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Television proved to be a great
platform as it provided Ragz
with vast exposure, cutting
across all age groups and giving
her a diverse fan base. Music,
had always had more than a palpable
presence in her house and one
day she stumbled upon a very
simple and yet beautiful tune
in her father’s music
room. It went something like
this… ‘ta ta ra
ri ra ra’. It was from
this hummable and haunting tune
that ‘Duniya’
was born. Ragz chose to sing
this song on her father’s
behest for he felt that lyrics
of this song were able to capture
the essence of Raageshwari’s
personality.
What lay ahead was a difficult
path for Ragz as she recorded
a scratch demo of the song and
did the rounds of music companies.
In contrast to her rising star
on television, she faced complete
rejection from the music companies.
The pop industry in India at
the time was in its infancy
and still in the shadows of
the all-pervasive Hindi film
industry. As a result, ‘Duniya’
was tagged ‘too simple’
and ‘not sexy enough’.
Ragz’ brother Rishabh
joined forces with her and they
decided to go ahead and shoot
the video anyway. They chose
Maldives as the location in
their attempt to translate the
simplicity and beauty of the
music on screen. The result
was stunning and their gamble
paid off! If her father had
been able to capture her personality
musically, her brother managed
to encapsulate her in the video.
‘Duniya’
grew to become a favourite with
the music channels, catapulting
Ragz’s celebrity status.
The follow-up to ‘Duniya’
was a video titled ‘Oye
shava’. With this
video Ragz attempted a complete
image overhaul. ‘Duniya’
depicted Ragz being herself,
but ‘Oye shava’
was a departure from that image
as it was a ‘girl power’
video with hard core dance moves
juxtaposed with images of Ragz
and a bunch of other girls engrossed
in a game of rugby. Much like
‘Duniya’,
this video too was a refreshing
change from all else that was
on air at the time.
In 1998 Ragz collaborated with
her father and brother again
to release her second chart-topping
album, ‘Pyar ka Rang’.
Growth, innovation and a certain
confidence that results only
from success were evident in
the video for the title track
of the album. The video was
a spin-off on the character
of Aida from Giuseppe Verdi’s
19th century opera.
With her trademark sense of
poise and ease, Ragz continually
switched between the characters
of a doe-eyed college girl and
Aida in the video. Once again,
she managed to score a huge
hit as the song reverberated
through nightclubs for several
months. Constantly looking to
evolve, Ragz played a more mature
character, that of a young woman
who loses her lover to the ravages
of war in her second video from
the album, ‘Mere Mehboob’.
The song was a soulful rendition
of the pain of a young woman
when she is separated from her
lover. Her second album also
led to her growth as a performer
and she began touring the world
with her troupe of dancers.
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