What musician Zubeen Garg meant for Assam

On September 23, four days after Zubeen Garg’s death in a careless water-sports accident in Singapore, his mortal remains were laid to rest. Four days and two postmortems after, the people of ‘Assam have not found closure. Yet, nobody is really looking for one. Because this is only another beginning, where the phenomenon called Zubeen da (as he was popularly known) is being immortalised.

- Shrabana Barua

Born in Tura, Meghalaya, in 1972 as Zubeen Borthakur, Zubeen Garg was distinctly more than just a popular singer, let alone just the singer of Ya Ali, the immensely popular song from the 2006 movie, Gangster. Now, many people outside Assam are surprised by two facts.

The first is that Zubeen sang more than 38,000 songs in about 40 languages. For a man who died at 52, the size of the corpus itself should be a reason for heightened recognition. But, people tend to care less beyond a few hits and popular numbers these days.

In Assam of the 1990s, this was not the case. Zubeen, who grew up in different parts of ‘Assam and belonged to an artistically inclined family, made his way through school and college relying on his musical skills. His first solo album, Anamika, released in 1992, turned him into an overnight sensation. By the turn of the millennium, he was an icon for most in Assam.