Bally Sagoo, musician and DJ who gained success as a DJ in the club scene and broke into music by giving the old Bollywood Hits a 'New Look'.

Bally runs a production company named Ishq Records that manages several artistes like Bohemia and Gunjan and has also made it to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Gurinder Chadha's film Bend It Like Beckham, working with Amitabh Bachchan for a musical rendition of Harivansh Rai Bachchan's poetry, Star Crazy Album with popular numbers Long Gwacha and Gur Nal Ishq Mitha and  producing Late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's album Magic Touch have been some of his successful projects. 

Where has Bally been for such a long time?  No new albums OR any new projects?

Been working hard on other ventures like my restaurant bar / music school.

Going back to 1990, you released your first album Wham Bam, a remix of Bhangra numbers, which struck a chord with Asians in England.  What made you choose this kind of music style at that time?

There was a need for my kind of music ... desi beats with rnb and dance fusion.

Would you say that your break in Bollywood was the album 'Bollywood Flashback in 1994' and why?

It was 'Bollywood Flashback’ that took Bollywood by storm. The song selection was ideal to test the market and the style I did the trax worked with all audiences.

What is the process involved in remixing?

Good sounds, good songs and lots of hard work.

What's your favorite song lyric?

Too many to say. Dil Cheez is one of my personal favs...what a song!!

Would you say that your Indian culture is a huge part of your life? Tell us about that and the impact it has on your music!

My culture and living all my life in Birmingham UK has definitely had a major part in my success. I have a lot of black and desi influences which is heard clearly in my music.

Who is and has been an inspiration to you and helped the most at your career and who or what would you consider are your most inspiring musical influences?

Motown has been big in my up bringing. Listening to Quincy Jones, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Jam and Lewis. I have listened to more black American music more than anything else.

Can we expect to see your work in the UK charts again - are we going to see a Bhangra track get to No1 in the UK charts?

I don’t make music for any chart. I just do what I enjoy, if it works in UK charts again for me great. But firstly my aim as always to bring something different to the table.

What is your favorite dish? When your not recording or touring, how do you spend your time?

With some good home made roti and chicken. A good glassi of Johnny Black!

Having started off doing little remixes, then going on to make big hit albums, to producing Bollywood soundtracks such, Hera Pheri (2000) - Kartoos (1999) do you still have plans to work in Bollywood or are there any future projects coming?

My movie ‘Sajna Va Sajna’ has my music. This also is my debut movie in which I play the lead roll. I am working on some new albums too...this will come out soon.

Where do you see the future in remixing? Do you think that this trend will continue or there will be original work by new artists?

It will always continue, as remixes make or break certain songs. You will still get lots of shit though as a lot of guys jump onto it and spoil the original song.

What's your take on the current state of modern music?

Some good stuff but more bad stuff comes out. Still only hand full of good producers in UK and not so many good vocalists.

It is becoming very difficult to find sites that offer Bhangra mp3 downloads, simply due the effects the hard working artists and musicians.  How does it feel to know that people from different parts of the world are accessing and downloading your music?

Downloading is killing the scene, about time it stopped!

If you had the opportunity to repeat the last five years, what might you do differently and why?

Nothing

How do you handle a difficult or unpleasant task when it involves another individual or individuals?

Move on.

A final message to all the readers of Simply Bhangra?

Look out for lots of new stuff including my movie, and my new music, plus new stuff from Ishq Records and many thanks to YOU reading this at SimplyBhangra.