Papon (Angaraag Mahanta) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and one of the most powerful new voices in India. While rooted in folk, Papon has a wide variety of influences and is an extremely versatile artist and a composer. Papon was born in Assam, India, to a set of brilliant musicians of Assam and was introduced to music and its intricacies at a very early age. His mother Archana Mahanta and father Khagen Mahanta are two very popular and respected musicians of the region. Coming from a musically attuned family, music has always been in his blood. His inspirations came from the wide array of sound that he has been exposed to from the traditional Folk songs of Eastern India to new-age electronica. His initial training has been in Indian classical and traditional music (devotional and folk) from Assam. His innovative experiments are rich with ambient electronica, acoustic folk, electro ghazals, new-age, Ind-classical sounds. Papon has featured on both the seasons of Coke Studio India as a singer in Season I and In Season II. Apart from performing as a singerin Nitin Sawhney`s episode he also has produced one track in the multi producer episode. He is considered the `Find` of Coke Studio India. In Coke Studio Season 3 (2013), Papon is a producer of one full episode, composing & producing 6 tracks.
Papon`s long-standing collaboration with pioneering producers Midival Punditz have led to songs he`s co-composed like Har Ek Baat and Naina Laagey finding their way to Bollywood film soundtracks like Soundtrack. Papon has collaborated with renowned composer-multi instrumentalist Karsh Kale on the track Absence for his fifth studio album Cinema. With Sushmit Sen (of Indian Ocean) he has collaborated on the track The Voyage on his first solo album Depths of The Ocean. Papon also has collaborated with percussionist Bickram Ghosh and rising Scottish singer-songwriter Rachel Sermanni, over a project called Troikala rooted in contemporary folk and an initiative of The British Council; they`ve performed across the country and in the UK (South Bank Center) and will soon release an album.
Papon has been very selectively contributing to Bollywood playback singing. He has sung tracks like Jiyein Kyun for film Dum Maaro Dum, Kyun from Barfi, Zindagi Aisi Waisi for film I Am Kalam, theme song for Inkaar and also recently Kaun Mera in the film Special Chabbis.
Recently he has also sang in Chor Chor super Chor, Madras Cafe (music by Shantanu Moitra), Satyagrah, Ishqeria, etc.