Rabbi Shergill (born Gurpreet Singh Gill, 1975) is an Indian musician famous for his debut album Rabbi and the chart-topper song of 2005, Bulla Ki Jaana. His music has been described variously as rock,[1] Sufiana, and "semi-Sufi semi-folksy kind of music with a lot of Western arrangements."[2] Rabbi himself has been called "Punjabi music's true urban balladeer".[2]
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Rabbi's father was a Sikh preacher and his mother is a college principal and also a Punjabi poet. Rabbi has four sisters. He is an alumnus of Guru Harkrishan Public School, India Gate and University of Delhi's renowned Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College. After college, he went for further studies at the Fore School of Management but dropped out a year later.
After leaving college, he did ad jingles for a while, some of them were for Nova ghee, Yamaha RX-T motorbikes, and Times FM.[1]Rabbi struggled for many years to get his debut album published. Initially he worked with Sony Music, but Sony backed out. He then approached Minty Tejpal, brother of Tehelka's editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal, who liked his music and offered him a contract. After Tehelka's first sting operation, the company ran into financial problems and eventually cancelled the contract. Magnasound also offered him a contract, but the company became bankrupt before the album could materialize. He was finally signed on by Phat Phish Records, who brought out his debut album.
His self-titled first album Rabbi was released in 2004 and was highly successful with its title track Bulla ki jaana main kaun becoming an instant hit. The other songs in the album are an eclectic mix, including songs of joy (Ajj Nachna), love (Tere Bin) and even on contemporary issues (Jugni). Rabbi writes in Punjabi, for "It is my pride", he says.
Most of the songs in the album were composed and written by Rabbi himself except for "Bulla ki Jana" based on the poetry of 18th century Sufi mystic Baba Bulleh Shah, "Heer" from Heer by Waris Shah and "Ishtihar" by Shiv Kumar Batalvi.
Rabbi has since worked as a music director and lyricist for the Hindi movie, Delhii Heights. He has also performed at the World Social Forum in Brazil, played at the inauguration of the Tri-Continental Film Festival in New Delhi and various other Live Shows.
On 2008 April 9, Nokia India announced that Rabbi's new album, Avengi Ja Nahin, will be available exclusively on its Nseries range of multimedia devices for a period of one month prior to its audio cd release.[3] The album contains nine songs and deals with issues like communal violence, social responsibility and the need for "collective morality".[4]
Rabbi's music has been inspired by rock,Hard rock as well as Sufi and Punjabi folk music. His favourite musicians include Bruce Springsteen, Sahotas, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Jimmy Page.
His songs are deeply philosophical and blends archaic, almost lost, Punjabi phrases into far more recent Indian rock music with great ease.
His fans include Amitabh Bachchan and Sir V. S. Naipaul, who famously commented, "I didn't understand it (his music); but it was very, very soulful, very deep." Mira Nair compared him to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
The name Rabbi means God-facing and originates from the Punjabi word Rabb(God). Which originally came from Arabic word "Rub" which means God.
