I listen to a lot of devotional songs, says Kanika Kapoor. “I grew up in a joint family where we used to worship god and perform rituals. We had a temple in our house and I would listen to bhajans every morning. So singing a devotional track comes very naturally to me,” she says.
The singer has recently released her first devotional single- Ik Onkar. Composed by Harpreet Singh, the music video features the singer herself.
She says that this is something she has been listening to for a long time and is very close to her heart. The track has been sung in a slow pace. Ask her how much liberty did she and Harpreet take while working on it and the singer replies, “It’s funny that when I am working on a track, I complete it at one go but it took me so much longer for this because it had to be from the heart. I couldn’t believe that something that I have been listening to for so many years would be so difficult to record. I had to live up to my own expectations. It was one of the most difficult tracks I have worked on.”
She says that it’s a mutual collaboration between the Harpreet and her. “He wanted me to sing a new track and I wanted to make sure he and I were happy about the track.”
The Ik Onkar moolmantra has a great significance. It is the first hymn in the Shree Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs and the primary teaching uttered by Guru Nanak Dev. It means, ‘One universal creator god. The name is the truth. Creative being personified. No fear. No hatred. Image of the undying, beyond birth, self-existent. By guru’s grace.’
Kanika says that her connection with god cannot be described in words. “It’s something I strongly feel. I believe, the more you give, the more you get. You have to give your soul and heart and that’s why everyday I am producing music. It’s all amazing.”
Along with playback singing, Kanika has been doing a lot of independent music both internationally and back home. She says that indepdendent music is very important for artists like her. “I am able to sing what I want to sing and do it freely. I am not bound to a movie or just singing for the actors, which is also exciting. But for every artist, having an independent career is very important.”
Kanika is trained in classical music. About her training in classical music influencing the songs that she sings, she says, “It’s very important. I am singing a lot of different genres because of my training. In fact, I am still learning.”
She believes that one can also make a career in music without training in classical music. “A lot of singers I know sing without any training and they sing very well. Of course, if they also learn sur and tal, it will help them.”
Kanika has sung a variety of songs in various genres, but is there any style that she wants to try her hand at? “A sad love song is in the pipeline. I have been wanting to sing something like this for a long time.”
