Bollywood star Kumar Sanu is so prolific a singer he set a Guinness World Record for the most songs recorded in a single day: 28.
"I am the fastest singer in our industry. I have sung 14,000 songs in 22 languages. I have a record of 161 songs in a month," said Sanu, playback singer and star of Bollywood Night, a song, dance and drama extravaganza coming to Houston on Sunday.
Sanu, on his 15th U.S. tour, stars with playback singer Alka Yagnik, Mona Singh (model, actress and dancer) and 20 singers, musicians and dancers, all from Bollywood.
A playback singer records songs on a soundtrack, and actors lip-sync the songs for films. In India, Bollywood's leading playback singers are usually at least as famous as dancers and actors.
"I'm from a musical family," Sanu said. "My father, Pashupati Bhattacharjee, was a great classical singer. My mother, sister, everybody was in music, and I grew up in music. I started playing tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) at the age of 8, and after that I started singing."
Although he began singing publicly in 1979, it took a while for Sanu to break into Bollywood. In 1987, music director and singer Jagjit Singh offered him the chance to sing in the film Jadoogar. "That was my break," Sanu said. In 1990 the film Aashiqui brought immediate fame and his first Filmfare award for best male playback singer.
"And because of that, everybody came to know a new singer had arrived," Sanu said.
Bollywood is the nickname for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India. The term, a catchy blend of Bombay (the former name of Mumbai) and Hollywood, has taken root in pop-culture vernacular and worked its way into some dictionaries.
Although English is sometimes woven into Bollywood dialogue and songs, Bollywood Night productions will be sung only in Hindi. During the three-hour show, performers will wear both traditional costumes and modern Western attire, but the core of the performance is strongly rooted in tradition.
"Our songs are all based on classical music," Sanu said. "Everything is classical-based and melody-based." Co-star Yagnik also is classically trained.
Although Bollywood is thought of as popular music, it can help to preserve Indian musical traditions, Sanu said.
"Our music has gotten polluted today," Sanu said. "We are straying far from our culture. Other people are trying to grab our culture, but we are very far from our culture."
Hari Dayal, president of the Indo-American Association of Houston, said that for years Bollywood and Indian classical music kept their distance.
"That distinction has totally gone because a lot of classical artists are now working in Bollywood," Dayal said. "These two, (Sanu and Yagnik) first and foremost, are trained as classical musicians. The music is very melodious and draws very heavily on folk music also. It has to cater to the whole country."
The impact of Bollywood is not confined to India, Dayal said. "Nowadays films made in Bollywood premiere in New York and Los Angeles before Mumbai. People go to see the movies for the singing and the dancing.
"We feel that Bollywood is very much mainstream."
