Papon: I don’t perform at weddings as music is not priority there
The singer says he only likes to perform for an audience that’s focused on music.
After a recent disagreement between singers Abhijeet Bhattacharya and Neha Kakkar on a reality show over singers performing at weddings, a lot of musicians shared their views on the same. While most of them saw no harm in performing at weddings, some had a different view. Singer Papon, who performs at a lot of live shows and corporate events, is against the idea of performing at weddings. “At weddings, people come for a different purpose. They go to weddings to have fun and their focus is more on enjoying with everyone, eating food and being a part of the celebrations. Music is not the focus there. Hence I don’t perform at weddings. I like to sing for an audience that treats music as their priority, be it a concert or baithak,” says the singer, who will perform at concert in Mumbai tomorrow.
Live shows can be very demanding and exhausting for a performer. Of late, there’s have been instances of unruly audience manhandling musicians, be it hurling a bottle on stage at a recent Sunidhi Chauhan show or last year’s instances of Sonu Nigam and Kailash Kher being troubled by audiences. Talking about the instances of audiences manhandling musicians during live shows, Papon says, “Of course it hurts because people forget that the performer on stage is a human being too. However, I’ve received so much love from the audience that even if one person ever misbehaved, I let such one-off instances pass, because the purpose of being a musician is greater than such unpleasant instances. Being a musician and being able to spread so much joy and happiness is a bigger cause for me.”
On the work front, Papon has a lot of music coming up, including a ghazal album. “As musicians, we know how to make music but releasing it is a task,” he laughs, and adds, “I am sitting on a a lot of film and non-film songs, which I plan to release soon.”