Daler Mehndi India’s Pop Artist
Daler Mehndi is one of India’s leading bhangra/pop singers. Mehndi was a student of traditional Punjabi music and his first album broke sales records in India. He has recorded several highly successful albums in India, and also sung in several Bollywood movies. His international popularity has grown in recent years allowing him to tour the United States.
As a Sikh, born and raised in Patna, he began singing at age 6 and was taught the ragas and Shabads from the Guru Granth Sahib by his parents. At age fourteen he spent three years refining his voice and learning the tabla, dholak/dhool, harmonium and tanpura from Late Ustad Raahat Ali Khan Saheb of Gorakhpur. Mehndi then moved to San Francisco, United States and worked as a cab driver before returning to India in 1991 and forming a band. Initially he sang Afghan songs, and ghazals inspired by the poets Qateel Shifai and Firaq Gorakhpuri. Mehndi eventually switched from classical music to pop, and in 1995 his first album Bolo Ta Ra Ra, with tunes based on those given to him by his mother. The album sold over 20 million copies in just four months making him the best selling non-soundtrack album in Indian music history. His album song "Tunak Tunak Tun" is an Internet phenomenon. He received the Award for Voice of Asia International Ethnic and Pop Music Contest in 1994.
Daler Mehndi specializes in a type of Hindi-Pop that he infuses with Rababi singing, a Sikh musical tradition that sounds similar to that of Techno, dance, and house music, with folk sounds of an Indian tabla being played in the background. His popularity and the concurrent revival of Bhangra music is thought to be driven by the ease of dancing to it and a national pride in the Indian people.