Meet Singer-Actor QUEEN HAZARIKA | an article on G-Plus weekly

Queen Hazarika | G-Plus

Initially trained in Indian classical music by her aunt and grandfather, Queen developed a taste for soul music gradually and very recently her track, ‘Xaare Aasu’ (I am awake) gained huge success and popularity and received appreciation from across the world. It received around 25,000 likes in just 11 days on networking sites.

Interestingly, Queen is a third generation singer in her family and started listening to music when she was in her mother’s womb. The 38-year-old said, “My singing life started even before I was born because my parents wanted to have a singer in the family and my father used to play the gramophone near my mother’s womb while she was sleeping.” When she started speaking, she started with sa ra ga ma… Singing was always a part of her life and she first stepped up on the stage at the tender age of four and sang her first song on Jyoti Prasad Agarwala’s anniversary.

She then started singing for children’s plays in theatres. In 1996, she recorded her first album (Abhiman) with her uncle Raaj J Konwar who is a Bollywood singer now and has sung for the movie, Ragini MMS and also received many awards. This was the proper professional beginning for Queen as a singer.

After that she finished her first solo album ‘Sobi’, which is also available on soundcloud.com. Then she delivered her first playback for the film ‘Mon’ along Zubin Garg, which was one of the toughest songs she ever sung. Many singers were not able to sing this song but Queen was able to do it which gained her huge appreciation. After this there was no stopping her. After ‘Mon’, she also sang for ‘Suren Suror Putek’ and ‘Sneh Bandhan’.

Hazarika was born in Lakhimpur to Raj Hazarika and Usha Gogoi Hazarika. She studied at St. Mary’s High School in North-Lakhimpur and later graduated from Handique Girl’s College, Guwahati. Queen has acted in films like ‘Surjasta’,’ Avataran’ (yet to be released which is also the first 3D film), ‘Akasmat-Out of The Blue’ and ‘Stage 3 Fighting’ (English film directed by Kenny Basumatary).

Taking a sabbatical from singing because of marriage and children, she had also worked in the corporate sector for around nine years working with ICICI, Reliance and Vodafone India. She left Vodafone in 2014 and with extreme support from her family to pursue her passion, she is now totally into singing and is lined up with many projects.

On 1st May she released ‘Xaare Aasu’ which is a huge hit. With the desire of always singing something different, she is extremely excited about one of her future projects, which is a fusion of Assamese and Carnatic music. According to her, the music industry here has gone into a rut and there is no creativity. She feels she has something new to do in all her ventures. According to her, Guwahati has changed to a great extent and she likes the new generation as she believes that the new lot is much focused.

At the same time, however, she dislikes many things about the city, mostly, the changing value system. With many planned projects in the future, she dreams of working with David Foster and Illayaraja. She has two sons, Mahin and Caillou and the younger one has already started writing songs at the age of six. Mahin, who is nine years old, wants to become a magician.