 Thank you so much, Sonam Kalraji for joining us. Of course, Ms. Kalra needs no introduction. She is the biggest name in the Sufi music world, in the Indian music world. Thank you so much, Sonamji, for joining us on this episode of Power People, wherein we featured the who's who of the music industry. Thank you so much, Rohail. It's such an honor to be here and you're so kind in your introduction. Thank you so much for saying that. I think that the most important thing for all of us to remember is just that we're all students of music still. So it's very exciting when you say I'm on a power list. But like I said, thank you for this recognition. Thank you so much. My first question to you is, you know, you've been there. You've seen the industry shift, you know, it's now tech led, a lot of technology is there. If I have to just ask you to look back at the last 10 to 15 years till now, how has the entire music landscape overall changed in your opinion? Well, I think performance wise, live performance wise, it's become really, really exciting. It's become much slicker. I have to say that, you know, when I started performing, I remember something really simple, like I know presentation is really important to me is the way we present ourselves on stage. And I used to always say, why can't we also present when we present on stage, even a band as an ensemble dressed in the same colors, use technology. And I know that now when I look in those days, I was one of the first few people even to say, let's all just wear the same kind of coordinated clothing, present a very clean, neat stage, you know, have a certain sense of performance and theater to music as well. And I know that, you know, even my musicians would be like, his ki kya zaroorat hai and all that. And now I noticed that everyone's doing it and actually it makes such a big difference how you present on stage. And that has happened also with the advent of so much social media and people seeing how you can use light, how you can use drama, how you can mix all of that into a performance. I mean, performance like Lady Gaga and and of course, Michael Jackson had been doing this for many years and so had Madonna, but even Lady Gaga, I mean, you always bring in an element of theater. And I think people are now musicians have realized it's not just about getting on to stage and sitting and singing or standing and singing. It's about the whole experience. So I think that has changed. People have become really savvy in terms of the way they want to present themselves in performance. They're making it a point to connect with their audiences in a way that they never did. And it's also become that much harder, I think for an artist, because you can't just be good at your own craft of saying, OK, I know how to sing. And I'm going to go on to stage and sing. You have to now understand. You have to understand social media. You have to understand how to stay relevant on social media, how to connect your audience on social media. So you've actually got two or three other stages other than the physical stage. You've got the virtual stages that you have to be equally active on. So actually the work for an artist is increased much more. But I think it's also been really exciting because this has happened. It allows artists to push themselves that much more to not just be complacent about the fact that they're going to make their livelihood or increase their audience just by climbing on to stage and performing. They realize that they have to be a master of all these trades, you know, and have like their five fingers plugged into all of these things to understand how to become a more sort of wholesome artist that that is on the top of their game. And this is the only way you can be on the top of your game. You know, right, right, right. Absolutely. You know, talking about performance, you know, Indian music, you know, the classical part of it, the Sufi music. You know, what we have seen is there was an era when we saw a lot of that and we had a story on what happened to guzzles, for example, you know, there was an era when everybody loved guzzles, Bollywood had guzzles. You know, they had a lot of, you know, Indian classical inspired music. That is going down. Is there a shift on that side? What kind of a shift are you witnessing? Also, brands are not really coming out and sponsoring such events. Is that a fact? So, honestly, I don't know if there's such a shift, Ruhil. I think that some of the good stuff that's happened is, you know, Sufi is such a loosely used word. Anything people believe if you call out to God or you say Ali or Allah, everybody believes that Sufi is a song or if they use the word like your love for Sufi is a song, that is not really true. That's not what Sufi means. However, that being said, if that is causing an interest in people to find out more about Sufi music, I'm all for that as well. I think that people are discovering Kabir, people are discovering Bulesha even in mainstream. I mean, you know, even if they say Bulea in a Ghana, but there's a reference to Bulesha, which means he's kind of in people's minds. So I think that and Kabir is very big and people are thanks to, I'd say I would give credit to Koch Studio Pakistan in this respect for bringing back this interest in Sufi music. And then, of course, Koch Studio India did that as well. Though they want only specific to Sufi music. I'd say Pakistan was much more specific to Sufi music. I think there's a huge interest in Sufi music. I met someone the other day at a music conference who said, oh, ma'am, Sufi is trending. And I found it quite amusing that he would say something like that because I said, you know, Sufi has always been a trend. If you want to call it a trend, because I don't think it's a trend. It's outlived a trend. A trend is something which is short lived, but like look at the greats like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khalsa is still being heard. I mean, Abhidha Ji is still being heard. So I don't think Sufi is a trend. However, that being said, I think that more and more people, the good thing is are educated about what Sufi music is with platforms like Spotify, with the Internet. So technology coming back to even your previous question, technology has played a, has been a game changer for artists, right? It's been, you've been able to put out no matter who you were in the old days, it would be really difficult to get a contract with a record label. Now you can be anyone and from your bedroom or your little sitting room, you can put music out onto Spotify. You can put it out and people can find you on Instagram. You can become a viral sensation. And that's so wonderfully freeing and empowering for artists, right? So that's been an absolutely fantastic game changer coming back to the influence of classical music or Sufi music. So I do believe that Sufi music is still around and it will be here to stay forever with guzzles. I think if you're referring to wonderful movies like Masoom, you know, which was heavily guzzled and I think that, yes, there's less of an interest in guzzles. But I think that will also come back. I think in non mainstream, non Bollywood, there are still a lot of people singing guzzles. And, I mean, again, coming back to Koch Studio, one of the most highest views it's got, you know, Abhidha Ji, I mean, Farid Khanam Ji is Ajjana Ki Zidna Karo and you can possibly, you even say that you want to sing it at a live concert. You can hear the ooze and the aahs in the audience that people are so thrilled. So I think that love for poetry, because the poetry of guzzles and Sufi kalams is so very beautiful. I think that love for poetry won't die. I don't believe it will die. It's also interesting classical music is being reinvented, you know, like whether it's Rangisari Gulabi, which has been just re-sung by Kavita Seji. And before that, you know, it had been sung by why am I forgetting her name? Hang on, not Iqbal Bhanno. Yeah, I mean, even if it's a song like Rangisari Gulabi, which was sung originally by Shobha Gurtu Ji, but I think Kavita Seji has just done a reprise of it. And she's done it with Hassan in a much more modern way. So there are people. In fact, even if you get on to Instagram reels and you hear the music that people are using, they do use tumris, they do use geets. They do use classically inspired or classical, light classical pieces like this from the tumri genre from the khayal also genre from Dapa. So it's kind of I don't agree necessarily real that it's dying out. I do think you're absolutely right when you say that Bollywood perhaps is not using it as much. But I think that's the other lovely thing that's happened with social media is one of the things at one time was Bollywood was the only way you got heard. But now because of social media and because of Instagram and YouTube, you can get heard beyond just Bollywood. And therefore, I think that all of these other all of these other genres of Indian music, whether it's classical, whether it's folk, whether it's semi classical, light, they, you know, they are all getting a chance to breathe a little bit and to come back to the force. So I do believe it's going to change for the better. That's my understanding of it. Right, you know, also, you know, when you can see the Sufi gospel project, you know, with your team, tell me how, what all has changed? What kind of impact did it create? And among youngsters today, do they really appreciate genres like, you know, Indian classic Sufi, you know, guzzles? What is your reading of the current generation? So I think for me, when I created the Sufi gospel project, it was really for me. It was not my end idea, my end desire was not how will people respond to it? It was just something that really I believed in. It was my truth. I needed to tell my story and my beliefs through my music. And therefore, I created the Sufi gospel project very quickly for those who don't know what the Sufi gospel project is. It's basically an attempt to take the many different voices of faith and put them together to try and create one voice. To me, Sufism is an understanding, is an acceptance. As an I understand Sufism to be an acceptance of all humanity as equal. Gospel means the truth. And this truth of acceptance is what I started looking for. I looked for it in Sufi music, in gospel music, in bhakti sanghi. In contemporary poetry, I just wanted to create music that said that many different calls to God, many different hallelujahs can and must exist in harmony. So, you know, whether it was an abide with me, which is a gospel hymn that everyone knows, which is a call to God to be by one side, to abide by one, whether I took that and then found a resonance of what we were saying or actually an answer. So when you call to God and I kept thinking it was a beautiful hymn where you call to God to say, what over you abide by me? But then I found a beautiful answer in the words of Kabir Das, Sufi poet Kabir Das who says, Mokko kahaan dhoon de re bandhe, mai to tere pass mein. And then he goes on to say something so valuable and so pertinent where he says, naa mai jap mein, naa mai tap mein, naa mai vrat upavas mein, naa kaabe kailash mein, naa mandir mein, naa masjid mein. And he ends by saying, khoji hoy turath milja. Ispal ki talash mein, kahe Kabir suno bhai saad ho, mai to hoon viswas mein. And that's really what I wanted to say through all of my music, that it's not in the names you call God, it's in believing in God and also somehow through the music, putting out this very important message about the most important religion, the most important religion being the religion of humanity and the most important virtue being the virtue of kindness. And if we can remember that, then you can see God in yourself and God everywhere around you and you've attained a different kind of spirituality. So that's what I wanted to do with the music. And like I said, I did a lot of research. I found lots of common ground between seemingly disparate texts and genres of music. I mean, I blended jazz with Hindustani classical. I blended Irish music with folk Indian music and, you know, even text. And the interesting thing to me and you're asking me the response is that from day one, the response has been incredibly kind. People have just welcomed it, have been moved, have written me the loveliest emails. You know, I mean, I just came back from Bangalore and I think there were people who just came to me at the end of the show saying, we just wept and you moved us from so deep within. And that is generally the response we get because I'm talking of a world where we're all equal through the music. I'm talking of a world without borders, without labels. And I think at the very core, we all want the same thing. And I think the other thing that is artists and event planners and curators we tend to do is that we don't trust our audiences in Afro-Hail. We tend to think, he'll go on, he won't go on. He'll appeal to the masses, he won't do it. Even as artists, you know, sort of before we can put something out there, we'll have these thousands of voices in our heads saying these things. I think we need to just trust people and trust audiences to be far more intelligent and evolve than we believe them to be. And if we really do have that faith in audiences, I have found, at least in my personal journey, that it's always been received. Anything that I wanted to say, no one has criticized it. No one has said, what is she doing? Why is she taking the traditional definition of Sufism and why is she making it her own? Why is she contemporarizing it? I have just been received with love, whether it's been at the Sydney Opera House or whether it's been, you know, in the most traditional space in, you know, it can be anywhere. And people have just said, you know, we came with a preconceived notion, but we've accepted what you've said because what you said really resonated with us. And I think very importantly, and I say this to a lot of younger musicians or any artist, I say that if you go out there and you tell your truth and then no matter what that truth is, is even if it's slightly flawed, even if it's not the same truth that someone else believes in, I think it will be heard and it will touch someone because it's your truth to tell and it's your unique story. So that's all I believe as an artist. I believe it's our responsibility to tell the truth through our art as music. I believe we have to be the truth tellers of society. We have to use our voices to make a difference and to be the conscience in many ways of society. I think it's a very important point that you raise that audience, you know, the audience is open to ideas. We just assume at times that they may not like something, but they are open to, you know, trying new things. Also, that bit about youngsters today, you know, are they drawn towards this genre? What are you reading on that? Again, I've had some amazing experiences. I've performed in colleges, I've performed in schools. I at the other day, I bumped into someone on the street who said, ma'am, you came to my school and performed. And I was so moved by what you said about equality and humanity and acceptance and Sufism that, you know, it's really impacted me and that he stopped me on the street to say hello. So, you know, I think, again, we have to believe that even the youngsters are far more involved than we give them credit for. You can't keep. And the fact is because everybody keeps feeding them so much of the same thing, because it's safer. You have, I think they themselves are excited when they hear something new and something slightly off the beaten path, slightly different and something that makes them think also, Rohil, I really think music is not just for entertainment. I think any art form must make you think, it must make, it must touch you at the core and make you go back and dwell on it a little bit, you know, move you in a way that otherwise what is the point of art, really? You're giving me the headline material in this. What is the point of art? I have three, we have three questions. Overall, one would be asked by my colleague. I'll call her shortly on screen, but I want to ask you this question about how does Sufi music, you know, kind of find its due place? Is it, what are the bigger challenges in this genre? I mean, when it comes to, for example, sponsorships, you know, doing the concerts, how is the market right now on that front? So I think the biggest challenge in India in general for any music that's not Bollywood is the challenge of sponsorships, right? Because a lot of sponsors believe, let's just get a big Bollywood name and it'll sell tickets or it'll give our brand the visibility that it needs. And, you know, it's the easy way out and agreed in many ways. Yes, it is. Because obviously Bollywood has the ability to reach the masses, which perhaps more niche music doesn't. But that being said, I do also believe it's the responsibility of larger corporates to be patrons of the arts. And it's it's therefore they need to understand that India is not just Bollywood. India is just this incredible treasure of different genres and forms of music, you know, whether it's the folk music and we have our folk music isn't on also just one kind of folk music. I mean, you have the folk music of Punjab, of Rajasthan, of the south, of the east, of the west. It's all so different, right? And we must as responsible citizens, responsible, you know, treasurers of this of this wealth that we have, we must give some of our funds as corporates. I mean, this is my plea to corporates that you must give some of these funds to promote to nurture these forms of music as well. Because I have not seen someone who goes to Rajasthan, for example, and doesn't enjoy folk music, you know, individually, everyone will enjoy it. So then why not give more platforms to that Rajasthani folk music or to Punjabi folk music or to music from Bengal? You know, so I think it is the responsibility of corporates to help nurture this music so that the subsequent generations of those of those people who are of the skilled musicians and subsequent generations continue to take up this path because if they find that there's not enough money in it or they can't make their livelihoods of it, then this will just die out and that is something we really don't want to lose because it's come over years of evolution. It's been an oral tradition and it has to be bound to stay alive. I think coming to your other question, not just about sponsor, you asked about sponsorship and the overall challenges are just I think individually as musicians, it's an overall challenge in general for any musician to not follow the easier path, right? Everybody, not just yourself. Sometimes you'll think, oh, God, shall I just do the easy thing, the more popular song because everyone will like it, shall I just do a cover version? And I'm talking about a lot of youngsters who might want to do this. But I think that and that's the easy way out because you know, you'll get that many views, you might get famous, you might get that live concert to do. But I think the most important thing, at least for me, it's always been is that I know that I personally want to be true to what I feel. I want to be true to who I am. So for me, my music, my art is not different from who Sonam Kaldra as a person is. I mean, if you'll see my music, it reflects who I am and all of my beliefs. So for me, it's never been challenging. I think because I just have known that there has to be no disparity between who I am, what I feel and what I communicate through my music. And those challenges for me personally have been whether it's been a struggle of your not enough, perhaps, you know, you don't get called to as many concerts, maybe as you like. But I think I go to sleep really satisfied, really in the knowledge that I am following my true path. So that's not been a challenge other than that. The other challenges, the other struggles, so a lot of working hard, those are things I personally, I mean, and I get laughed at by my friends. I love working hard. I just love the struggle and I love the challenge. And I remember that there was a lady who called me many years ago, asking for advice for her daughter. And she said, you know, Sodomji, and they were from a wealthy family. And they said, we don't want our child to struggle. So, you know, can you tell us how we can help her out? I said, the only way you can help your child out is by letting her struggle. Because it's only through the struggle that you will understand the value of what you create. And you will be pushed to create more if you struggle. And I mean, I often use this quote. And I remember telling that young girl's mother as well, I said, the wound is the place the light enters you, which is what Rumi says. And until you see darkness, you will never see the light. Until you struggle on that uphill climb, you won't enjoy the summit. So, I love the struggle. I'm glad there are challenges. Life would be boring without challenges. And the challenges push us to evolve, to create, to find new ways to stay relevant and to keep on reinventing ourselves. Right. Very profound, very profound. I want to bring in my colleague, Rojasvi, who has a question for you. Hi, Rojasvi. Hello to everybody. Good morning. Good morning. It's a hi, Sonu Ma. I'm Rojasvi Kappu from Louday's Not In. So, I would like to ask you regarding... So, these days, independent music and independent industry is flourishing. And so, can you comment on the landscape of how independent music industry is flourishing and what challenges independent artists face? So, I think Rohil and I were talking about this before you joined the call. I think it's been very exciting for independent artists, thanks to the advent of social media, of independent release platforms. You know, I mean, you can release your music anywhere. Now, you don't need a record label. You don't need them. You can just literally be sitting in your home and release a song. And of course, now with technology, you can even record that song at home. You can mix it yourself. And what's been wonderful is that so many independent musicians, younger musicians, have made themselves comfortable with this technology. They've taught it to themselves. I think during Covid, all of us learned things in these two years that we never thought we would learn. And as a result, you can produce your music. You can compose it at home. You can produce it at home. And you can release it from homes. You never literally have to leave your home. And you will still, with the help of Instagram, with the help of the algorithms of Reels or whether even, whether you can boost a post on Instagram, on YouTube, with SEOs. You know, you can push your music out there so you can be your own marketing person as well. And that's also what I was saying to Rohail earlier, is that now artists can no longer just be artists. They have to be their own managers, their own marketing people. And in some ways, it's a really good thing because who knows your music better than you. Who knows where you wanted to reach, who you wanted to touch. So that way it's been absolutely fantastic. The challenge, however, is it's also very cluttered as a result of this, right? There was the old days where there would be one album release of Shubha Mudgal and everybody knew about it or Amjad Ali Khasab's album and everybody knew about it, right? So when Shubha Mudgal released an album, people would be like waiting for that album or similarly Amjad Ali Khasab or Pandit Chipp Kumar Sharma, you know, but now every day they're like, I don't know how many songs I don't think we can keep track of how many independent musicians release a song every day. But that being said, it's I think from the point of view of the independent musician, there is no better time than now to be an independent musician because you have you have autonomy, you have freedom, you have audiences. And you can on Instagram Reels, even if somebody uses your music for a reel, and if that reel happens to go viral, your music is viral and you suddenly from, you know, not being known and having maybe 200 followers overnight, you can have 20,000 followers or more. So it's the best time to be a musician. People are also willing to do because because of the clutter, because of the fact that there's so much sameness, people are also Roheel coming back to a question, which is just, or just just this question has made me think this that because of the clutter, I think if you do something different, if you do happen to do something different, the chance of you getting noticed is even better. So I think it's very exciting because, yes, there's a lot of sameness that's happening. But then there are some people who are breaking the clutter by trying to be slightly different. So I think it's a very good time. I think it's less challenging now to be honest than it ever was. It was more challenging when you needed to find a record label. You needed to get that interview and say, Sir, please listen to my music. You could leave your music with a record, you know, an artist and repertoire manager, and he may probably never get a chance to even listen to it. And you would have had no way of knowing because you had only that one interview. So I think it's this, it's an amazing time to be an independent creator, to be an independent musician. You don't, you no longer have a middleman. And that's really, really exciting for anyone, you know. Wonderful. Very, very awesome. Can you sing two lines of your favorite album? I don't do that. I'm so sorry, but I'm going to ask you if you would play it. And it's, you know, just when someone asks me what my favorite album is, it's always hard for me to say all my favorite song. Pick your own. Yeah, of my own only. But it's like asking someone to choose who your favorite child is. And you know, it's hard because each one is a labor of love. Each one has so many hours of blood, sweat, tears, happiness, ecstasy, sorrow, you know, so many different backstories and so much that's gone into making each song. But I will ask you to perhaps play at the end of this interview, play or maybe at the beginning of one interview, the interview could play a little bit of Man Manam, which was a song I created for Coke Studio, this song I created for Coke Studio. And I think it was challenging for me, you know, Rohil, because I had to choose. Again, I chose, shall I do the song? Shall I do a Punjabi song, which everyone will understand? Shall I compose a Punjabi song? Or shall I compose a song in Farsi, which no one will understand? And somehow, even though everyone was like, just do the Punjabi song, everyone will get it, it'll be easier. I chose to go with the Farsi song because I don't know, I trusted my gut. And I think that's one thing that most artists and I think everyone, but perhaps artists even more are born with because we're slightly more in tune or maybe more intuitive or in tune with our feelings, in tune also when we sing, hopefully, but in tune with our feelings, we're more intuitive. So I think we're all born with a GPS. And we just have to stop and listen to our own internal GPS, which will tell us what the right thing to do for us is at the time. And I just had to trust my gut and I went with Man Manam, which like I said, if I tell you the words or just we wouldn't understand them, they Ashike Be Khabar Manam, Man Manam, Na Man Manam, which really means it's so beautiful. It means I'm so lost in the love of the beloved that I am in this world, yet I am not. And it was the last verse in this particular song, this column that I wanted to compose that really touched me, which is why I wanted to compose the song. And it says, Isai Maria me Manam, Hemadeh Hashmi Manam, which means Marys Christ, am I, I am the child of Mary, and I am Ahmed of Hashem, I am of Ali. And I always share my mother's couplet, which again describes why I did the Sufi Gospel Project. And I found something my mother had written after I created the Sufi Gospel Project just a few days after I did my first show. And it felt like perhaps she'd been leading me to this place her whole life. And she had written, Guru mere saath kade hai, gobind yahi to hain, Allah bhi maujood hai yahaan, to kaun kahaan se hai, if my Guru is standing beside me and gobind too is by my side, if Allah too is present here, then whose child am I? And I think for me, I just knew that this is the message that I wanted to put out with a large platform like Koch Studio of who I am, what spirituality, what humanity, what a world without religions and labels means to me, you know, religion is fine if it's about faith. The minute it becomes divisive to me, that's not okay personally. So that became the first song that I put out on Koch Studio. The last song that I will ask you to end with is a song of great joy. It's a celebration and it's about celebrating much the same thing where Baba Bullisha says it's a kalam by Baba Bullisha which I composed where he says, ki mere Guru ne mujhe ek nupta padhaya hai, my teacher has taught me a wonderful lesson, ki mere kaba, mere kibla, mere masjid, mere mandir, kisi char diwari mein nahi. My temple, my shrine, my church, my mosque is not within the four walls of a building, it's in the walls of my heart and in the walls of the heart of the person next to me. And now that I have this knowledge, I will wear my ghumrus and I will dance because God is in everyone and everywhere around me. So you can end with that. But just also just to discuss what we were saying with Rohail earlier about me personally wanting my music to have a message even when CAA was happening and there was so much unrest and unhappiness in the country, you know, and there was so much divisiveness. Even then when I sang my version of Hamdei Kinge, which I coupled with Rabindranath Tagore's a recitation of Rabindranath Tagore's where the mind is without fear and the head is held high and he talks of a world again, a country which upholds its values of secularism. And he says into that heaven of freedom, my father let my country away. Even there I have done whenever I use my music, I'm not shouting at you. I'm not forcing my views down your throat. I'm not preaching at you. I'm just asking you to listen. And I hope that in asking you to listen with kindness, I will be able to create a mind shift. I will be able to make you empathize with my what I'm saying and with the person next to you and perhaps their beliefs. So I'm asking not for tolerance as I always say through the music. I'm asking for acceptance of each person as unique individual having their own beliefs and us just learning to respect them. So again, coming back to Sufiism, acceptance of all humanity. And that's all I want to say through my music. Wonderful, wonderful. Very profound. Thank you. My final question about, you know, one is what is your advice to youngsters you know, who are starting their music career in music and also your upcoming music projects. So my advice to youngsters and is that really, there's no shortcut. Work hard. And the harder you work, the more you will see the results like work like a crazy person. Be obsessed with what you do. Be obsessed with music. Don't expect it to come to you. Don't believe that it's all about luck. Yes, to some degree, of course, luck plays a part in everyone's lives. But luck won't come to you if you don't work hard. It's when you work hard that perhaps Lady Luck will also see that you're working hard. You know, I do believe that there are forces watching you and that if you work, get in a minute cup, I'll meet you and it's such a true adage that you must work hard. There's no shortcut. You'll get better. You'll improve your skill. And if you improve your skill, you will get hard. Chances are if you are doing something skillfully, you will be appreciated. So that's how you create the path. That's how you open the doors by just working hard. So that's my advice, work hard. The other piece of advice I would give youngsters is be true to yourself. Find your own unique story and your own unique voice to tell because that is also that is unstoppable. If you have your own story and your own voice, it'll be unstoppable. If you become a me too, then perhaps you'll trend for a while, but that will be a trend and it'll stay for a while. So don't follow trends blindly, listen to the greats of music, emulate them, but don't copy them. So find your own unique story to tell through your music, your own unique message. My upcoming projects, we actually have quite a lot of exciting things coming up. There's a performance that I created in 2016, which was on partition. Rohe, it was called, it is called partition stories of separation, where I talk of, it's a multidisciplinary performance. I have an actor on stage. I have myself with a few musicians on stage and I have video testimonials of those people who survived partition. And that same video screen then goes on to talk of messages of peace and the way forward. But that performance has been revived. So we're doing a lot of those performances actively. We've traveled a lot with it also because this year marks 75 years since the partition of India. It's an exciting performance for me because I also have a visual artist that I worked with. So, you know, we brought all the arts together. We bought theater, we brought video, we brought graphic design and we brought music together. All of the things that I'm very passionate about, I've actually, I don't know if you know this about me, but I've acted in the theater for a long time. I won a national award. So I mean, I worked hard in the theater, but I also went to art school and I trained to be a graphic designer. So you know, there's that. And I worked when I worked in advertising, I worked a lot on film. So it brought all of my loves together and hence created a sort of multidisciplinary performance and I've got the best people to work with me whether it's Gopika Trophla, who's a visual artist, Salima Raza and Rutika Channa, the actors. And of course I've worked with the Partition Archive 1947 Partition Archive, which is a US based organization that has collected these oral histories of survivors. So we brought it all together. The album releases soon. We've had a rough release because obviously when we showcased it for the first time that was a soft release, but the formal release songs of separation comes out this year. Then there is another Sufi album that's coming out. There is a Persian album of just songs that I've composed in Persian coming out. And also I got this year. I was very lucky. I got, I mean, very honored and to be invited to be part of the Recording Academy, the Grammy Recording Academy. So we're prepping for our Grammy entries next year. God willing, of course, we're prepping the rest you leave to the universe and you hope and pray that the universe guides you in the right way. But yeah, so it's a year of a lot of work. And as I said to earlier, I'm so excited because I love hard work. So I love the fact that I'm going to be awake all night thinking of what to do and that my mind will be constantly in a buzz. So I love that. That's wonderful. And you know it's such an inspiration to talk to someone who believes in this. You know, in today's times when a lot of artists are looking for shortcuts, but really wonderful talking to you and learning a lot of things. And we'll be releasing this episode very soon. Thank you so much, Sonamji, for taking out time and talking to us. May I please say thank you Royal for such thoughtful questions. They were really they were really it was a wonderful, wonderful discussion with you and it's rare to have someone who actually spent so much time understanding the artist and asking such insightful and thoughtful questions. So thank you so much for this. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.