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Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Second innings Anwar

After 10 years of staying away from the industry, singer Anwar has now come up with an album Tohfa.

“The kind of songs being made I realised no longer required my kind of voice. So I packed my bags for the U.S. and started concentrating on live shows.You know, people in America and Holland just love old Hindi film songs. In India too, there are lovers of good music but it is not reaching them,” says the composer-singer who’s now settled in Mumbai.

It is during these concerts that he found people asking why he isn’t doing something new.

“I thought that if Bollywood doesn’t have a place for me, let me compose my own songs and come out with an album. I heard the poems written by Qatil Shifai and Musafir and loved it so much that I decided to set them to a tune. Tohfa is out-an-out romantic album.”

In his heydays, he has sung for top actors and along with big names such as Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle.

He reminisces, “There was so much variety then. There used to be one qawwali, one bhajan, may be a ghazal, a romantic and a sad song. But now all songs seem so similar and only aim at commercial success. Music is no longer an art.”

But for someone who doesn’t have much regard for the current style of music, his new album too has a remix version of Humse Ka Bhul Hui.

You ask about that, and he defends himself.

He says, “When you are aiming the album at youngsters, you have to give them what they like,” says this step-brother of actor Arshad Warsi.

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