Tuesday, August 13, 2013
SONU NIGAM (born 30
July 1973 in Faridabad, Haryana,to Agam Kumar Nigam and Shobha
Nigam) is an Indian singer whose songs have been featured mainly in Hindi and Kannada languages.
He has also sung many songsin Urdu, Oriya, Tamil,Assamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu and
Nepali movies. He has released Indian pop albums and acted
in a few movies. He had changed the spelling of his last name from 'Nigam' to
'Niigaam' in accordance with numerology, but later reverted to the
original spelling.
His initial years in Mumbai proved to be a struggle,
beginning by singing covers of Mohammed Rafi songs, mainly for a
number of "Rafi Ki Yaadein" albums released by T-Series.
T-Series promoter Gulshan Kumar gave him a chance to reach a larger audience.
In these years Nigam's singing style was regarded by some to be a "Rafi
clone". Nigam's first movie song as a playback singer was for Janam (1992),
which was never officially released. He then began making radio commercials.
Nigam started hosting the popular TV show, Sa Re Ga Ma,
in 1995 with the first episode airing on 1 May. The singing talent competition
soon became one of the most popular shows on Indian television. Soon after, he
sang "Accha Sila Diya" for the film Bewafa Sanam (1995). His
first major success was with the Anu Malik-composed song "Sandese
Aate Hai" in Border (1997). Sonu's Album "Deewana"
was released by T-Series in 1999, revealing his talent for singing romantic
songs and the music directed by Sajid, and Wajid and it remains one of India's
most successful albums. Sonu's image as a 'Rafi clone' changed after his
rendition of the Nadeem-Shravan-composed song "Yeh Dil Deewana"
in Pardes in the same year. Since then, he has created a
unique style of his own and has become a role model for emerging vocal talent
in India.
Over the years, Nigam became a major force in the Indian music
industry. He provided playback singing for Hindi movies and won many awards,
notably the title song of the film Kal Ho Naa Ho. He recorded
romantic, rock, sad and patriotic songs. Nigam sang in many languages besides
Hindi, including Kannada, Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil,
Telugu, English, Bhojpuri, Urdu, Nepali, Chhattisgarhi, Malayalam and Marathi.
With a career spanning over two decades, Nigam has recorded his
voice for almost all top-rated music directors of India including A. R.
Rahman, Ilayaraja, Anu Malik, Pritam,Jatin-Lalit, Nadeem
Shravan, Mano Murthy, Vishal Shekar, Sanjeev Darshan, Aadesh
Shrivastav, Anand Milind, Sajid-Wajid, V. Harikrishna, G.
V. Prakash Kumar among others.
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