Pash in the twang

Neha Kirpal

Born into a Sikh family in Kurukshetra, Punjabi and Hindi came naturally to independent musician Harpreet Singh. While growing up, he felt a strange connection with poetry and music, which led him to experiment with different sounds. This fuelled his interest in languages, and he now composes music in Urdu, Bengali and Rajasthani too.

He calls the varied musical influences a matter of chance. “I feel a strong inclination towards poetry by mystics like Bulleh Shah and Kabir, which led me to explore more poetry,” he says. He was also influenced by Pash’s revolutionary poems, especially Ghah (Grass). Recently, he composed his first Urdu song, ‘Bol Ke Lab Azaad Hain Tere’, a poem by Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

Harpreet has been composing music for poetry of other Hindi and Punjabi poets, including Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Madan Lal Didi, Deepak Dhamija, Maheep Singh, Naresh Saxena, Gurbhajan Gill and Varun Grover. He recently performed his signature Sufi folk music at the final edition of the three-part monthly concert series, Under the Banyan Tree on A Full Moon Night, at Qutub Minar.

He has also composed a song, ‘Kutte’, for the 2014 film Titli. Harpreet says the song was originally written by Deepak and Maheep for a 2011 play. “Once Dibakar Banerjee heard me singing the song during one of my performances and offered to feature the song in a film,” he recalls.

Currently, Harpreet is busy working on music videos for his YouTube channel, which involves his new compositions based on poetry written by himself, Varun Grover, Gopal Datt, Bhawani Prasad Mishra, Shah Hussain and Kabir.

As a poet, he doesn’t want to be typecast in a genre. This is why all his poems and songs have been inspired by different situations.