If you are a regular on social media, then we are sure that you have come across the videos of a Tanzanian (African) man in his ethnic attire lip syncing and grooving to Bollywood songs. Yes, we are referring to that guy, that’s Kili Paul. He and his sister Neema Paul have rose to fame within a couple of months winning millions of hearts on Internet.
For the same, Kili has been honoured by the High Commission of India in Tanzania. Indian Diplomat and High Commissioner of India in Tanzania, Binaya Pradhan posted about this on his Twitter account.
Today had a special visitor at the @IndiainTanzania ; famous Tanzanian artist Kili Paul has won millions of hearts in India for his videos lip-syncing to popular Indian film songs #IndiaTanzania pic.twitter.com/CuTdvqcpsb
— Binaya Pradhan (@binaysrikant76) February 21, 2022
Kili Paul thanked the High Commission on Instagram with the caption,” I’m so happy being honored by the HIGH COMMISSIONER OF INDIA IN TANZANIA. It’s a pleasure meeting u Sir and thanks to everyone there for being nice with me and I love u my Indian supporter without u I wouldn’t be here more to come JAI HIND (sic).”
Paul who lives in Luboga, Morogoro, Tanzania has garnered above 2 million followers on Instagram and Tiktok respectively since they started to gain momentum last year. It all began with his lip-sync video on the song, ‘Raatan Lambiyan’ from Bollywood flick Shershaah starring Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra. After seeing Kili’s video, Kiara reposted it on her handle. Even Indian singer Jubin Nautiyal and composer Tanishk Bagchi shared Kili’s video. As a result, it was viewed more than a million times within five days.
Tanishk Bagchi (Indian music producer, composer, singer, and lyricist) has offered Kili to work with him on a video.
“We love Jubin Nautiyal and there’s a fan page we follow. They suggested this song to me. While doing it, I realised there’s a part where a girl sings, so I showed the video to Neema, and she practised it over and over until she got the lyrics. I recorded my part first, and when I posted the second part with her, boom, it went viral. We tagged Jubin and other stars and now it’s everywhere,” Paul said in an interview.
More About Kili Paul
Kili Paul is basically a farmer and lives with a big family. He is often spotted with his younger sister Neema Paul in his videos. He is a huge fan of Hindi movies and his favorite genre is action.
Both Kili and Neema perfectly lip-sync to Bollywood songs considering that Hindi is not their native language. Kili shared his process of creating these videos.
“When I like a song, I go on Youtube, I learn the lyrics first and then I go to google to see how they pronounce every word, because I don’t want to miss any. Then I try to find English meaning of the song. If it’s a love song, then I add my own expressions because love is love everywhere. So yeah, I check the meaning of every part and then I record.”
That’s how he learns any Hindi song within two days with correct pronunciation word-by-word. Moreover, he along with Neema record the videos on a tripod all by themselves and there is no other cameraman who helps them. But they want some experts in the team to look after video recording soon.
Initially, Kili was worried for TikTok is banned in India. But he didn’t stop and kept posting his lip-sync videos on Instagram simultaneously. In no time, his videos were noticed in India.
“Indians are amazing in how they’ve supported us. They don’t fake or pass any judgments or care where you are from; they just show love. Now that I’ve seen where my audience is, where real people and real love are, I’ll bring the best of myself for them. I’ll invest more in India. I’ll try to catch up dance trends, lip-sync songs, (do) comedy,” he said.
He has never been to India, but as per Kili, he has been in India in his imagination and also has future plans to visit the country.