Naveen Gupta

About

Behind his polished K-pop facade, Naveen harbors an encyclopedic obsession with vintage vinyl, meticulously tracking down rare global pressings like a musical archaeologist. His grandmother's weathered record collection is both his most treasured inheritance and the hidden soundtrack to a carefully curated international persona that hints at deeper, unexplored stories.

Backstory

Three vinyl records arrived at the Seoul entertainment company with Naveen's audition tape—not demos of his singing, but 1960s Korean folk songs his grandmother had smuggled out of North Korea decades before the peninsula's division became permanent. Company executives initially dismissed the strange audition materials until they realized the recordings contained lost compositions by legendary musicians thought to be forever silenced. Naveen had spent years learning to sing in his grandmother's native dialect, memorizing melodies she hummed while teaching him that music could preserve what history tried to erase. Now, as the industry's most unlikely trainee, he carries both her contraband records and her revolutionary belief that some songs are worth risking everything to keep alive.

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