Nucleya's audience is aged between 13 and 19. Even if it's a very literal translation, it's alright because people need to understand. "You can contemporise it, make it more audience-friendly by having a good lyrical breakdown of the translation. It is in this collaboration that Vibha, who has a formal training in music from Bharatiya Kala Kendra, discovered a younger audience drawn to Kashmiri folk. That was until she collaborated with Nucleya, one of India's renowned music producers. "Essentially, every now and then, I did things to keep the stove burning." She joined advertising where, among many things, she also sang jingles. Struggle is not a word Vibha claims to understands fully - her version of it relates to the time when she worked in a corporate set-up to pay bills and music was firmly in the backseat. When you are a baby, that's all you remember," she says.Įvery 'outsider' has a story - one of inspiration and perspiration - a struggle that is often romanticised once they taste success. "What I have are fleeting memories of a bridge, a saffron staircase, apple orchards - essentially the landscape of the place. "Sometimes, you may not have active memory of things," she says. Vibha admits that she does not have defining memories of her childhood in Kashmir yet, it is very much present in her music. Today, her voice has become synonymous with Kashmiri folk, a genre many may be unfamiliar with, but her gentle tweaks and melodious voice make them all the more appealing to the ear.įor someone who spent much of her adult life in Delhi (her family had moved from Kashmir in the 90s), her music is unmistakably rooted in nostalgia. Of course, it only helped that the song's popularity was followed by that of Kab Se Kab Tak from Zoya Akhtar's Gully Boy and Roshay from the web series Made in Heaven. The heartwarming vidaai (send-off) song was instrumental in catapulting her into public imagination. If you haven't heard her Kashmiri folk singles, there is a good chance you remember her singing the Kashmiri verses in Dilbaro alongside Harshpreet Kaur in Meghna Gulzar's Raazi last year. Many years later, it is this destiny that Vibha Saraf finds herself fulfilling - one popular song at a time. The Sarafs were stunned, as were the fellow travellers, who alerted the family to the fact that their daughter sang rather well. Seeing them croon to different melodies, their four-year-old daughter Vibha chimed in. It would have been yet another train journey for the Saraf family had their co-passengers not played the musical game of Antakshari.
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March 2023
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