‘Pop music is dead in India’

This Indo-Canadian pop singer created waves in the music industry around 2003 and 2004, with tracks like Angel eyes, Can’t get enough, So confused and This can’t be right. But soon after releasing his hit album, Storyteller, Raghav Mathur vanished from the scene.

This Indo-Canadian pop singer created waves in the music industry around 2003 and 2004, with tracks like

HT Image

Angel eyes

,

Can’t get enough

,

So confused

and

This can’t be right

. But soon after releasing his hit album,

Storyteller

, Raghav Mathur vanished from the scene.

“Yes. I did vanish. See, out in the West, we take the time to get the music right, which can be take three to four years. Then my mom got unwell, so I took some time off,” says Mathur. But that wasn’t the real reason he went missing from the popular music scene in India. “Let’s face it… the pop music scene in India is dead. It’s all Bollywood now, which is cool because that’s what India is.”

But the singer, who currently caters to markets in the UK and Middle East among others, keeps coming back to India for other reasons. “India is an important territory for me. Just that when I came out with

Angel eyes

and

Can’t get enough

, India had a burgeoning pop market.”

He adds, “It’s all Bollywood now, even MTV no longer plays pop music. It only plays songs from Hindi films. The newspapers don’t cover pop stuff unless it has a Bollywood connection, and that’s fine for me, but a lot of new artistes are going to find it hard to try and make a mark in the Indian market.”

Movies calling

Meanwhile Mathur, who was in the city to perform at the finale of the hunt for the Kingfisher Calendar face, has found a more interesting reason to come to India: “I would love to do some Bollywood music. But I would like to do the right film, which is why I am working with Atul Kasbekar. He has really studied what I do and he knows so much about the industry. I am sure he will pick what will be a right marriage for me.”