After high school, she also went to India to study Kathak at the Kadamb Dance Academy in Ahmedabad under Kumudini Lakhia. Today she teaches semi-classical Kathak and Kathak beginners’ class. “I like to choreograph to Bollywood songs but in a Kathak style, I keep myself open so I can explore my choreography and add more contemporary elements to it.”
Not everyone can boast of such a sweet memory from
childhood. Parvyn Kaur Singh was ten-years old when Michael Jackson, the
deceased King of Pop, came to perform at the Adelaide Oval as part of the HIStory World Tour in 1996. Parvyn and her two sisters were
among the lucky children selected to welcome Jackson at the red carpet. Dressed
in traditional Punjabi suits, the sisters, on an impulse, started to chant the Mool
Mantra (first hymn in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs) as
soon as Jackson showed up. He stopped, listened, and walked on.
But for Parvyn and her sisters, the surreal moment did not
end there. Suddenly, one of Jackson’s assistants walked up to them and said
‘Michael wants to meet you properly’. She took them through security to
Jackson’s presidential suite where they came face to face with the man the
world was crazy about. “He asked who we were and what we were singing,” recalls
Parvyn, adding, “He also wanted to take photos with us, something he likes
doing before a show. Since his show was on the next day, he organised to get us
tickets.”
One thing led to another and before Parvyn realised she was
there the next day not just for the photos but with a main role in one of his
songs on stage. “It was the Earth Song and as part of his live performances, a
massive tank comes up with a soldier in a ready-to-shoot position. At that
point, a child comes out to the front and hands the soldier a flower, so I did
that. And then I stepped back and Michael gave me a hug,” says Parvyn.
Clearly, it was a life defining moment for Parvyn. “It was
one of the moments when I thought this is what I want to do, to be on stage, in
front of people and performing. And it felt so natural for me to do it. Yes I
was nervous, but not really. If you know what you need to do on stage, it’s
quite a thrill.”
It has been an interesting journey since. Parvyn, born to
renowned singer/musician Dya Singh, candidly
admits to never having made a conscious effort to be a singer or a dancer. “It
just happened. I started performing with my dad from such a young age that I
just kept going and kept getting different opportunities. I never forced myself
into one direction, I kept saying yes to things and from that it has grown.”
Today as front singer of Bombay Royale, Melbourne's much
loved cross-cultural band, Parvyn is making a grab for Bollywood vintage
singing success and is on the way to recording her own original album (more on
that later).
Parvyn hooked up with Bombay Royale in 2010, the year the
band was formed. It was band leader Andy Williamson’s idea to present live
vintage music. Based in Brunswick, Williamson’s hobby was collecting old
records from India and he soon realised that there was not anyone else doing
live vintage music. It helped that he had professional musician friends who shared
the same interest.
When Williamson and his group got in touch with Parvyn
through a common musician friend, she was curious to know what these guys were
doing. The day she got to their Brunswick warehouse which doubles up as the
studio too, they were playing old Bollywood numbers such as “Yeh Mera dil” (Don),
“Dum Maro Dum” (Hare Rama Hare Krishna). “It was fascinating,” says Parvyn.
Thus was formed Bombay Royale with an elaborate story
attached to the 11-member band. With inspiration from vintage Bollywood, all of
them wear bandit masks infusing the gangster element as they exploit their
alter egos on stage. For instance, Parvyn is the Mysterious Lady, Williamson the
Skipper and Bhattacharya the Tiger. “We can go over the top as we are acting
and it takes away all of that extra baggage that we have for our own egos.”
Coming together as a band was also easy, says Parvyn, as all
the musicians are top professionals. “They have been doing this for a very long
time. Because they are also great, it’s kind of easy, everyone does their
homework and when you get together and play as a group, it happens quite
organically.”
Their
first gig, after six months of intermittent rehearsals, was at the Australasian
World Music Expo in Melbourne where they got noticed instantly. “That was a place where people from the music
industry all over the world come for shopping almost, to find bands.
Fortunately for us, the director of that festival saw us there and straightway
booked us.” There was no looking back since.
The band started doing covers and from there made their own
records. They released their first album You Me Bullets Love in April 2012 and it
was chosen as iTunes Breakthrough World Music Album for 2012.
In 2013, the band was booked to play at Glastonbury Festival
in the UK and toured Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. In January
2014, The Bombay Royale made its US debut, playing at GlobalFEST at Webster
Hall in New York City and at The Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C. It has also
played at many other major festivals including WOMAD (in Australia, New Zealand
and the UK), Sziget in Hungary, Sakifo Music Festival in Reunion Island and
Festival du Chant de Marin in France.
Their second album The Island of Dr Electrico was licensed
in films, video games and TV shows. Recently the band brought out its trademark
sound yet again with their third album Run Kitty Run.
Full of fun, great costumes and theatre, the group has evolved
into a creative force of their own infusing Indian classical, rock, pop surf,
funk, cosmic disco et al with “a bit of Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and English
lyrics” thrown in.
“We have very quickly got a lot of attention. I think that’s
because we are so different. Our music is funky and different with very
elaborate stage performances. It’s unlike anything else. It is so full of
energy,” smiles Parvyn. Among their huge fan following are Russians, Japanese
and Mexicans.
One of Parvyn’s fondest memories is performing at the first
White night event in Melbourne in 2013. A stage was set up on the steps of Flinders
Street Station where about 40,000 people crammed in at the intersection of
Swanston and Flinders Street to watch them perform. “Our dressing room was at
the BMW Edge so we had to leave at least half an hour earlier to walk to the
stage because it was so packed with people. We had a good time slot, you can’t
pay for that sort of stuff, it was just a dream-like performance and in that
size crowd.”
Now that they are making their own music, Parvyn says one
can’t call it Bollywood (although it is inspired by that) because it is
original music made in Melbourne. “It’s also hard to call it Indian music because
it is not really that either. Bollywood kind of helps label it but it is not
entirely correct because it’s just a bunch of jazz musicians in Melbourne
making funky music. I think one of the coolest things about the Melbourne music
scene is the presence of so much world music from African to Latino, so this is
just the Indian sector of that music scene.”
Parvyn
was born and brought up in Adelaide. There were only a few Indian families then
and her parents made a big effort to assimilate. At primary school, every now
and again, she would perform a Bharatnatyam or a Bollywood dance number during
assembly, her father would also go to the school and talk about his turban and
show everyone how to tie one, while her mother would bring “aloo paratha” for
the class to try. “We wanted to make sure people knew about us and our culture.
It is like the one sandalwood tree in the forest that the whole forest can
smell. For us it was an opportunity to share and to be open about our culture.”
“That’s why I became such a proud Indian,” she laughs,
adding, “ Holding on to my culture gave me the inspiration to say this is what
makes me different, unique and special and, I suppose, you stand out that way.”
Growing up under the wings of her father who was a larger
than life figure, Parvyn took to the arts naturally. She started singing with
him from a very young age, following what she calls “the path of least
resistance”. And he made things easier for her as she was able to make contacts
in the music industry through some of his networks. “It’s not the normal path that most Indian children
follow where you go to university, get married etc. Dad couldn’t tell me
otherwise because I was just following his footsteps.”
At university, Parvyn dabbled in engineering but ended up
doing journalism. It was something she did for fun, she admits, going with the
flow of the time. However, her singing became her full time job.
After high school, she also went to India to study Kathak at the Kadamb Dance Academy in Ahmedabad under Kumudini Lakhia. Today she teaches semi-classical Kathak and Kathak beginners’ class. “I like to choreograph to Bollywood songs but in a Kathak style, I keep myself open so I can explore my choreography and add more contemporary elements to it.”
After high school, she also went to India to study Kathak at the Kadamb Dance Academy in Ahmedabad under Kumudini Lakhia. Today she teaches semi-classical Kathak and Kathak beginners’ class. “I like to choreograph to Bollywood songs but in a Kathak style, I keep myself open so I can explore my choreography and add more contemporary elements to it.”
Asked if she is a better dancer or a singer, Parvyn says, “I
am a singer first and dancing is something I do on the side, but in saying
that, because I learnt classical dance I can teach dancing better than I can
teach singing, for example. Singing is something that I have always done, I
have never had lessons with singing, so it’s a different understanding of it. But
I love both so much, I recall my guruji saying, ‘the singer dances within and
the dancer sings within’ so that duality of both, of having this connection to
the internal - is what I aim for as an artist, reaching that space of stillness
where you get to a focus that is beyond the everyday norm. That is why I do
art, it’s my type of meditation and what my life is about.”
Parvyn admits she loves performing at small venues such as
house concerts or private functions where she is doing acoustics with Bennett
and they are both singing. “It’s a different sort of communication that you can
have with an audience as this unlike a big stage where the feedback is
different.”
It is one of the reasons why she is now working on a solo album.
“We have done the three Bombay Royale albums and we are going to put that on
the side for a while, and do some Parvyn stuff,” she laughs.
The other thing that Parvyn does is cultural education shows
where she goes to primary schools teaching young students about Indian music
and dance. “That is part of my seva (service), teaching the general Australian
public more about our culture and trying to get everyone participate. When you go
out to regional towns like Geraldton in Western Australia, they’ve never done
any Bollywood dance before and there’s a lot of Aboriginal communities out
there and they love it.”
At the moment, Parvyn is concentrating on song writing to
get her solo album out. “I have given myself three years until the actual album
will be released but there will be a few singles coming out before that. I
haven’t nailed the sound yet, never heard the sound of the music that I want to
make. I have this craving and I can’t hear it anywhere else, it is there in my
head but I haven’t brought it together yet. It’s a mix of all of my culture and
all the traditional Sikh world as well but with the groove that is contemporary
I suppose. It’s a rhythm I am looking for.” There is no end to what one can do
but Parvyn says having a two-year old makes her realistic about her timelines.
For the moment, having just finished a big gig, Bombay
Royale is having a bit of a break. “The 11 of us are more like a family and we
meet often. When I moved to Melbourne, they literally adopted me. I grew up in
the Sikh community a lot, that was my world and then I was introduced to this
community which is different. We support each other like family and go to each
other’s performances, that’s where we do our socialising - at live gigs instead
of going to Gurudwara each week.. Perhaps I should do that too.”
Parvyn blends the spirit of belief with that of musical
ambition.
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