The Turbaned Lady Harshdeep Kaur

The first thing that strikes you about Harshdeep Kaur, all of 27 years, aka the young Sufi voice with its sultry nature who captivated everybody’s imagination when she was spotted for a reality television show; is her quiet confidence. When we caught up with her right before a performance in Delhi, there was a decidedness about everything she did as she directed the live orchestra for a sound check before her performance at Striker’s Pub and Brewery in Delhi. Every song was delved into, for hours before the show, and the sound check went on for almost as long as the performance itself. As her rich as cream voice rolls down, she makes sure every intonation is perfect; checking the Roland guy, checking the mic is perfectly aligned for the perfect rendition of “Kabira” – the song that has officially become every bride’s anthem. Her voice, powerful yet controlled, is just like her persona.

Your memory of Harshdeep might be from the time she came dressed in a resplendent turban on one of the most popular television reality shows of that time on NDTV Imagine, named rather earnestly so – Junoon Kuchh Kar Dikhaane Ka. The turban, a fluke experiment that worked, is a permanent part of her stage persona now, even though Harshdeep insists she’s poles apart from this image when away from the stage. A ‘tomboy’ is how she likes to describe herself, all about the Nike shoes and the leather jackets. But on stage she’s presentable, ‘girlie’ and powerful at the same time.   Harshdeep has an easy way of somehow getting the spotlight to follow her around (it would be too simplistic to call it screen presence) especially since she doesn’t seem too perturbed about it.

She has, predictably so, featured in a lot of movies, and sung in several chartbusters already, “Kabira” from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and “Jugni” from Cocktail being amongst them. But a little known fact remains that she won the MTV Video Gaga contest in 2001. (That is seven years before the NDTV Imagine show aired on television as a result of which she became a public face.) Harshdeep’s upbringing in Delhi remains the reason she can straddle different worlds so easily according to her. Growing up in a bilingual scenario (where her parents speak Punjabi while she was exposed to Hindi otherwise in Delhi) and having friends from different cultures helps her adapt to even singing in different languages. (She’s sung in Odiya and Bengali movies before.)

Sufi Sensation Harshdeep Kaur.

And then, there is the matter of the iconic musicians who declared faith in her early on in her life as a musician. Harshdeep is the youngest entrant into A.R. Rehman’s memoirs, deeply influenced as she is by him. Not only did she participate in the Rahmanishq tour with him in 2012, a worldwide tour that Rehman had curated, he was also present to release her album with her last year.

Then, there is the significant matter of her strong voice that easily touches crescendos, and has oodles of strength and bass to back it in the depths of scale. Perhaps it is the bright turbans she wears, a sight uncommon in any other performer, especially a female musician, and the flamboyant anarkali costumes.

The sound check was perhaps the most thorough sound checks that we had seen. It began with her rendition of “Katiya Karoon”, and she proceeded to check every aspect of the performance to painstaking detail with the musicians, as the sun faded from yellow to red, while her deep voice resounded in a delightfully claustrophobia-free empty pre-gig pub.

She’s trained in both Indian Classical Music, and Western Classical Music, and she doesn’t differentiate in anything but good music, straddling commercial and indie music scenarios comfortably.  As for Sufi music, she sees it as a way of life, and music as the best teacher and mentor into Sufism.

And for someone that sorted in life, life comes easy, and so does music.