Birth name Baljit Singh Sagoo Name Bally Sagoo Also known as Bally Sagoo Spouse Sita Pall (m. 2004) | Occupation(s) Producer/musician Parents Saminder Sagoo Years active 1989–present | |
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Genres BhangraBollywoodFusionHip Hop Labels Ishq Records, Fresh Dope Records Role Musical Artist · ballysagoomusic.com Albums Bollywood Flashback, Rising from the East, Star Crazy, Star Crazy 2, Dub of Asia Profiles | ||
Bobby Friction meets pioneering Punjabi producer Bally Sagoo - BBC
Bally Sagoo at the LONDON MELA 2013
Baljit Singh "Bally" Sagoo (born 19 May 1964) is a British-Indian record producer. Born in Delhi, India, Sagoo was raised from an early age in Birmingham. He has been active in the recording and entertainment industries since 1989. He is the producer of albums and the mastermind behind songs and remixes. He remains a force in the music industry and is currently the figurehead of the UK and Belgium based entertainment company, Fresh Dope Industries.
Contents
- Bobby Friction meets pioneering Punjabi producer Bally Sagoo BBC
- Bally Sagoo at the LONDON MELA 2013
- Early years
- 1990s
- 2000s
- Present day
- Discography
- References
Early years
Sagoo grew up in the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham. By the 1970s, his father – Saminder Sagoo – was running his own retail music outlet, after playing in The Musafirs in the late 1960s.
By the time he had reached his teens, Sagoo developed a burgeoning taste for reggae, soul and disco and he was spending most of his college years producing mix-tapes for friends and dee-jaying at local events. These home-made creations demonstrated his fusing Western dance and hip hop with existing Indian music.
Sagoo got his break in 1989 when Oriental Star Agencies, a local Indian record label gave him the opportunity to remix an old Punjabi track called "Hey Jamalo". The single became a hit and Sagoo subsequently joined OSA as their full-time in-house producer. Through this relationship, he released his first album – 1990s Wham Bam – which went on to become a success and spawn a sequel, Wham Bam 2. Other material came during this period, including Star Crazy and Sagoo's 1991 collaboration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, to produce Magic Touch.
1990s
In 1994, Sagoo signed with Sony Records to produce Bollywood Flashback. He became the first Indian artist to be play listed on national mainstream radio when the album track "Chura Liya" (a re-working of Asha Bhosle's song) was played on the BBC Radio 1. This was followed in 1996 by his first, all-original non-remix work Rising from the East, which included "Dil Cheez" and "Tum Bin Jiya". Subsequently, featured the album Dance Attack and composed another remix hit music video, Mera Laung Gawacha (the original Anu Malik composed track from the film Naag Mani), starring Deepti Bhatnagar and Jas Arora, the video was directed by polygram multimedia, these became chart hits in the UK and saw Sagoo appear on Top of the Pops. He later toured India with Michael Jackson on the "HIStory Tour", produced the Aby Baby album with Amitabh Bachchan and was invited to New Delhi to meet the then Indian President, Shankar Dayal Sharma.
2000s
In 1999, Sagoo launched his own UK music label, Ishq Records. Their first output was his album, Dub of Asia. Ishq followed this with the release of a number of Sagoo titles including Anything But Silent, Hanji and the technical Sag Loops series. The label also managed and showcased several other new talents and delivered tracks such as "Noorie" on Sagoo's 2000 release, Bollywood Flashback 2.
In 2003 at the UK Asian Awards, the Spice Girls presented him with the inaugural trophy for 'Outstanding Achievement'.
The decade also saw Sagoo's music supporting Gurinder Chadha's hit Bend It Like Beckham, Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding (2001), the Aishwarya Rai and Dylan McDermott drama Mistress of Spices and It's a Wonderful Afterlife. Sagoo also starred in and composed the music for the 2006 Punjabi film, Sajna ve Sajna, and he appeared in television programs throughout the decade, including the UK Lottery show, the Asian reality show Bollywood Star and celebrity magazine formats such as Tinseltown TV. Sagoo's new album, Cafe Punjab released in 2015.
Present day
In 2012, Sagoo completed the installation of a new studio in Mumbai, and now splits his time between the UK and India. The same year saw the merger of the business assets of Ishq Records into Fresh Dope Records, the music division of Fresh Dope Industries. With a head office in Brussels, Belgium and an operational satellite in Mumbai, the new business represents the culmination of Sagoo's striving to create quality material and it is already engaged in a number of projects including feature film production, TV shows, new artist promotion and management, corporate participation, online and traditional publishing, live performances, lifestyle products, fashion trends and technology developments.