Nearly 30 years before Dubai became a fixture on the global concert circuit, Shaan remembers standing on a stage at a newly opened Global Village, looking out at something that had caught his attention almost as much as the audience: people preparing to bungee jump.
It was around 1995 or early 1996, and the singer was performing alongside his sister Sagarika at what was then a very different Global Village.
“We were there and we were very excited,” Shaan tells Khaleej Times, ahead of his ‘All of Me Tour’ to Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena on October 25. “We got a tour of the whole place. We were in the Indian pavilion of Global Village, which was also quite massive.”
One particular sight has somehow survived three decades of memories. “I remember bungee jumping was a big thing and Global Village had a bungee jumping area. From where we were performing, I could see people preparing to bungee jump and I remember wondering what was going on in their minds. There’s someone singing and they have to now jump off this thing onto the ground,” he laughs. “That was something I had seen for the first time too, someone bungee jumping. I’ve actually shared this memory after ages.”
Ask Shaan about Dubai and one story quickly unlocks another. The stages, however, have become bigger since. Over the decades, the Indian singer has returned to the UAE for private gigs, ticketed concerts, television shoots and arena performances.
He filmed a special edition of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in Dubai Media City around 2005 and later performed at Expo 2020 Dubai. His more recent appearance at Coca-Cola Arena, he says, was “absolutely fabulous”. “Dubai is always a very, very special place,” he adds. “It would easily rank as a top city for me in terms of the audience, the excitement and the numbers.”
Remembering KK
Some of his most cherished Dubai memories, however, are inseparable from another voice. Shaan performed three shows in the city with the late singer KK, a contemporary who became one of his closest friends. “Three wonderful sold-out shows,” is how he remembers them. “All those photographs that I share of me and KK performing together are mostly from Dubai.”
Years after KK’s death in 2022, what Shaan remembers most is not simply the singer audiences saw on stage, but the man who seemed remarkably untouched by everything that came with fame.
“KK had this childlike persona. He was so light on everything. He never carried the burden of being this celebrity or this singer,” Shaan says. “He could so easily just switch off when he needed to and just be the family person that he was. His priorities were so clear. Yes, he enjoyed his singing, he enjoyed performing and it brought him his popularity and his bread and butter, but it wasn’t something that he wanted to be all the time.”
It’s a quality Shaan says he has consciously tried to carry into his own life. “The thing about KK is that he didn’t spend too much time with people other than his own family and probably his bandmates and people he would work with on a regular basis. I was one of those few friends who could just call him at any time. We could talk for hours. So I feel very privileged.”
Perhaps that perspective also explains how Shaan talks about his own longevity. After decades in an industry where relevance can disappear as quickly as it arrives, there is surprisingly little triumphalism when he looks back.
“There’s a lot of gratitude,” he says. “I don’t know how much of this I deserve, and whatever I’ve got, I cannot let that get to my head or feel that I have anything to do with it. Sometimes it’s the right place, right time.”
But gratitude, at 54, has not translated into slowing down. “I still feel there’s a lot of fuel left in the tank. I want to do a lot more. I want to sing more songs, I want to perform in more venues, I want to improve on my live shows.”
Giving Dubai ‘all of me’
Nearly three decades after that first Global Village appearance, Shaan is once again preparing to return to Dubai with a show whose title perhaps best captures where he finds himself today: ‘All of Me’. The concept, he says, came from wanting to repay decades of audience affection with a concert that does not hold anything back.
“I was very sure that I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. I don’t want to leave anything to excuses. I want to give it my everything,” he says. “It all comes from a place of gratitude. I’ve got so much love, so much support and so much kindness from my listeners through all these years.”
That means finding a way to squeeze an enormous catalogue into a single evening without simply running through one hit after another. “We have to package them so that you don’t end up singing just 20-odd songs when you could actually sing 60-odd songs and yet make it all seem seamless and fun.”
There’s a dedicated ’90s segment, an unplugged section featuring songs personally meaningful to him and, towards the end, a roughly 40-minute stretch designed for dancing. “Luckily for me, I have more dance hits than actually romantic songs,” he jokes. “Many of them duets with KK, mind you.”
The singer has also watched music transform from records and cassettes to television, streaming platforms and now an ecosystem in which a few seconds on Instagram or TikTok can turn a track into a phenomenon. He understands why younger listeners gravitate towards younger artists but what he cannot do is manufacture a version of himself simply to fit into that landscape.
“I cannot completely give in to a trend or give in to something that I know is working right now if I don’t relate or connect with it,” he adds.
Perhaps that’s why, almost 30 years after he first looked out from a Global Village stage at bungee jumpers and an unsuspecting Dubai crowd, Shaan is still returning to the city with songs that have travelled across generations with him.
“I like to think that this moment is everything. If I’ve enjoyed this moment, made the best of it, whatever is to come will also be as rewarding,” he says. “As long as the child is alive in you, you are alive. Otherwise, you’re gone.”
Shaan is bringing his All of Me Tour to Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena on October 25.. Tickets start from Dh150 and are available on platinumlist.net
Source: Khaleej Times
