assamese rockstar papon talks to bryan durham about his debut hindi albumwhy the name change angaraag mahanta is my school name people in assam announce me as angaraag mahanta now on stage angaraag mahanta some of my school friends call me angaraag but everyone else calls me papon its like a pet name and after i came to delhi it became papo what was your first song that had the crowds swaying and singing along i think my assamese song phagunore posuwa ba which i also played unplugged on a recent tv show it was writted by my uncle keshav mohanta who recently passed away and was assams biggest poet its the simplest and loveliest song very romantic i wish i could translate the whole song for you it surprised me it got really popular and shamelessly for five years now we start every show in assam with that song laughs we almost have to which place do you call home assam delhi or mumbai well maybe the planet laughs i live in bombay now what is your debut album the story so far about well its about my journey about the story so far this album has been ready for about four five years now and it didnt get released because our contract got stuck with a different label one of the songs on this album is the first song i ever made after that three songs released in assamese i made music with the punditz karsh kale so much of work happened but this album just didnt get released so this is my journey from when i started actually composing and producing music i have moved ahead sound and productionwise now but maybe all of that has happened and where i am now musically is because of the story so far its my journey why a predominantly hindi album because i have already done my assamese albums now i dont know many languages laughs wont they seem betrayed well bollywood isnt a genre as such there are so many different genres within bollywood and now is a time when its so opening up so i dont mind doing bollywood at all im sure theyll also love my bollywood tracks because im not going to sing everything that comes my way and ill choose the ones i want to do selection of the tracks well these are the tracks i composed to fit into the album thats all really laughs the track you most enjoyed working on duur it was made about nine years ago if you listen to it it was a treat for the engineer to mix but there was stereopanning and electronica at that time it was way ahead of its time as a track then and very interesting production wise do you feel that the resurgence and the rise to prominence of folk music and its exponents is a trend that is here to stay i think its around to stay