Reinvention has been at the heart of everything that Bappi Lahiri — who turned 65 on Tuesday — has done in his 50-year career. The singer-composer, who introduced synthesised disco music in India, is now set to direct a feature film.
Lahiri earlier helmed a documentary ‘Slumstars’, but his new project will be a fictional story titled ‘Ek Adhura Sangeet’.
“I always think I should keep doing something every year. This time, I will begin a big journey as a director of a feature film. It’s a huge journey,” Lahiri said.
He said the subject of his film is “very good”.
“After doing 600 films across Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Oriya and Gujarati languages, I have gained a lot of experience. So, I thought I should give it a try. Maybe it does well. My wife Chitrani had produced ‘Lal Darja’ which won a National Award in 1997... Whatever film I make, it won’t be average. I can’t say it will be superhit, but nobody will say it’s a bad film. I am confident I will make a good film, whether it works or not,” said Lahiri.
Lahiri also hinted at doing something in Hollywood.
“My son Bappa and I are working with a Latin group,” he said.
Adding another feather to his hat, Lahiri has also written a book titled ‘World, Peace, Love and Harmony: We Are One’.
“It has good words like ‘our colour of blood is one’, ‘our emotion is one’... It’s all in the form of poetry,” said the singer.
“The journey is still on... The public loves me so much. I perform all over the world. I am not just a composer, I am also a singer. I sing with the public one-to-one, and it feels so good when the public, including youngsters, sway to and sing along songs that were made 20-25 years ago,” he said.
“I performed ‘Chalte Chalte Mere Ye Geet Yaad Rakhna’ at a recent event. I sang and the public joined in with the words ‘Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna’. It was beautiful,” he said of the track, sung by Kishore Kumar and penned by Amit Khanna.
He said while it is very difficult to choose a favourite song from his discography, ‘Chalte Chalte...” is special as “it feels like a Bollywood anthem”.
Lahiri’s mantra in life is to “Keep working. Don’t look back. Do something new.”