Ever since Pawni Pandey was born, music has been a huge part of her life. She developed a passion for classic Bollywood music due to the influence of her parents, who are passionate about music,  and she quickly became set on singing as a career.

In 2006, when she was thirteen and a newspaper advertisement introduced her to “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li’l Champs,” a singing competition television show in India, Pandey never expected to become a finalist.

“My motive was never to win or to prove anything. It was only to go there, have a good time, sing well, and that’s it, but luckily I got in, I did good and everybody liked me,” Pandey said. “During the auditions, I used to be really nervous—not for the fact that I will win or lose but just for the fact that I’ll be good or not.”

After gaining fame through her popularity on “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li’l Champs,” she found some difficulties in becoming a film musician, as nobody in her family had ever been in the industry.

“When you’re not from the film fraternity, the barriers for you increase, but luckily I got very good people who got ready to guide me through this struggle of mine,” Pandey said. “It was just like a rollercoaster ride. You have the highs, you have the lows, but that energy, that inertia is still there.”

Pandey’s most recently released song, “Laila Mein Laila,” is featured in the recent Bollywood movie “Raees” and is a recreation of a song with the same name from the 1980 film “Qurbani.” The song’s music video has garnered over 100 million views on YouTube.  

When Pandey initially recorded the song, she was unaware of what film it would feature in and was shocked to find out that one of her favorite actors, Shah Rukh Khan, would be acting in it.

“I really feel that when you’re recreating something as classic as ‘Laila Mein Laila,’ it is impossible to recreate an exact match because it’s an iconic song,” Pandey said. “It was quite challenging for me actually because it was a huge song, and to recreate it plus to give it your own color and create your own image is very difficult.”
Pandey has already recorded several more songs for upcoming films this year, including “Anarkali Ana Wali,” “Julie 2” and “Guns of Banaras.” In addition to playback singing, Pandey performs for live audiences.

“The live performances that I do just give me a very different high. When you see the people dancing in front of you, when you see the people encouraging you, shouting for you, whistling for you, it’s really good,” she said. “It really takes me to another world.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on February 21, 2017.