September 09 2005

Karki has earned fame through his ghazals

By THAKUR AMGAI

How would one feel if one were treated as an outsider when one returned home from a greener pasture for the love of motherland? The reflection would certainly not be pleasant. But, Anand Karki a popular ghazal singer in Nepal has endured the situation in the music fraternity for the last two decades.

Born in 1966, in the eastern mountainous district of Solukhumbu, Karki traveled to India with his father, who was in the Indian Armed Forces. He joined school in Lucknow and stayed there for about seventeen years, before he decided to settle in Nepal permanently.

Karki's decision to make an identity as a singer in Nepal was full of difficulties. He had come to Nepal, having got the job of a singer at Everest Hotel which paid him well relieving him of financial problems. However, for Karki, who had just come from India and was very new to the Nepali culture, it was difficult to get along in the music fraternity. "I had to face a lot of difficulty. Wherever I went, they used to treat me as a foreigner," recalls Karki. "As I had spent my entire learning period in India I could not speak Nepali properly and the accent of Hindi was always there."

After a hard time, musician Shakti Ballav gave him a break by giving the opportunity to sing a ghazal 'Jiwanma Dherai Khola Tarnuchha'. Karki passed the voice test at Radio Nepal with the same song.

Karki's flair for singing was apparent since his early childhood. He would sing to show his talent at the 'talent shows' organized every Friday in school. His teachers, friends and relatives did not take long to realize his outstanding talent. Karki concedes that the appreciation and encouragement from them worked as inspiration for singing better.

"My relatives would request me to sing popular songs of those days from Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeskar and Mohammad Rafique when I went to attend family invitations, and friends and teachers would request me to sing during school functions," said Karki who has a very calm personality and is very amicable with everyone.

Groomed in an environment where music earned its due respect, Karki had made up his mind to professionally engage in music in his life. Without a second thought he joined the Bhatkhande Sangeet Mahavidhyalaya upon completion of high school.

Once, King Birendra was scheduled to visit Lucknow and the Nepali students of Bhatkhande Sangeet Mahavidhyalaya had to prepare a song. One of the senior students Bijaya Shrestha from Nepal taught them to sing 'Chhatiko Mero Yo Chhoto Bhoto, Kammarma Khurpeto'. This was one of the first Nepali songs that Karki had heard. "I had only heard the song 'Nakkalilai Bhagai Lagyo Jhilkele' before this," said Karki.

When Karki was fifteen he had opened orchestra group called the 'Spark Group' with his friends. Different members of the group were supposed to mimic different singers. Karki's role was to sing Kishor Kumar's songs.

Once when he came to Kathmandu, Lions’ Club of Patan proposed for a performance of Hindi Nepali songs at the Royal Nepal Academy and this show made Karki and his friends of the orchestra known to the Nepali audience.

After he went back to India, he read the advertisement of Everest Hotel which was looking for a singer. Karki, who was in search of a pretext to live in Nepal permanently thought it was a good idea and applied for it.

At a time when there was a clear lack of ghazal singers in Nepal, Karki, who was gifted with a voice that suited for ghazal and with a proper training in music, was instantly seen as a boon for Nepali music industry after his break.

He continued singing ghazals and after a couple of years released his first album 'Anand Karkika Ghazalharu' from Music Nepal. Over the years he has sung about 600 songs of different genre and released ten albums. His latest album 'Anand' is coming in the market with variety of songs from Sunday (September 11).

Although ghazal has remained his forte till date, Karki has tried versatility in singing. He has sung modern songs, folk songs, patriotic songs, Bhajans (religious songs), and practiced playback singing for feature films and video films. After the first playback singing for the feature film 'Kasam' in 1991, he has sung for about 140 feature films so far.

Karki's versatility in singing is not only in terms of genres, but also in the language. In addition to the Nepali songs, he sings fluently in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. In a program recently organized in the Capital, audience was stunned by the fluency in Karki's pronunciation while singing Bengali songs.

Over the years he has won several contests and honored with many awards in home and abroad. He was awarded the 'Chinnalata Geet Puraskar' a couple of years ago and in 1999, he had won the 'ZeeTV Saregama Antakshyari Award'. This year he is being decorated with the Gorkha Dakshin Bahu for the second time.