KATHMANDU, July 15: Amrit Gurung, the front man of Nepathya, is someone who wears his stardom lightly. The bespectacled long haired musician says that fame doesn’t warrant recognition on the streets and he enjoys blending with the crowd. “We’re not stars, we’re artists,” he says.
Nepathya doesn’t need any introduction; the folk rock band gave us gems like ‘Chekkyo Chekkyo’, ‘Resham’, ‘Sano Kura’ and ‘Yo Jindagani’ which have been able to strike a chord with the young as well as the slightly older crowd. They have nine albums to their credit, starting from ‘Nepathya’ in 1991 to ‘Aina Jhyal’ in 2010.[break]
Nepathya’s music gets its major musical influences from gaines and damai who play the panche baja. Gurung hails from Pumdi Bhumdi, a village 12 kilometers away from Pokhara. “Gandaki is very rich in music and gaines and damais have influenced and inspired me. I’ve met a lot of them and their music really touches me,” he says.
In the 20 years since the band’s inception, Nepathya has toured many countries. He remembers the first concert at Tribhuvan University in Kirtipur in 1995. “We had three guitars and we put an acoustic event for the MA English students,” he reminisces. Then came the tours around the country, followed by one in Hong Kong and then the 1998 Japan concert which he terms the most embarrassing. “We were to perform in Hamamacho, but along with us and the technicians, there were only 42 people in the hall. The organizers wanted to cancel the show but we decided to go ahead with it,” he shares. That trip changed things for the band, and Gurung returned to Nepal a disillusioned man who quit music for the next two years.
Post 2000 when the band regrouped with ‘Resham’, Gurung believes that he’s started taking music seriously and the music making process has also become fun and lively. The next album is due to come out by 2014 and will be along the lines of appreciating life.
On August 3, the band will perform in the Wembley Arena in London, the first ever Nepali band to do so. It is the second largest indoor concert arena in the UK and the band will be joining a list of international artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, U2, Spice Girls, Beyonce and Britney Spears who’ve performed there previously. The concert has been organized by Parcha Productions, based in the UK.
Gurung, the vocalist and lyricist of the band, expresses his band members’ delight along with his own. “This is a festival for Nepathya as well as the Nepali residents in the UK. We’re taking Nepali music for our listeners there. Every concert is important to us, but considering it from the logistics angle; we know that Wembley is a great place to connect with our fans. We feel very lucky and proud to have this opportunity to perform there,” he says.
The veteran artist shares that he still has stage fright. “After all, a microphone is a microphone,” he points out pragmatically. The trick is to have a quiet moment before the performance and just get on with it because no one else will do the job.
Related story
Nepathya’s Nepali class in Boston
inMelbourne_20191225143708.jpg)
