Can a phone call change one’s life? It just might. Just ask Jigmee Wangchuk Lepcha.

 

The musician and music educator, now 41, who was born and raised in Sikkim, India. Lepcha started singing in Sunday school—the church choir—at the age of eight. He soon moved up to the senior choir, to which he dedicated his teenage life.

 

He then began exploring various genres of music before settling on rock, which he particularly fancied. Lepcha became part of a local band, CRABH, and started perform­ing in various shows, which earned him praise. The pos­itive response brought him even closer to music.

 

That life-altering call in 2001 came from his cousin, Daniel Karthak. At the time, guitar­ists Binayak Shah and Imam Shah were just back from the US after completing their study, and they had plans to work in the field of music in Nepal. Karthak showed them Lepcha’s musical demo. Impressed, they rang him up to invite him for a musical show in Kathmandu. Little did he know that the phone call would separate him from his hometown, perhaps forever. Reminiscing about it now, Lepcha smiles: “It completely changed my life.”

 

His plan, when he arrived in Kathmandu two months before the show, was to return to Sikkim after its completion. But life had other plans for him. Because he was born into a Christian family, Lepcha was requested to record a Gospel album by Karthak, and he had to stay back in Kathmandu for a few more months.

 

During the recording, yet another offer knocked his doors. Legendary drummer Dev Rana and his team of musicians were preparing to perform at the Hyatt Regency. Lepcha was invited for an audition from the front-man and immediately earned a three-month contract. Three months turned to six and six to nine—the contract kept being extended and so did his stay in Kathmandu.

 

“I was happy with what was happening, the music scene here was totally different,” says Lepcha. “Back home in Sikkim we used to perform rock songs only. At Hyatt, we also performed soft, com­mercial numbers which were comfortable even dance to,” he adds. Lepcha was earn­ing much more than what his band would make in Sikkim at the time. After nine months at Hyatt, he was given the responsibility to arrange con­tracts and the line-up for the in-house band.

 

“Things were going well but after eight years at Hyatt, I started getting tired of doing the same thing over and over again,” says Lepcha. “So I ter­minated my contract.”

 

Lepcha then joined a local band called Strings and entered Thamel’s music scene—which he says was totally different from what he was doing. “Performing in Thamel meant performing the songs I liked, the music I grew up listening to as a young kid—rock—which injected me with new life,” says Lepcha. Strings at that time was a very popular cover band in the Kathmandu circuit.

 

While at Strings, as a side project, he was also involved with The Midnight Riders for various events and concerts. “The Midnight Rid­ers made good music and it was already one of Nepal’s most sought-after bands, although the band members were in it just for fun. Things took a dramatic turn when the band members decided to get serious,” says Lepcha.

 

That was when Lep­cha started composing and recording with The Midnight Riders, which culminated in the release of their debut album “Yaatra” in 2017. After cutting ties with the cover band Strings, Lepcha, for the past eight years, has been the front-man for The Midnight Riders, wooing audiences young and old with his high pitched vocals and energetic stage presence.

 

Lepcha is currently work­ing as a music educator at a few schools in Kathmandu; even as he is still an active member of The Midnight Riders. Nearly 16 years ago, he had received that fateful phone call and was invited as a guest to Nepal. Now Nepal has become his permanent home. Lepcha is comfortably settled in Kathmandu with his wife, mother and a daugh­ter. He visits Sikkim once in a while to see his father and to keep up with the musical scene there