



Sufi music is all about beautiful poetry with a truly divine feeling. However, there is the other lot, which loosely uses words like maula or khuda and tags the songs as Sufi. Commenting on that, Seth says, “I think there are two sides to this – a part that keeps the soul intact and gives it a contemporary feel in order to make it relatable for the younger listeners, which I endorse. There’s often been discussion around the authenticity of Sufi music and how new-age experimentation takes the essence away. Everything has its own time, but good music always finds its way in people’s hearts,” says the Iktara singer. It gets saturated and then something new springs up. Everyone follows what is working with the fans and then a lot of the same kind is created in the industry. Meanwhile, an ardent lover of Sufi music, Seth goes on to explain why the genre has become a rarity in Hindi film music of today. I am happy singing a few songs that stay with people.

After Tum Hi Ho Bandhu from Cocktail (2012), I was offered a lot of item songs, the lyrics of which I’d be ashamed to sing in front of my children. “I am quite picky about the songs I choose to sing,” says the singer, adding, “I don’t want to sing any and every song that is offered to me. Seth, who scored the music for Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy (2020), featuring Tabu and Ishaan Khatter and also rendered a couple of songs for the series, hasn’t been heard in a Bollywood soundtrack for a while. Kanishk (her son composer-singer) and I collaborated on Rangi Saari, a traditional thumri with a new-age production,” shares the singer. “The lockdown gave me the opportunity to share more music with people across the world. While many artistes were unhappy about the restrictions that the pandemic-induced lockdown brought about last year, for singer Kavita Seth, it was the other way around.
