Why Shalmali will continue to do indie music
Singer Shalmali Kholgade has had a fairly successful run in Hindi film music ever since she made her debut with Pareshaan (Ishaqzaade, 2012), before having lent her voice to films starring Deepika Padukone, Anushka Sharma, and Jaqueline Fernandez. Shalmali now wants to concentrate on independent music, but not at the cost of her Bollywood career.
“[Bollywood] is the reason why I can do independent music today with the kind of freedom that I think I do it with,” she says. “There is no pressure of releasing one song every month because I know that I have a Bollywood career that helps me stabilise my life financially and otherwise.” The Balam Pichkari singer also doesn’t believe in pursuing one thing with “so much focus that you forget that there are other things that you can do, as well”.
Indie music certainly makes her happy, but going by the response that her English single Spark a Fire, which released last month, received on YouTube (2,817 views), she does seem to have a long way to go. However, Shalmali maintains that the “sense of achievement” that releasing the song brought her “cannot be weighed against [its online] views.”
“I will do this (make indie music) all my life even if I get 2,500 views on YouTube for my 100th song.” But how easy will it it be to gain the same popularity when it comes to English music?
“For me, this is beginning of something that I wish to follow. I like the uphill journey. You are right when you say that people do not find it easy to accept an English song by an Indian artist and possibly the audience is much smaller than the audience for a Hindi song. But this is who I am and this is what I like to do. I would like my audience to give me a chance with English music as well,” she says.