By Akshay Acharya
Mumbai– The rise of Punjabi musician AP Dhillon has been meteoric in true sense. The singer-composer and his team of Shinda Kahlon, Gurinder Gill and Gminxr released their first track ‘Fake’ in 2019 and since then there has been no looking back for the Canada-based boys.
Songs like ‘Brown Munde’, ‘Excuses’ which went crazy viral on Instagram, ‘Wo Noor’, ‘Ma Balle’, ‘Summer High’ have solidified their position. It’s not easy to churn songs that turn into chartbusters but for AP and his team, the journey of a song starts with a good cup of tea that opens up all their senses and puts them right on track.
Talking to IANS, Dhillon shared: “Making good music starts with a good chai like a good cup of wholesome tea, it just fills the team with so much energy and helps to set the vibe. So yeah chai is a catalyst.”
First it’s the chai and then the magic follows as Dhillon gets to designing the beats on his Logic Digital Audio Workstation getting in the right sounds and textures with VSTs like Kontakt library and Omnisphere.
Punjabi language has always appealed to the larger audience both the Indian diaspora and non-Indians as well. Right from Gurdas Maan, Daler Mehndi to the more recent Diljit Dosanjh, Guru Randhawa and Dhillon, Punjabi music and language have disrupted the international scene time and again.
However, Dhillon and Shinda feel that language has got to do very little with the success of a track. If the music is good, people will lap it up regardless of the language.
AP told IANS: “I feel any artiste from every language today has equal opportunities. If your music is good, it will connect with people at large no matter what the language is. Primarily, it’s your music or the beat that has to appeal to the listeners. If the melody or the beat is good, people will like it and then they will take an active interest in learning that language too. So, as a musician your responsibility lies in making good music, because good music makes the language travel.”
Shinda concurred as he said: “With regard to Punjabi, I feel the language is easy to understand and is very sweet, so it easily gets into the listeners’ subconscious.”
Dhillon recently got his docu-series released on OTT, and is particularly intriguing for his fans because not much has been known about his life.
When asked if he is an introvert by choice, AP told IANS: “I’m not an introvert but I wanted to keep it to music. When I started my work in music, I didn’t have a roadmap to follow. It would have been easier if I had one, I wouldn’t have made the mistakes that I have made.”
Dhillon said that the docu-series is more of a roadmap for upcoming artistes so that they could learn and pick up the best and not repeat the mistakes that he has made.
“So this docu-series is kind of a give back to the community of brown artistes, and for all upcoming artistes so that they could take a cue from it and make better choices.” AP concluded.
‘AP Dhillon: First of a Kind’ is streaming on Prime Video. (IANS)
