Twice-born, Bobby’s all set to scale new heights

chandigarh: christened anupam amod at birth, this singer from rajasthan made a mark for himself much before the mtv video ga ga contest came along in 1999 and invited entries from singers across the country to participate. amod entered the contest, and won, and there was born bobby. it was my nickname but i took it up as my name after the contest, says bobby, whose powerful voice and capacity to draw an audience is quite a quality. performing at planet m in chandigarh on thursday he managed to warm up the crowds which is traditionally rather closed towards anything other than punjabi. apart form making the crowds sing to his number deewane and remixes such as jaane jaan, back to disco and jai jai shiv shanker, he also threw in a punjabi number (sukhbir's gal ban gayee), which really got the crowds grooving. and, like a true performer, he did not lip sync. i used to sing with alisha chinai and ila arun at their shows; i love live shows, says the singer, whose main aim is to sing playback for hindi movies. after winning the mtv contest, the singer has sung a couple of songs in compilation albums. he's also rendered some traditional alaaps to a jazz base for a music today album, which featured other artists as well. his first solo album, titled tere liye, is soon to be released, and apart from original numbers it also features two remixes, oh maria from sagar and yamma yamma from shaan. that's because i was already doing many remixes as this way the identity would remain intact, says bobby. the video of the song deewana, which has been shot on a low budget and has snapshots of his recent performance in holland, is already on air. another video of tere liye will follow. in the meantime, we'll follow his career - he's sure going to be scaling heights, even if it's the only way he'll make use of his architecture degree! geetika_bhandari@indiatimes.com