The year 2008 is extremely crucial for Assam’s heartthrob singer-composer-actor Zubeen Garg, who two years ago hit the top of popularity charts with the chartbuster song Ya Ali... from Anurag Basu’s Gangster. And he knows it. This is the year which will see the release of his most ambitious work in Hindi, an album titled Pakeeza.

This is also the year when he expects to start work on his directorial venture in Hindi, a political thriller set in present-day Assam, through which he plans to portray the angst of the youth in a disturbed social milieu.

The diminutive singer with a powerful voice has given his fans some wonderful songs such as Jaane Kya Jaane Man Bawra... in Pyar Ke Side Effects and Jag Lal Lal in the eminently-forgettable Sunny Deol-Priyanka Chopra-starrer Big Brother, as well as a few dance tracks like Dilruba with Alisha Chinay in Namastey London and one of the three versions of the title track of Yash Raj Films’ Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. Garg burst onto Assam’s musical scenario with a blockbuster album called Anamika in 1992.

“It is a very important album for me. It is an album that will see the first of my projects shaping my dream of taking Assam and North-East India’s rich traditional musical sounds to the world. People very easily identify the North-East with violence, but they don’t know the rich culture and strong social traditions there. As a musician, my dream is to bridge this gap by taking our music to the world,” says the singer, who is singing the title track in Drona starring Abhishek Bachchan apart from lending his voice to songs in films like Bombay to Bangkok and Manorama Six Feet Under.

The 35-year-old Zubeen, who has till date sung over 7,000 songs in almost every language and dialect of the North-East as well as in Bengali, Nepali, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Oriya and Marathi, recently had another private album with music composed by his friend Dudul Saikia with a few songs sung by south’s veteran singer Chitra and Pakistan’s Shafqat Amanat Ali.

The singer, who is committed to social causes related to Assam and North-East is also giving final touches to the script of his first directorial venture in Hindi,  titled Chakra. “It will be shot completely in Guwahati with the story revolving around six major characters,” says Zubeen, who has acted in the National Award-winning film Dinabandhoo directed by Munin Barua, for which his soulful music earned everyone’s appreciation.

He’s also working on  an album, a tribute to S D Burman. Amidst all this, he finds time to work towards raising social awareness about issues relating to his home state, like a recent musical rally that he led to raise a voice against continuing rhino poaching in the Kaziranga National Park that coincided with an art camp by the state’s top painters. He has also sung songs condemning the ongoing violence in Assam and calling for peace. According to Zubeen, “I, like everyone else in Assam, want peace in my home state. The killings  should stop. That’s why I wrote and sang Alap Shanti Diya (Give me a little peace) sometime back. It is high time we devote ourselves to bringing back peace.” No wonder, he is an icon in Assam, and could be one for the whole of India soon.