THE NEXT 100 - MUSICIANS

Young achievers in Music who symbolise India Tomorrow

HITTING THE RIGHT NOTES

JUBIN NAUTIYAL, 32 Singer, Dehradun

Jubin Nautiyal was in his late teens when A.R. Rahman told him that his voice was “original” and needed a few years to blossom. He cut short his stay in Mumbai and headed back home to Dehradun. A few years later, Sonu Nigam would reject him at the audition of X-Factor. He travelled to Varanasi and Chennai to hone his voice. He returned to Mumbai in 2012. It took him another two years of singing around 250 demos before he scored his first song with ‘Ek Mulaqat’. “Where I knew my limitations, I learned, where there was politics, I smiled and left,” he says. Since then, he has been hitting the right notes—‘Kaabil Hoon’, ‘The Humma Song’, ‘Tum Hi Aana’. It culminated in him dominating the 2021 charts with two hit tracks: ‘Lut Gaye’ and ‘Raataan Lambiyan’. “The voice has found a face which is a difficult thing to achieve [in music],” he says. After a breakthrough year, he is eager to show a newer version of himself, one that sees him as a composer of independent music and who performs across the world. •

— Suhani Singh

TRAVEL TALES An avid hiker, Nautiyal has trekked many sites in the Garhwal region of his home state Uttarakhand

SOULFUL SOIRÉE

MEHTAB ALI NIAZI, 2 3Sitarist, Delhi

YASIR IQBAL