Musician Rahgir’s calendar is booked for July. He will be in Delhi on Sunday, one of the stops in his multi-city tour to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune and Mumbai, for his ‘Ye Jo Hans Rahi Hai Duniya’ show. However, instead of the grand concerts of metro cities, it’s the intimate mehfils of small cities that the independent musician likes.
“Metros mostly have working people who live for weekends. Here, the stage and the preparation are very grand. For many, one weekend concert is like any other. But in small cities, venues are intimate like mehfils and baithaks. I can have better interpersonal interaction with the crowd.
Excitement is far higher because people come from far-flung areas. Once a man took a train of 10 hours from Gorakhpur to Varanasi for my show. Some even bring in their parents, and grandparents while others bring homemade sweets and ladoos out of love,” says the 31-year-old whose hit songs like ‘Aadmi Utiya Hai’, ‘Kachha Ghada’, ‘Kya Jaipur Kya Dilli’, ‘Mere Gaon Aaoge’, have become viral hits for their relatability to the common man.
“Delhi has a diverse crowd because unlike other north Indian cities it has people from all over, including people from Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Haryana. I can comfortably sing folk songs in different languages here as the mixed crowd will understand, unlike in other hyper-local places like Rajasthan, where reception is more for local folk songs,” the folk and country musician says, adding he will perform a mix of old popular songs and five to six new songs.
At his Delhi show, one of the new songs he will sing is on a real-life fufaji who insisted on cutting down a neem tree in his village deeming it an ill omen. “Aise hi logon par toh gaane likhta hoon main (I write songs on such people), he quips, making clear his disdain for the superstitious. This will not be his first song that acts like a social commentary on society, his desi-folk-meets-country-music style has its roots in Sikar, literary realism and Bob Dylan!
Inspired by legends
Rahgir, born Sunil Kumar Gurjar, grew up in a joint family of farmers in a village in Khandela, Rajasthan. He was the first from his village to become an engineer and get a “good paying job” at an MNC in 2014. However, in a moment of self-discovery, he gave up his job in 2016 to take up music.
“Since a young age, I used to listen to country music icons like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra. I also used to write poetry. It just happened that I turned some of my poems into songs and learnt to play guitar from a friend. Even at that time, eight years back, I did not have the ambition to make it big as a musician. I just wanted to travel, write and sing freely,” he says.
Looking at life
Filled with passion for music, Rahgir traversed like a wayfarer, true to his stage name. He met new people, cultures and communities. Soon he honed the craft of telling societal vices as poetic verses. For instance, in ‘Tan Kha Gayi Ye Tankha’, he talks about human greed. In ‘Sun Bachhe,’ he calls out peer pressure that stifles innocent dreams while ‘I Love to Travel’ is a soothing medley, played on guitar, morchang, khartal and bhapang that celebrates the free-spirited wanderer in us despite adverse times.
However, it’s the evergreen ‘Bhai Rahgir Ye Hum Kaunsi Gaadi Pe Chadh Gaye’ that sums up many issues in a single medley — from existential crises, and shallowness of material success, to questioning the choices we make in daily life.
“I do not write thinking that I have to address a particular social issue. I write for my soul. When the music comes straight from the heart, it connects with people and becomes a universal emotion,” he says. Such reflections come from his lived experiences. “In my own village, upper castes were allowed to fetch water before those from the lower castes. I was a kid then so could not understand the gravitas of the issue. But it remained in my subconscious,” he says about the inspiration for the song ‘Aalsi Dopahar’ which critiques casteism.
Rahgir does not see his music as a tool of activism. But he likes to let people introspect about societal issues with his songs. “I try to plant a seed of an alternative reality and let people think about it. I assume that people have their own minds to figure out what is right and wrong,” he says, citing lines from Bob Dylan’s famous protest song ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, “After all, ‘how many times can a man turn his head, And pretend that he just doesn’t see?’.”
Success on his own terms
Rahgir’s resounding success has got him offers from notable music companies and labels who have sought to have copyright on his already released hit songs. “But I am determined that I do not want to sell my songs. I tell them that I am fine with a collaboration for future songs rather than already released ones, but they do not want to bet on an independent artist.”
Further, he’s unbothered by trends and virality. “As an artist, I don’t want to get caught in a supply and demand chain. One has to understand that you will never be able to please everyone. Just stay true to yourself. If in future, my songs do not support my livelihood, I will just take up some other job, but will never make soulless music for trends. In any age, if an artist brings something very unique, original, and puts his soul into his work, the audience spots it,” he concludes.