Papon on World Music Day: 'It's a good day to remind us that music is important'

Like every year, World Music Day is being celebrated on 21 June. Instead of reaching for your headphones to listen to your favourite songs, you can watch Papon along with other singers celebrating the day in style.

Artists Papon, Agnee, Faridkot, Nikhita Gandhi, Shashaa Tirupati and Shilpa Rao will be part of the World Music Day Carnival, which will be hosted by Sukriti and Prakiti Kakar.

Talking about the special show, which will air at 12 PM and 4 PM on MTV BEATS and Vh1 and 1.30 PM on MTV on 21 June, Papon says, “It’s more of a celebration of many artists coming together. It’s not a full concert, but there’s a lot of fun, games and conversations about music and our journey.”

“World Music Day is a good day to remind all of us that music is important in our lives. Otherwise, every day is music day. But it’s good to be reminded of a day when everyone celebrates music. It is an integral part of everyone’s life, so it is a great day to be celebrating,” he adds.

As for Papon, who has delivered many hits like ‘Moh Moh Ke Dhaage’, ‘Bulleya’, ‘Humnava’, ‘Kaun Mera’ and ‘Kyon’, he celebrates World Music Day every week. “I have been releasing one song in every ten days for the last few months. They have been cooking since I was locked down in my house for two years. Now the songs are released.”

“I am not doing anything specially on World Music Day, but I recently released a song. After World Music Day, I’ll be releasing another track.”

As a singer, he has been exploring many genres in multiple languages, but he would also like to listen to new talents, new voices and new sounds.

“I would like to see good music coming out. Most importantly, I want new talents, new voices, new sounds and new songs to be heard more. I want to see music coming from all corners of India so that we can have a diverse ground where we can have more variety of music,” shares Papon.

According to him, all genres of music should exist parallelly. “We should have radio stations of different genres. There shouldn’t be just one style or one genre only. There should be a channel for jazz music, another for folk then for pop and hip-hop I would like to have more variety than one genre every year. They should run parallelly which is lacking right now,” he points out.

The singer, who hails from Assam, has not only sung in Hindi and Assamese but also in Bengali, Tamil and Marathi.

“I take every song as a good song so anything that’s good irrespective of the language, it’s good to sing. I have sung in quite a few languages and sometimes, it’s nice to hear myself in another language. When it comes to my ears, I find it very exciting and interesting,” shares Papon.

The singer, who was among the luminaries from India to have attended the prestigious Cannes Film Festival as the cultural ambassador of Assam in May, often entertains his fans with his Assamese music. He recently teamed up with singer Shreya Ghoshal for a love song titled ‘Koi Nidiya Kiyaw in Tiwa’, Bodo and Assamese.

Talking about his love for singing in Assamese, he says, “I have spoken to poets of other languages. They always say that the phonetics are so nice that it sounds interesting when I sing in that language (Assamese). Since it’s my mother tongue, it’s more amazing for me and comfortable and exciting to sing in that language.”

While making new music has been keeping Papon busy, he is also looking forward to hitting the stage.

“Shows will start happening from October onwards, so there are shows lined up,” he says.

Natalia Ningthoujam is a Manipur-based journalist. She knows how to smoothly switch from being a fan to a writer whenever needed. She tweets at @nattynick.

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