He made the entire nation move to his foot-tapping numbers Dil le gayee Kudi Gujarat Di, laungda lashkara and Kudi Kudi O Kudi. He has also done great work in keeping the Punjabi culture and tradition alive through his music. Fortyseven-year-old Jasbir Jassi, who recently performed at the Mela Phulkari festival in Delhi, continues his big fight against vulgar songs.
“Singing vulgar or double meaning songs has become a trend in Bollywood. If I get a music project and am asked to do a vulgar song I refuse. It is a fight I’m having with all the singers and producers. Of course, they are thinking commercially but for me, culture comes first. We are capable of making good songs without vulgarity,” Jassi says.
There are many other singers who have joined the bandwagon in this fight. “Singers like Malkit Singh, Gurdas Maan, Satinder Sartaaj and the younger lot in Jassi Gill, Firoz Khan, Saleem and many others have been boycotting vulgar music and doing good work. I feel sad when I see people taking Punjabi songs so lightly and doing anything for money,” Jassi says.
In these time of remixes, Jassi feels that singers need to work on the revival of old melodies. “The Punjabi music scene has almost come to a standstill with nothing new coming in. Rappers have killed melody. There is only one type of melody going these days. We need to focus on preserving and reviving old melodies,” he insists.
Apart from working on some good sufi music, Jassi is also engaged in acting for which he started getting trained in 2011 by NK Sharma. He has acted in Punjabi films Khushiyaan, Dil Vil Pyaar Vyaar and Heer Ranjha. “When I was getting trained as an actor, I felt that I had done a big mistake by shifting to acting. People started thinking that I was out of the music market industry. But I realised it was nothing like that. Besides giving me the opportunity to diversify, acting has helped me in my internal growth,” he says.
