Singer Burrah: Music brought me a sense of purpose - Exclusive

There are two types of people in the world, ones who always run after conventional jobs and the others who listen to their hearts if it craves creative liberty. Singer Burrah without a double falls in the second category. Speaking to ETimes, Burrah mentioned how music had been a part of his life ever since his childhood days. However, he wasn’t aware that music was his calling until he tasted the art of music-making during his job. And that is when he decided to pursue music professionally.

Here’s a brief account of how Burrah fell for music

"So music has been my first love ever since I was a kid. It’s been an integral part of my upbringing. We as a family bonded over music and I’ve grown up adoring bands like Abba. In fact, these were regulars on my parent’s playlist. My father was obsessed with music so much so that he had engineered his own music stereo deck with his personal favourites. So, he had fed me a lot of music – international, desi, ghazal, or devotional for that matter. I’ve grown up listening to a lot of devotional music too!”

“When in college I had joined the theatre group and the dramatic society and would host a lot of street plays or “nukkad nataks”. During rehearsals, we would end up jamming non-stop for hours and I’d usually break out into the alap. It was around this phase of my life that I felt music had brought me a sense of purpose and was adding so much meaning and joy to my life.”

“So, in 2017, while I was employed with TVF, we were working on this track called ‘Dilli De Sardar Boys’ which was a parody track that went on to win hearts a million on the internet. The process of music making during this time, the late-night mixing, the composition, the editing and the juggling between office and studio for a month straight up got me head over heels in love with music all over again. It felt like it connected me to parts of me that I myself wasn’t aware of. I felt rejuvenated and more alive than ever before. I was floored!”

“That’s when I decided that it was time for me to give in to this calling, I quit my job, took a leap of faith, and embraced music as a full-time profession!”

“Udja happened at a time of my personal self-discovery when I was going through my own emotional exploration. I had just returned from Vipassana when Ankur Tewari’s team connected with me. They actually wanted me to write a track and I was initially onboarded as a songwriter. But during the process, I was asked to sing the track because his team really liked my voice and the rest as they say is history. It was a play of destiny from thereon. We soon got a call from Coke Studio Bharat informing us that they were launching the season with ‘Udja’ as the hero track because the honesty, simplicity, and rawness of the song appealed to them.”

Also Read: #HerStory - Deedar Kaur on making a career in music: It was meant to be - Exclusive