Singer Shahid Mallya: Investing time in learning music is important for an artist

While most budding singers are seeking instant validation on social media for fame and opportunities, playback singer Shahid Mallya - who recently won hearts with Shauq - has explained what made him go slow and learn more about the art and craft of music.

Shahid told OTTplay, “I think investing time in learning music is very important to realise that music is the ocean, and we only can learn one drop in a whole lifetime. When I see those new trends around I feel like people are living a life of fast food, that has no nuance and no therav. They are only putting things together in whichever way and consuming them. It affects us badly!”

According to him, the shorter duration of a song is somehow taking away the beauty of an elaborate composition with more musical nuances and melodies. “Earlier, the duration of a song used to be five to seven minutes, then it was cut down to two minutes and now we are making reels of 15 seconds. I think the day is not far when we will just have ‘o ho ho’ as a song, like three seconds!,” he said. 

Adding to that, the singer said, “I believe that if you really want to win a war, you have to practise and strategise things for a long time and not the night before the war. Years of practice can take you for a longer run, and we see such genius we have in our industry be it Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal and a few more such wonderful artists. When you listen to them you feel the depth of the voice.”

Although Shahid received a lot of love from the audience for his songs, being a traditionalist, he tends to focus more on practising music than remaining visible on social media. He shared how the popularity on social media and in the music fraternity by doing ‘networking exercises’ at times overshadow a real talent like him.  

In the past, he has delivered some beautiful renditions like - Rabba Main Toh Mar Gaya Oye, Ik Tu Hi Tu, Ikk Kudi, Toh Dishoom, Daryaa, Rubaiyaan and Nirvau Nirvir, among others.

Shahid said, “Even though I am from this generation, I am one of those people who has been learning since childhood following the guru-shishya tradition. I am more into practising the music, doing riyaz and learning the depth of music. But these days, for most budding singers, it has become a norm of being more visible on social media and making reels than doing riyaz. If you are not visible on social media, even if you are talented, people say that ‘We don’t know this singer, and we cannot work with him’. It makes our struggle much harder. Having said that, there are a lot of singers who have steady fan-followers and they really have learned music.”

The vocalist released a single Dagabaazaa recently, which was composed by Manish Sinha with lyrics by Ashoke Punjabi. Karishma Sharma and Deane Sequiria feature in the music video for the song.