Zubeen Garg Biography

Zubeen Garg is a singer and composer from Assam, India, in the Bollywood and Assamese music scene. He plays dhols, dotora, mandolin, keyboard and various percussion instruments.

Background

Zubeen Garg hails from Jorhat, a small city in upper Assam. His birth name is Jibon Barthakur. He was named after the great composer Zubin Mehta and used their Gautra as his surname. Zubeen was born to Mr. Mohini. M. Borthakur, a famous lyricist and poet (who uses the pseudo name Kapil Thakur), and late Mrs. Ily Borthakur. However, because of transliteration discrepancies he is sometimes credited as Zubin Garg, Jubin Garg, or simply Zubin, Zubeen or Jubin and various combinations of the above mentioned.

The Borthakur family had its roots in Janji, Sivasagar. Mr. Borthakur was a magistrate and moved often during his early years along with little Zubeen. Zubeen's mother was a good dancer, an actress and a singer. However, she never turned these talents into a professional career. Instead, she decided to teach them to little Zubeen at home.

Zubeen considers his mother to be his first guru and mentor. Zubeen's younger sister Jonkie Borthakur was a well known singer and actress who died in a car accident in 2002. Zubeen's other sister Palme, is a good Bharatnatyam dancer, presently living in Guwahati.

Feeling indebted to his loyal fans from Assam, Zubeen became involved in various charitable organizations dealing with AIDS and brain cancer. He plans on opening an institute in the near future to help those who are mentally challenged as well.

Zubeen lives with his wife Garima, a fashion designer, in his flat, which is a part of his music studio called Sound & Silence, located at 165/1, Sher-E-Punjab, Andheri East, Mumbai, India.
Zubeen has opened a chain of beauty parlours across northeast India called Zubeen's Veda.

Entering The Music Scene

Zubeen started learning tabla from Guru Robin Banarjee, and then continued learning Assamese folk music form Guru Romoni Rai. He attended J.B. College in Jorhat, and then moved to B. Barooah College, where he was pursuing Bachelor of Science after his family moved permanently to Guwahati. But he did not complete his baccalaureate studies as he jumped into the music scene.

Zubeen's life had a turning point when he received the gold medal for his western solo performance in the youth festival held in 1992. This is where he got his first taste of success and confidence as a vocalist. Apart form playing dhols, dotara, mandolin and percussions, Zubeen is an accomplished keyboard player.

He broke into the professional music scene in 1992, releasing his first album - Anamika. This unusual album became an instant hit in the entire northeast India and re-defined Assamese musical landscape for the coming 21st century.

After that, there was no looking back for Zubeen. With about 40 albums to his name, Zubeen continues his musical career directing music in over 24 Assamese movies including a few Hindi and Bangla movies as well. He received the best Music Award in 2005 for the Bangla movie Shudhu Tumi.

Zubeen considers himself to be a musician having sung more than 9000 songs in various languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi, Oriya, Bengali, Marathi, Nepali, and many others. The song Ya Ali from the movie Gangster became a superhit in mainland India, the Middle East and across South Asia. Following the success, an album titled 'Ya Ali Remix Blast' containing remix by DJ Suketu & Aks was released.

In 2000, Zubeen wrote, directed and acted in his own Assamese film Tumi Mor Matho Mor. He acted, co-produced and scored music in another Assamese film Dinabandhu, for which he received a national award in 2005. Zubeen had composed music for Strings - Bound By Faith, a Hindi film, directed by Sanjay Jha which was released in 2006.

Mukha and Uronia Mon are the latest solo Assamese albums of Zubeen released in the year of 2007 under the N.K. production banner. Currently, he is working on his new Hindi album Chakra. Zubeen came up with his own Hindi album 'Zindagi' in 2007, which received appreciation.

He also worked in the video album of his Assamese audio album "Rumal" which was released in 2008. The video album was released in the Bengali version in Kolkata.