ਕੰਵਰ ਗਰੇਵਾਲਕੰਵਰ ਗਰੇਵਾਲ

Kanwar Grewal (born 1984) is a Punjabi Sufi singer and lyricist from Mehma Sawai village in Bathinda district, Punjab. He first reached a wide audience with the album Akhan in 2013 and the song Faqeera in the film Ardaas in 2016, then became one of the best known musical voices of the 2020 to 2021 farmers protest through songs such as Pecha, Ailaan and Akhan Khol.

Early life and musical training

Grewal was born into a Jatt Sikh farming family in Mehma Sawai, a village in Bathinda district in the Malwa region. The Indian Express and News18 both name the village and his farming background. He began learning music in Class 6, and his school performances on Punjab heritage subjects were already drawing attention while he was a student.

His interest started early and practically. As a primary school boy he asked his father for a harmonium and a bicycle so he could travel to a neighbouring village to learn classical music, and he was given both. That early training stayed with him through college. He graduated from SBC College in Kotkapura and completed a postgraduate degree in music at Punjabi University, Patiala.

After his studies he taught at Punjabi University for a time and worked on background music direction. In those years he sang the work of classical and Sufi greats, including Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, building the grounding in raga and kalaam that later shaped his own recordings.

How did Kanwar Grewal become a Sufi singer?

The turning point, by his own account to The Hindu BusinessLine, came in December 2010, when he was introduced to spiritual preacher and singer Mata Manjeet Kaur at her ashram near Malerkotla. He describes that meeting as finding his spiritual core, and it was there that he took to a Sufi way of life centred on the oneness of humanity across faiths.

That outlook explains the figure audiences see on stage: a singer in a simple white kurta pyjama who performs at shrines as readily as at concerts. A Tribune feature on Punjab Sufi singers found him singing at Meera Ka Darbar in Malerkotla, eyes closed and hands folded, and noted that he refused to move to the city or change his plain dress even after his singles brought him fame and money.

Career: from Akhan to Faqeera

Grewal's first album, Akhan, released in 2013, was an immediate hit, and his second album, Jogi Nath, was also well received. Singles such as Fakeera, Mastana Jogi and Maaf Kari Rabba reached the top of music charts and gave him a wide audience across Punjab and the diaspora. Mastana Jogi, one of his best known early songs, takes up division and hatred between people and answers it through the message of Guru Nanak.

His entry into Punjabi cinema came with Faqeera, his song for the 2016 film Ardaas, which remains the recording most listeners outside his Sufi audience know first. Live work ran alongside the recordings. He told BusinessLine in 2020 that he had performed around 1,200 shows around the world in the previous seven years, a figure he offered himself to explain how village to village travel, rather than studio promotion, built his following.

ਕਿਸਾਨ ਵਿਰੋਧ ਗਾਣੇ

When the agitation against the three farm laws began in 2020, Grewal was a natural presence at the Delhi borders. He came from a farming family, sang at the protest sites, helped with langar and addressed gatherings, The Indian Express reported. At Singhu border he was also a voice for discipline, urging crowds to stay focused on the cause rather than treat the gathering as entertainment.

Between August 2020 and February 2021 he released ten protest songs. Eko Hi Bana came first, on 21 August 2020. Akhan Khol, shaped by his travels through Punjab villages with lyricist and friend Harf Cheema, followed in September. Ailaan, released on 10 October 2020, was watched more than six million times before it was removed from YouTube in February 2021 on the Union government's directions, and he answered with Ailaan Fer Taun two days later. Pecha, sung with Harf Cheema and released on 21 November 2020, days before the Delhi Chalo march, became an anthem of the movement. Other songs from the period include Itihaas, Aakhri Faisla, Jitega Punjab and Jawani Zindabad, a song for the young people who had left home to join the protest.

The work did not stop when the march ended. In November 2021 he released Sek, a song about farmers who had died during the protest and the grief their families carried. The chorus line of Ailaan, that decisions about crops would be taken by farmers themselves, had by then become a rallying cry of the agitation, Outlook India noted.

Honours and later life

In April 2018 the Canadian province of British Columbia gave Grewal a certificate of appreciation for his work promoting the Punjabi language. The same year he received the jury choice award for best Punjabi singer, and in 2020 he received a best Sufi singer award.

He has kept writing on public questions since the protest. In July 2022 he released Rihai, on the demand for the release of Sikh prisoners who had completed their jail terms. News18 reported that the song was taken down from YouTube after a legal complaint and later became available again. In December 2022 the Income Tax department searched his Mohali residence as part of a reported verification of singers earnings, an operation that also covered Ranjit Bawa. No outcome of that search was reported in the sources consulted for this page.

In his personal life he keeps the pattern set by his Malerkotla years. The Tribune feature in 2016 noted that he had recently married, and that his wife stayed with an older woman he calls Bebe in a small kutiya at the dargah. He credited Bebe with changing his life, and said the biggest success comes with surrender, not with money or fame.

What is Kanwar Grewal known for?

Kanwar Grewal is known for Sufi singing rooted in formal training, for the album Akhan and the film song Faqeera, and above all for the protest songs of 2020 and 2021. Pecha and Ailaan carried the farmers case far beyond the protest sites because they were written from inside farming life, in plain Punjabi, by a singer who was present at the borders himself. That combination of devotional music and direct social song is what sets him apart in modern Punjabi music.