never be happily married and I say this very openly. In the next 100 years there will be no marriages. There will be contracts, I’m sure and that’s better that way because the killer of a marriage is security. The moment the woman or the man feels secure ke ab to ye mere saath mein hai, oh she is going to be with me for her whole life, it’s like ok lets not make love to her now, next week, I’m tired today. You won’t do this to your girlfriend because you know she is going to walk away in the morning. The moment you start feeling secure, you start taking people for granted. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just that the institution of marriage is now so cumbersome and so boring. I feel if you have mutual contracts, three years or four years contract, every day you will feel ki ek din kam ho gaya, one day less. The last six months will be the most romantic months. I understand this very clearly and I have no qualms talking about it because I am speaking the plain truth.
I haven’t seen one happy couple, really really happy couple. I’m not looking down on them. We all understand this but yes Madhurima and I have had our issues in the past but my son Nivaan is so beautiful, so awesome, I’m honored to be parenting a child as intelligent and as positive as that little boy. He’s also brought a lot of samajh into me and Madhu, and into our relationship. I know it’s impossible to live with a person like me who is always searching for something. Madhu would have probably expected that I would be like the normal husband, get up at 9 o’clock and come home in the evening. She sleeps alone the whole night while I go to bed at 6am. If I am at home, I am working on my music. Of course, I am an irritating husband. I can’t blame her but this is me. So she has her own problems with me, I understand, but we are trying to do a good samajhdhari ka relationship, trying to put things together nicely. I can’t guarantee the future but right now we are fine.
