I first met Suheil Rais Khan during last year’s Tehzeeb Festival. This year, he flew down from Mumbai for a few music events during which I managed to track him down for an interview. While speaking to Images on Sunday, his introduction was, “I’m not only a classical singer. I’m a ghazal singer; you can call me a live semi-classical singer and a classical player. I play the sitar and ragas; I love singing any song that touches my heart. It doesn’t matter which genre it belongs to and what language it is in.”

Suheil Rais attended the famous boarding school Bhans in Nasik which has produced artists like Arshad Warsi, Anu Malik, Vinod Khanna, etc. He realised the worth of classical music when he would see his father perform and the admiration he received, developing his interest in classical music. So which personality does he call his teacher?” My father is from the Mewati Gharana and he moved to Pakistan while we stayed back in India. I used to take lessons on the phone or when he visited India. My father is my guru and I’ve had no other training, it has been just practice,” he says.

Interestingly, Suheil also teaches music and many current Indian music composers have been his students. However, he is modest enough to avoid mentioning their names. “I’ll be joining a reputed music academy that belongs to a legend as a professor.”

Would he call his talent good genes, passion or a result of endless hours of practice? “Anything that has to do with fine arts needs practice. It is very important no matter what. Even if you have the genes, you’ll be better at it than anybody else if you practice well,” he says.

Having sung in genres like pop, jazz, classical, live classical, semi-classical and even Sufi rock in collaboration with Jawad Bashir and Akbar Ali titled Maula (to be released soon), perhaps no one can best define fusion music than Suheil. “It’s like jazz. You take any tune, twist it around, explore it and then end up back at that tune. To me that’s fusion. You can sample it in my latest album, Raga Fusion.”

Over the years Suheil has collaborated with all the big guns. Whom did he enjoy working with the most? “I’ve had the most fun working with Sadhna Sargum because she is a versatile artist and a very good person at heart. And in Pakistan, I have only worked with Jawad Bashir and Akbar Ali. It was a wonderful experience.”

What does he think of the present music scene in Pakistan? “I don’t really know too many artists and neither do I know much about the music scene existing here these days. I’m quite impressed by the Mekaal Hassan Band and to an extent Shafqat Amanat Ali who is doing a splendid job.”

So why doesn’t he do Bollywood films, I ask to which his reply is rather unusual, “I have been working for so many years but haven’t got a break yet. Maybe it’s because I can’t be a sycophant or flatter. I’m a straightforward person when it comes to dealing with people.”

He is a true proponent of Indo-Pak harmony and thinks everything is possible through music. But at the same time classical music is fast becoming an extinct commodity. However, Suheil is hopeful and thinks that it has a wide scope if packaged in an innovative manner. He thinks that people are really trying to make it better. “We will have to eliminate the generation gap. Classical music can appeal to the youth if it has a different packaging,” he says in an optimistic manner.

About the future of sitar as an instrument, he says, “Sitar is an international instrument. It was initially called sehtar. There were two different styles of playing it: the one that Ustad Ravi Shankar follows is called the Bol Bhaj and the other was Gaikean Bha (sing and play) used by Ustad Rais and Ustad Vilayat Khan. The future of sitar basically depends on how far you can take it and explore it.”

About his future plans and projects, he says, “I recently released three new albums with Hans Raj Hans, Rais Khan Saheb and Sultan Khan; Raga Fusion with Rekha, Sadhna, Shreya Ghosal and Jaspinder Narula; and Sublime Love, a love song album, with the same team. There is also collaboration with Shoma Gosh. I am planning to release some of these albums in Pakistan as well. Moreover, there are collaborations with two more Pakistani artists which I would like to keep as a surprise.”