#
I am fascinated by counterfactuals, especially when it comes to our personal lives.
#
You tweak some tiny detail in your own life and you go in a completely different direction,
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you become a completely different person.
#
And at the time, one usually doesn't know what the important moments are.
#
My guest today did an MBA in finance and worked as a bond trader.
#
And she also loved music.
#
And at one point in her life, she decided to quit her career and study music and become
#
Later, after a couple of albums, touring with a backup band she wasn't quite comfortable
#
She was in a group where she says she might well have quit at some point.
#
But then she fell in love with a guitarist from another country, married him and her
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music also fell into place as they began to collaborate and it reached new heights.
#
And there are other parts here.
#
And there are other lives that were possible.
#
She could have stayed in finance and become successful there.
#
She could have fallen in love with some other man and married him and had kids and all the
#
She may not have met the music teacher she did meet who inspired her and taught her so
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She may not have got the opportunities she got.
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Luckily for us, it worked out this way when she chose her passion.
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But so many others stay on the conventional route and their art is unseen.
#
So many others choose their passion, fail, and their sadness is unseen.
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Having said that, when you feel a love this strong as Kiran Aluvalia felt for her music,
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you plunge yourself into it.
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To embrace your true self can be hard, but it is the best form of self-love.
#
And if we can't love ourselves, we are nothing.
#
Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
#
My guest today is a musician, singer, composer, lyricist Kiran Aluvalia whose work spans genres
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and has touched people across the world.
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She left a promising career in finance to follow her heart and study music and become
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I will list all her albums in the show notes.
#
I urge you to discover her music and go with her through her musical journey.
#
My favorite album of hers till recently was Arms Amin or Common Ground, a collaboration
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with Tenari Ven and Tera Kaft, the legendary Tuareg blues bands from Africa.
#
Actually, my new favorite now is Comfort Food, her yet to be released album.
#
In fact, this episode is a world premiere for some of the songs from this new album
#
and there'll be a lot of music here.
#
So if you listen at higher speeds, please slow down to normal speed when the songs happen.
#
A few happened during the episode and I've put a bunch at the end that she wanted to
#
share with my listeners.
#
I'll give a listing with time codes in the show notes.
#
But as much as the music, I love this conversation and I especially loved the bit about her charming
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romance with Reza Bazi, the Pakistan born American guitarist whom she married and who's
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played on all her albums since they met.
#
Lovely story, great music.
#
I'll cherish this conversation.
#
But before we get to it, let's take a quick commercial break.
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a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
#
Kiran, welcome to the scene in The Unseen.
#
It's absolutely amazing to be here because I'm a fan of you and of your podcast.
#
And I've pretty much listened to maybe like the last 100 episodes that you've done and
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a couple of them time and time over, like I've repeated, I've listened to them a number
#
of different times on repeat.
#
So I can't believe I made it here.
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It's absolutely my pleasure.
#
And I must say, I'm late to discovering your music, but now that I've discovered it and
#
spent some time sort of listening to it, I think in the end, my count of listening to
#
your songs will be way, way, way, way, way, way more than you are listening to my episodes.
#
Thank you for the kind words.
#
I want to sort of start by asking a broad question.
#
Like you've been kind enough to share the songs of your latest album with me.
#
I was kind of blown away and I heard them after listening to the rest of your music.
#
And it just feels so incredibly powerful.
#
And, you know, I mean, I don't want to compare any of your work with any of your other work.
#
That's obviously not fair.
#
But I just felt that this is, you know, there's sort of a clear evolution and this is so powerful
#
And I'm wondering how you feel about the journey that you made in music, because typically
#
what happens in music is that unlike the other arts, music is considered a young person's game.
#
You get in there in your 20s and you're doing stuff and a lot of the rock icons, like 27
#
is a famous age when a lot of rock icons died, like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin
#
and so on and so forth, 33, a bunch of people died at 33 as well.
#
These are like two iconic sort of ages in rock to die.
#
And it's always, you know, you'd rather burn out than fade away is what seems to happen
#
in a lot of typically in music, whereas in the other arts, you have writers and painters
#
and so on reach maturity over time, that it is not really a young man's game.
#
You know, you're playing a kind of long game.
#
It's very common with artists and authors that they'll really hit their stride in the
#
30s or 40s or even 50s, which gives me hope because I'm kind of late to that game.
#
But tell me about how you think about the journey of a musician.
#
I'm guessing when you started in the 90s, then and we'll talk about your entire journey
#
and how you made that shift.
#
And it's all fascinating to me and we'll dig deep into that.
#
But just, you know, in a general sense, when you started, you must have started with this
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exuberance and the passion of youth and and then the years pass.
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And sometimes I think at some point in your life, maybe you look back and you're like,
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what the fuck happened?
#
Where did those decades go?
#
You know, and all your dreams change over time, I'm guessing.
#
And I'm almost speaking in an autobiographical way, because that's how it is.
#
A year just pass, your dreams change.
#
You realize that maybe you aim for the wrong things.
#
Maybe some of the things you aim for aren't happening.
#
Maybe the process is more important than a particular goal of something.
#
And you know, you're 57.
#
You've brought out this incredible, powerful album, which is which speaks to the time,
#
you know, which is so moving in different ways.
#
What is your sense of, you know, the journey that you made and how you sort of redefined
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Well, I mean, first of all, I don't mind you comparing my new stuff to my older stuff.
#
That's I, you know, I do it.
#
And I love that I'm talking to a person who has the ability to understand my music and
#
Because although I was born in Patna, Bihar, very early on, we left India.
#
And so I've been outside of India my whole life, even though I've come back to India
#
So but my point is that in my career, most of my interviews, like 99% of my interviews
#
are with non-Indian, non-Hindi speaking or Urdu speaking or Hindustani speaking people.
#
And so they don't often understand the words of my songs and they don't understand the
#
World music enthusiasts and people who know world music will understand the trajectory.
#
But a lot of people don't.
#
I love that you are someone who, you know, you're able to compare it and then look at
#
So what was the question?
#
How do I feel about my journey?
#
Yeah, it's how you feel about your journey and how you sort of redefined it.
#
Like when you're young, you want something different when you're older, you want something
#
You know, sitting now where you are when you look back.
#
So yeah, you're right about that.
#
For me, definitely the journey is what it's all about.
#
And then everything that I get on the way is just a bonus.
#
But even in the beginning, I knew that I would just be lucky to be able to get up in the
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morning and be able to sing, like do my Riyaz and do my music.
#
And you know, like being an Indian person growing up in Canada and singing and composing
#
and singing in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, I never even could dream that I could make a career
#
I always thought that, OK, I'm going to get my MBA in finance like I did, and I'm going
#
to do other stuff and then I'm going to have this passion of music and I'm going to do
#
But by luck, I put out an album, by luck, I was at the right place at the right time,
#
I got a manager, I got an agent, lo and behold, I started to get tours and people started
#
to buy my music in Canada.
#
And so I thought, OK, I'll see where this takes me.
#
I'll do this for a year and then I'll come back to doing a full-time job.
#
But that year has lasted for 23 years now.
#
And so for me, I'm just so incredibly lucky that I got to do this.
#
I got to wake up, I got to do music every day, I got to compose, I got to release my
#
emotions and say what I need to say through music.
#
So, so, yeah, I'm happy with the journey.
#
You mentioned about how part of the journey that you're happy with is that you get to
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wake up in the morning and you get to write music and you get to, you know, spend time
#
doing what you really love.
#
And I sort of like I wonder how you manage the balance between that just that primal
#
impulse of immersing yourself in music, creating stuff and all of that with all the other
#
things that come with being a quote unquote a musician, right, in the sense that I would
#
imagine that in different ways there are all kinds of constraints that, you know, by default
#
And I don't necessarily mean constraints in a bad way.
#
Constraints are perhaps inevitable.
#
But like one kind of constraint which you have shrugged aside magnificently is of course
#
a constraint of genre where, you know, you're thinking beyond those typical boxes that people
#
think in that, yeah, sure, you've done the guzzle, but you've done so many different
#
kinds of forays into different kinds of music and just created something that is your own
#
and that you've gone past and that's great.
#
But then there's also, in a sense, a constraint of form that the music industry expects songs
#
that are a particular length or expects them released in particular formats and albums
#
have to have a certain number of songs and all these are really artifacts of an earlier age,
#
you know, the three-minute song evolved because at the turn of the 20th century, that's how
#
much would fit on the small discs.
#
Then the long playing record came and then that convention became 40 minutes, so an album
#
would have 12 songs or whatever.
#
And all of these conventions are artifacts of constraints that no longer exist, that today
#
we can just do whatever we can stretch out, we can do something that's just a 30-second
#
moment of magic or a half an hour performance and you do see many of those live and on YouTube
#
and all that and that's one kind of constraint and I guess another kind of constraint would be
#
the constraint of expectations that once you embark upon a career, people will look upon you
#
as a particular kind of music like, oh, she does fusion, which, you know, you have an 18-year-old
#
interview where you talk about why you don't like that word, but they expect a certain kind of
#
music from you and that can subconsciously, if anything, you know, push you in that,
#
push you further in that direction or maybe, you know, something I discussed with my friend
#
Gaurav in whose studio we're recording about how, you know, every song that you bring out
#
is really an artifact of you at a particular point in time, it is a snapshot, it is a static
#
snapshot, but a photograph is not a person, but then your audiences would then expect you
#
every time you're, you know, they'd expect you to perform some favorites and they'd look at you
#
through the prism of the music of yours they've heard and therefore the picture that they formed
#
of you as a person, but you are much more complex, you're always evolving and how do you deal with
#
these sort of internal things and of course there are the much cruder sort of constraints like
#
the promotional stuff you might have to do, the music videos that you might,
#
you know, have to bring out with the song, like I watched the Hayat video which is very interesting
#
and the video is beautiful, the song is amazing, I didn't feel like they went together, you know,
#
that, you know, when you're sort of, the groove of the song is just, you know, I don't think the
#
video kind of captures it, but it's stuff you have to do, it's promotional stuff and you have
#
to get out there and sort of do it. So what are the different kinds of things that you find
#
yourself balancing in terms of form, in terms of expectations, in terms of what the music business
#
expects from you, what your fans expect from you, you know, is there a real you behind all of this
#
that, you know, is kind of unseen? Well in terms of form, there's definitely a real me and I hope
#
I'm real all the time when I'm on stage, when I'm in interviews and when I'm composing, I definitely
#
want my music to be a reflection of me, whatever I am, and I think I do a, you know, a pretty good
#
job. I'm happy with how my music turns out, I think it does reflect me. As you said, you know,
#
each song represents the current evolution of what I happen to be at that moment.
#
So in terms of form, yeah, I started out, my first album was released in 2000 and at that time I was
#
a very young composer and I composed two things on that album and the rest were, there were a few
#
compositions of my Guruji, my Ghazal Guruji, Vittal Rao, and there were a couple of other maybe like
#
Punjabi folk songs that are public domain. And then after that first album, and it was mostly Ghazal
#
and it was mostly traditional, and then after that album I discovered a group of poets in Canada
#
and they were mainly all Pakistani, Pakistani-Canadian poets and they were writing
#
Urdu Ghazal in Canada. And so for the first time I didn't have to
#
look towards India to get material to compose. So my first album was Kashish Attraction and then
#
for my second album, which I called Beyond Boundaries, I took the words of these Canadian
#
Pakistani poets and composed them. And they were also Ghazal, they were writing in the Ghazal and
#
the Nazam format and I composed that. And then after that, god I kind of forget what my third
#
album was. That was your eponymous album for Kiran Allawali. Oh that's right, that was my
#
first album that was released internationally. The first two were just in Canada and then my
#
self-titled album was released internationally and it was a combination of songs, a compilation
#
songs from my first two albums. And so what happened there is that I didn't have an album
#
but I got a record deal. And it was a record deal from Triloka Records in the United States to
#
have international distribution. So I told them that I can't get you an album this fast,
#
but what we can do is we can take a few songs from each of those albums, each of my previous
#
two albums that have not been released yet internationally, and I'll give you a couple,
#
like two more new songs. And they said okay we'll do that. So for those two songs that I was now
#
going to put on that self-titled album, I wanted to do something different. So I thought I would
#
do a collaboration with a Celtic Canadian fiddler named Natalie McMaster. And so because I wanted
#
to collaborate with her, the guzzle format and the Punjabi folk song format wasn't, well the
#
Punjabi folk song format she could fit in, but the guzzle format wasn't quite fitting in the type of
#
collaboration that I wanted to do with her. So then I took some words and I went outside the guzzle
#
format and I composed them in a different way, especially for her so that she could shine. I
#
could compose something in which she could shine and I could really take the true
#
ras, the true essence of her, of what she does well. So that's how I started branching out.
#
Then after that, in my fourth album which was Wanderlust, by that time I had discovered two
#
types of music. One was Portuguese fado music, which to me is the Portuguese guzzle because
#
it's the Portuguese music of longing and really fell in love with it. And we were touring in
#
Portugal with my husband's band, my husband Reza Bassi, who's a guitarist. We were touring
#
there with his band and we were there for a month. And so I ended up spending a week and recording
#
with Portuguese fado musicians. And that worked out with the guzzle format. So I recorded like
#
guzzle with them. But at the same time, I also fell deeply, madly, insanely in love with Tuareg
#
music. Now Tuaregs are a nomadic people from the Sahara desert. And so the boundaries are man-made
#
and the way that the boundaries are made, the Tuareg people's home now falls in between present
#
day Mali and present day Algeria. And these are nomadic people from the Sahara and they're the
#
indigenous people of that area. And the seminal supergroup of this genre of music is Tenariwen.
#
And I was in Toronto and we had a day off. We were actually recording the fourth album
#
and in studio and we had a day off. So I thought, oh, let's go listen to some music tonight.
#
And I picked a fado concert to go to, Portuguese fado concert to go to and Reza and I went. And
#
after half of it, I thought, okay, like, you know, this is cool. But I also knew Tenariwen was playing
#
somewhere else. And so for the rest, for the second half, I went to see Tenariwen
#
and just absolutely like, like loved it. And so I didn't think I would do anything with it
#
because in my mind, I had just come back from Portugal and Portuguese fado was in my mind.
#
So I loved Tenariwen, but had no plans to do anything with it. But the next day I woke up
#
with the sounds of Tenariwen in my head. The day after I woke up with their sounds in my head
#
and humming their songs. The day after I went out and bought a CD of theirs and started listening
#
to it on repeat. So I thought, okay, I'm like, there's something here for me. I'm really
#
connecting with this. And I connected it, I connected to that music in a way that my
#
tabla player Nitin Mitta, who's originally from Hatharabad, he thinks that in my previous life,
#
I was probably a Tuareg and members of Tenariwen think that too. So I really connected with it. So
#
for me, when I fall in love with a type of music, be it Portuguese fado or Celtic fiddle or Tuareg
#
music, I want to own it. I want to possess it. I want it to be, you know, like that two year old,
#
I become that two year old person and I want to say the word mine, like this is mine. And so I
#
wanted to make it mine and I wanted to incorporate those ideas in my music. Still wasn't thinking
#
that I would ever get to collaborate with Tenariwen because they were already a super group. They had
#
already opened up and toured with the Rolling Stones. So they were like, you know, the bad boys
#
of rock and roll and world music. So when I sat down to try and compose something with ideas that
#
came from Tuareg music, it didn't work with Ghazal. So I thought, okay, how am I going to do this?
#
So then at that time, I took a 16th century Ghazal written by Qutb Quli Shah, who lived in the Dakhni
#
region, who was the royalty, the king of the Dakhni region, which is now Hatharabad. And so his words,
#
I felt that I could have more artistic license with and I didn't have to follow the Ghazal format
#
while composing it and I could do my own stuff with it. And then it was the first time I got
#
res to play electric guitar with. So then I branched out in that way with it. So then after that,
#
after that fourth album was recorded and that song that I did with the influence of Tenariwen
#
and Tuareg music was called Tere Darsan. And it sounds like it's a religious song, like
#
Tere Darsan Ki Hoon Mein Sai Maati, but it's not, it's about love and someone, you know,
#
waiting to meet their beloved. So that was the fourth album. Then after that, by this time I'd
#
done a lot of collaborations and each collaboration was a succinct project. Like I collaborated with
#
Celtic Fiddle, that was done, you know, put it out there, moved on, collaborated with Portuguese
#
Fado. I got it out of my system. It was done, loved it. What else is there in the world?
#
But when I got into Tuareg music, that music hasn't left me. It's now become a permanent way
#
that influences my music. And so from then on, I have been doing even my own music with Tuareg
#
music, with the influence of Tuareg music. So then what happened after I did Tere Darsan
#
and I put it on my fourth album called Wanderlust. Wanderlust received the UK's
#
best newcomer award from Songlines magazine. So in order to accept that award, I went to Copenhagen
#
and in Denmark, and there I met the producer of Tenari Wen's first three albums. And I met him
#
and I just told him, Oh my God, I love your stuff. I love the way you produce them. It's so amazing.
#
And then I told him that I have been composing with their influence. And he said, send me what
#
you did. So I went back to, I was now living in New York City by this time, went back home to New
#
York City and sent him my stuff. And he said, why don't you do something with them? And so that's
#
how I ended up doing something with Tenari Wen and also another Tuareg group called Terra Kaft.
#
And then out came my fifth album, which I called Aam Zameen Common Ground. And that is, that's like
#
a nod to the fact that even though they're in Africa and I'm an Indian living in New York City,
#
we were able to find common ground. So basically to get back to your question, which is, you know,
#
that's basically the story of how I have not stuck to, I evolved out of the Ghazal form.
#
I should actually finish it by saying, so Ghazal was not going to work with the Tenari Wen kind of
#
music. So again, I had to find different things to compose. And so I first composed the song
#
Rabba Rooh, which is written in a specifically Delhi dialect of Hindi.
#
Like that word, that word is very, very Delhi. So I first composed that to do with Tenari Wen,
#
but turn of events, I ended up doing that with Terra Kaft. And then with Tenari Wen, I ended up
#
doing something more iconic, which is the Kawali Mast Mast, which was made famous in the West and
#
actually all over by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. So I wanted to do something more iconic with them.
#
But basically I started composing out of the Ghazal genre because my own influence
#
of this Tuareg music and wanting to do electric guitar and wanting to now have drum kit in my
#
music, the Ghazal format wasn't going to allow me to incorporate all these influences. And that
#
necessity is what made me leave the Ghazal form and come into a basically song, a normal song
#
format, what we would call in Indian music, geet. But what we would call in the West is just a song,
#
a song format. Now, what you had asked is how has my audience reacted to that?
#
There will only been a couple of people that I can recall that have missed the Ghazal format.
#
One is the editor of the Songlines magazine, Simon Broughton. He mentioned to me once or twice
#
that he misses the Ghazal, my Ghazal forms. And then maybe there's some random person,
#
a fan at the end of a concert who said it, but basically the audience has made the journey with
#
me. So they've come with me on the journey. I haven't received any pushback and my audience
#
has grown actually since the first album. So it's all been good. There's no reason for me to say
#
that, oh, I did something wrong here. I'm happy with it. My audience seems to be happy with it.
#
So that's all good. Now, there was a second part of your question, which was other parts
#
of constraints, other constraints in my life, other than music. And that's a really interesting
#
question. And you're right, there are other things. I can't focus in this day and age,
#
being an independent musician, because I'm not doing Bollywood. I'm an independent musician.
#
I cannot focus 100% on the music. So I do my three hours of Riyaz every day.
#
Sometimes it's a little less Riyaz and composing a day. But then the other part of my day is
#
spent on administration, answering a lot of emails from my manager, from my agents, from my band
#
members, administering future tours and what's going to happen and what gigs I'm going to
#
accept and whatnot. Then doing all the marketing, answering your PR related inquiries,
#
making with the help of your publicist a press release, all the PR related things, doing videos.
#
There's all that. But for me, I actually love that I can have that division in my brain,
#
because what happens to me, the way I'm built, is that when I do a lot of music,
#
the music utilizes a separate part of my brain. And it utilizes the part of my brain
#
that is more sensitive, that is accessing my emotions more, because I'm trying to take an
#
emotion that I'm feeling and translate that into song, into melody, into rhythm and into lyrics.
#
And when this part of my brain is used too much, then I develop an oversensitivity to what's
#
happening in the world. And then I start breaking down. So what happens is if I'm on tour and I'm
#
like doing just like, you know, someone like other people are managing the administration,
#
and all I have to think about is the music. And I'm on this, like,
#
two, three week tour, what starts to happen is that I'll hear some news. Like I was in Canada
#
when I was doing the release, actually, of Ames Amin Common Ground 2011. And we were about to do
#
the CD release concert in Toronto to like 1200 people. And the night before I happened to hear
#
news, it was it was a really, really cold winter. And I heard on the news that there was going to be
#
really cold winter. And I heard on the news that a woman who had Alzheimer's left her home
#
and couldn't find her home again. And she was knocking on people's doors. But it was late at
#
night. So no one was opening the door to her. And she was out in the freezing cold. Like I forget
#
what it was. But like, you know, like, I don't know, negative 30 degrees Celsius or something
#
like that was really, really cold. And she froze to death. And so because that part of my brain,
#
that is super, super sensitive when I'm when I'm when accessing it to do music,
#
what kept in kept on happening is that I kept on repeat that story kept on repeating in my mind.
#
And I kept on imagining that woman rolling on this neighbors or whatever this this other person's
#
driveway in the ice and dying. And I could not shake it. I could not get out of it.
#
And so that distracts me then because I have to go on stage. I cannot in the middle of song. If I
#
have that, that that image coming to me and it will come come to me, I have to work extra hard
#
to get that image out and come back to the song and focus on the song and focus on focus on the
#
now. And I'm here with my band. And right now I'm doing this song. And right now there are
#
1200 people here who who want to enjoy the song with me. So for me, someone like me, I really like
#
it when I don't have to spend 100% of my time accessing that part of my brain. And it really
#
makes me feel better when I can access the other part of my brain where I do administrative work.
#
And I'm a very visual person as well. And I love working on my videos. I actually love the hiat
#
video I personally I'm totally like open to receiving other person's interpretations of
#
what they feel about it. But personally, I really love it. I love the crew. And it was a really
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amazing experience for me to do it. Happy with it. But I really you know, it's never a burden for me
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to do the videos. I love doing the videos. And it's never a burden to do the marketing. I just
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I love every aspect of of what I have to do. Yeah, I mean, I really like the video as well.
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But it's just I think what happens is that I heard the song first, and I heard it a few times
#
first, and then I saw the video. And the video kind of fixes the way you think of the song if
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you watch it first, because then every time you hear the song, you're seeing the visuals in your
#
head. And it's true. And and for me, because I heard the song first, and you know, so it's it's
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not a criticism of the video per se, that's, you know, that that's part of, you know, what one does,
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but just you get what I mean? And I do. And it's it's sort of, you know, what I kind of loved about
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your journey, and it comes through in all the albums as well as how organic it is in the sense
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of, you know, you're being true to yourself. And and what I loved about arms, I mean, was that there
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is not like it just feels like it is one thing, there is no contravance in it. I never felt while
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listening to it that I'm listening to different people coming together for a project, right? It
#
just felt very organic and very together. And it's almost like there are like three things going on
#
there in the sense there is you with your sensibilities, the scenario, and there's also
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Rez and he's doing his guitar thing. And that's also a very interesting kind of vibe, which,
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you know, continues through your other albums. And and I just felt that it all made sense, like,
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even when, you know, you perform their song, Mother Jam, it just it sounded like your song.
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Thank you. Right. And that was just great. And, you know, since you've very kindly pointed out
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that you have the copyright to your songs, we can actually play them. You mentioned Rabbaru. I just
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really loved that massive earworm potential along with other songs on the album, which I like. So
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let's play a little bit of Rabbaru for the listeners. For sure.
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Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru.
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Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru, Rabbaru.
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Fantastic quote which I first heard in my episode with Amitabha Kumar and it's a quote on writing
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where he quoted William Maxwell, a great editor and writer, and Maxwell once told him that
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after 40 years what I have come to care about is not style but the breath of life, right?
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And that really struck me, the breath of life, that that's really what matters and everything
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else you can kind of manage, you can learn the craft, you can master the craft, you can
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do the doing but it starts with that moment of inspiration where you can't maybe get a
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sound out of your head and you know there's something going on in there and then later
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then comes two processes almost and one is a process of actually sitting down and turning
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it into a song, a song with structure and format and you know and that's a whole craft
#
and all of that and then there is even that third process where you point out that you're
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on stage with your band and things could be going wrong, maybe the monitors aren't working
#
too well or somebody just broke a string or whatever but you're performing, you're going
#
through those motions you know and at one level it might seem kind of a mundane thing to do the
#
thousandth time you're playing a song but at another level that's also the game just you know
#
in my recent episode with Jerry Pinto he told me a story which resonated with many many people
#
and it is about Abhay Faria who centuries ago was a Portuguese priest and a young Portuguese
#
priest and his dad was also a priest and his dad joined the priesthood after having him so
#
but his dad was also a priest and at one point Abhay Faria and his dad get called to I think
#
the Vatican where they have to speak and it is an incredible honor and the pope is there and everybody
#
and for Abhay Faria this young priest to preach before them is such an incredible opportunity
#
and he's so good at this because he's done it so often but then he goes up on stage and he
#
completely freezes and nothing is coming into his head because the occasion is too huge like the
#
freaking pope is sitting right there and then his father whispers to him he says at him from from
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below kator rebhaji kator rebhaji and kator rebhaji means cut the vegetables you know and that and
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and that is so striking because from the outside when we look at artists we think it is an almost
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mystical thing that is happening but a lot of it is you're cutting the vegetables you're doing
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the thing and it seems to me that part of your art is that initial mystical thing the breath of life
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and then there is a hard work of crafting it into a song or into a performance and doing the
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arrangements and saying ki nahi yaha pe drums iss point pe aega and all of that and then there
#
are the iterations and the performances with each one perhaps different from the other
#
but you're doing kator rebhaji kator rebhaji cut the vegetables so tell me a little bit about
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how these musical processes and you know how you go through all of these has evolved for you for
#
you because i imagine when you would have been very young you know the breath of life would
#
always have been powerful that you have that tune in your head or the words you know come together
#
in a certain way and it's incredibly inspiring but you're still kind of learning the craft you're
#
still sort of figuring out what your voice is and all of those things and but over time it just
#
becomes you know so automatic that you know the mastery seems instant at least from the outside
#
you know like take take take me through that process of how a musician comes up with their
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music and how they refine it and just that whole process of all of these aspects right so how
#
like the i'm interested in this kator rebhaji thing dude to me when you told that story
#
i thought about when people freeze and you know they say imagine the audience in their underwear
#
so have you heard of that no oh okay okay so that's you know you imagine the audience
#
in your underwear so that you're not intimidated by them anymore
#
and i guess to me when you relate the story of kator rebhaji is the same thing
#
that he's telling his son that you're not performing you're just in your kitchen cutting the vegetables
#
so like to me when i'm singing on stage it's never mundane for me when i'm doing my riyaz
#
in my own apartment all alone then it's definitely mundane and sometimes i just
#
want to get up and you know do other things if it's a nice day i want to go out in the sun
#
but you know that's when the discipline comes in and i've just got to sit there and i've got to do
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this but when i'm on stage it's never mundane for me and for people who haven't seen me perform live
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i do get into a trance i don't do you know gazelle anymore i'm doing a type of a music
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that is inspired by trance that is inspired by twarag trance and so the way i move around
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you know i shake my head my hair goes flying everywhere i get into a trance and i i or at least
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i i let go i definitely you know let go and i want to do that i want to let go
#
because i want to enjoy that moment myself and i want to let my body move and my voice move
#
as freely as possible and because for the last 15 years of the people i have in my group
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first of all reza bossy this monster guitarist who i happen to be in love with my husband he's
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right there you know on the right right of me then there's my tabla players you know
#
people that i trust that i have played with for you know over a decade uh and my you know
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accordion player my my my drum kit player my bassist when i started out i i wasn't friends
#
with my band members i didn't even get along with one of them and it was really tense um and i
#
really felt like i was all alone on stage but two or three years into my touring career i
#
developed a really great band that i've been with ever since and so i feel like they have my back
#
if something goes wrong they're gonna have my back we're gonna we're gonna deal with it together
#
if i missed a beat here if i did an extra bar here someone's gonna figure it out and we're gonna
#
get right back on track and we're gonna make it musical so a lot of the worry that was in
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that was on that i had on stage in the first three years of my touring left me because i
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had this amazing back that i had this amazing band that i trust and we'll do it together
#
and so once that worry's gone i can let go and enjoy myself and also when things become second
#
nature to me like i love that too like i love that this song is going to come out of me no matter what
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um no matter what kind of news i was just texted before i got on stage
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i'm gonna get up on stage and no matter what i've done this song so many times it's just
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gonna come out of me i just love that because that helps me to relax and it helps me to perform the
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song and it helps me to go deeper into the song if i don't have to focus that much on the rhythm
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if i don't have to focus that much on the pitch um at the same time it's really important to
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keep on doing new songs because they're the ones that make you you know they kick your ass
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you you you did it in rehearsal and you might have done it in studio but now you're doing it
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in front of a people in front of people and doing a new song kicks your ass and it's it's really
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important to have that adrenaline like oh my god is it gonna work is it gonna be like a train
#
accident how is it gonna go so it's important to have that too but when i do a new song i definitely
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move less because i'm concentrating more on the rhythm and what what the band is doing because i
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i need to make sure more that it doesn't it's not a train wreck so that's how that is and then you
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said what was the second part of your question it wasn't even a coherent question so i apologize
#
for that i was kind of thinking aloud but it's more about that journey that a song or a piece
#
of music may make from just being that quasi mystical thought in your head that breath of
#
life and then you use all of your craft to kind of make it into something coherent and then when
#
you're doing in a sense on the stage performing it a thousand times it just it almost in a sense
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you the way you're describing it would seem to take a life of its own where you can just go
#
into a trance and the song plays itself yeah like i'm not doing because to me at this point in my
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career i've been touring regularly for 23 years i've done my cutting in the vegetables in the
#
kitchen and i'm really enjoying the fact that i'm in front of an audience i'm grateful to be in
#
front of an audience i'm i'm doing independent world music in a foreign land i'm really grateful
#
that all these people put down some money to come and see me in their underwear
#
yeah exactly in their underwear and so i'm getting a high from it i i'm i'm taking the music to
#
another level for me and i'm getting a high from it and i'm being inspired by it so i really love
#
being in that moment of connecting with the audience i really love connecting with the
#
audience and i've been told i'm really good at it like i'll talk in my audience with my audience
#
and also like you know like i i watch a lot of stand-up comedy and i love the fact that stand-up
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comedy is now becoming popular has been popular in india for the last i don't know 10 years
#
and now with social media and you know youtube it's accessible to me even if i'm in new york city
#
and so i watch a lot of stand-up comedy and if something happened you know on the way to the gig
#
i'll do it in a stand-up comedy style and i'll want to i'll you know i'll make the audience laugh
#
and i love all of that or you know one of my band members will say something and we'll have a banter
#
and we love that so to me i don't want to do the kato rebaji because i'm i'm completely comfortable
#
with being in front of the audience in fact i thrive on it i love it it's the thing i do it's
#
my mojo and see there you go no i forgot the answer again but you said okay so how does a
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song become a song kind of a thing right is that that's a kind of like i think the essence of your
#
question right it's one of the areas but i love your answer anyway because it doesn't matter
#
where it goes yeah well that's what i got out of the question is how does a song become a song
#
so um that's that's so super hard to articulate right so always so hard to articulate your process
#
but in a song for me becomes a song in so many different ways one way is that you know i live
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with my guitarist and my arranger razabasi so we'll be watching tv and he'll be noodling
#
on his guitar and then he'll do something and then and i'll love it and so i'll just put it on my
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iphone i'll say can you record that can you play it again and i'll record it so i have numerous such
#
recordings and i'll come back to them and i want to incorporate and i'll and i'll and i'll compose
#
something based on that guitar riff that's one way something will happen in the world that will
#
affect me and i'll be touched by it in a either a great way or a horrible way and i will want to
#
write about it so for example in my last album seven billion there's a song called sat
#
and that's a song about the seven billion of us on the planet today and it's about
#
cultural intolerance amongst the seven billion of us on the planet today and
#
it's talking about the song is inspired by how there's all this fighting like people are fighting
#
the religions are fighting amongst themselves that no this religion is the best and then even
#
within a religion there are sects of people fighting saying no no this is the best way to
#
do this and not that way and so what the song is saying okay there's seven billion there's seven
#
billion people in this world and there's seven billion different ways of doing things there's
#
no one right way so that came that song happened because i wanted to write about cultural
#
intolerance uh in the new album uh that is going to come out in september 2023
#
there's a song that i wrote called and that song i specifically wrote about
#
about really the marginalization of muslims in india today and i was inspired to write
#
a song of political resistance um a protest song by hussein hadry who is a wonderful
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urdu poet who i discovered and then i actually discovered your podcast amit uh through him
#
because you interviewed him and that's how i discovered your podcast and became quickly a
#
fan of your podcast so at that time um i discovered hussein hadry because um he had written uh this
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nazm called based on the mean hum
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so he wrote this it's a political protest song against uh about muslim marginalization in india
#
and i was i study i was studying this nazm in a deeper way just because i wanted to do it with
#
my friend who's a professor in amherst university in massachusetts so we were we were just studying
#
this poem and then and she was translating it in english and i was just you know being her typist
#
as she was translating it and i couldn't get the poem out of my mind and i started humming a tune
#
to it and ruzz was in the kitchen and he said oh that sounds nice so i started making a melody
#
for this nazm and i composed it as a song then i got in touch with hussein hadry got his permission
#
and so i recorded that song for this album but then i was also inspired by hussein
#
to write my own song about about this topic and so i wrote jani jahan about about uh about this
#
and what i'm saying in that song is that um i'm saying basically what i'm trying to say is that
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if you cut us we all bleed and and that blood is the exact same shade of red and when we cry
#
we all have the same taste of that same salt in our tears and we're the same you know no matter
#
what people are saying that we're divided by religion people aren't seeing that we're actually
#
the same and so that's my message in that song so that's one way that songs come about
#
a third way that songs come about is that a melody just comes into my head
#
a song i wrote uh for the album uh which album i think you mentioned about you mentioned khafa
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in sanata which came about like that right okay khafa is a good one so khafa came about because
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a melody came into my head first so the one way is that rez does something and i want to incorporate
#
that and i i do it that way another way is that i want to say something about the world and i
#
write the lyrics first and then and then do the arrangement later and then a third way is that
#
the melody itself arrives in my head and so the the the melody for khafa came into my head and
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i don't even remember what i was singing but but i'll be singing garbage words that don't mean
#
anything but i like you know i've got this melody i want to hang on to it i don't have the words
#
so i'll just sing some garbage words and and follow the words and i'll record it so i have
#
the melody and then i'll i'll sit down and i'll think about either does something naturally come
#
to me to write about in this melody or i'll think about it intellectually like what do we want to
#
write about what am i what am i thinking right now and so khafa at that time became a song about
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writing writing about religious fundamentalism and my anger against people who think they
#
own religion and they think that the way to the a spiritual leader if you want to call them god a
#
spiritual a spirit they think that the you know the way to that person is through them or through
#
a specific way and they kind of get in the way of a direct relationship with god so there you go
#
those are some of the ways that that a song becomes a song i also want to talk about you know the
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angle you mentioned of the way that you connect with your audiences and the way they connect with
#
you that you know you go to a concert and everything just falls into its own groove like that and
#
you can talk about what happened that morning or whatever and there's that instant connection
#
and it strikes me that you know that one aspect of an artist's relationship with her listeners
#
which i have only really come to notice in the last few years is is intimacy right because some
#
people are in a sense broadcasting to millions of people they're larger than lives you know you'll
#
have film stars in india for whom temples were made in the 80s and the 70s and whatever
#
and they're just completely larger than life and then there are other people especially in
#
the modern age with what technology allows you to do there are other people with whom the connection
#
you feel is much more intimate so much so that you feel like you know them right and i get this a lot
#
from people who listen to my podcast where they'll come up to me at an airport or whatever and keeps
#
happening all the time and they'll talk to me like they know me and i welcome that it's beautiful
#
you know i had someone listen to an episode i did with abhinandan sekri and say that
#
i felt so much like i'm sitting with two friends in a living room talking to them that at one point
#
i interrupted before i realized i wasn't there and to me this is like fucking special i don't
#
want to reach a million people if i can touch 10 people in this way right it's it's it's precious
#
for that reason right tell me a little bit about how your relationship with your fans evolved to
#
this point because i'm guessing that like obviously you're not mainstream like some stars would be
#
and you're not on radio all the time but you know people who are into you are really into you and
#
and and it's it's not it's not an idol it's not like idolatry but it's like they're with the person
#
they're with the journey they're there so tell me a little bit about this yeah well i mean i care
#
about reaching millions of people so i won't say no if that happens and definitely the trajectory
#
of the career of all my team around me it's their job to get more and more people
#
into my music to to grow the audience to develop the audience so there's definitely a concerted
#
proactive effort to do that but at the same time now that i'm 57
#
i'm more relaxed about it like i'm just happy i get to do what i do and i'm happy with what i have
#
i'm happy with the number of people who listen to me so uh you know there's no there's no um there's
#
no sadness there for me and uh you're right um you know i you know when i when i like i definitely
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think of you that way as well because i'm a fan of your podcast i've you know your your sound the
#
sound of your voice is in my earphone that's in my ear and so i definitely feel that closest to you
#
too and if i like the art of someone else then i you know i i feel close to them even though
#
i've never met them and definitely there are people who who also feel that way about my music
#
and you're right it is fucking awesome it's amazing one person comes into my mind there's
#
there's a lady i forget her name right now but she lives in toronto and she's been following
#
she's been coming to all my toronto concerts for like the last you know 20 years i haven't seen her
#
because i haven't done a concert in covid uh for the last three years in toronto but
#
before that i would see her at every concert and i think i was i was living in toronto and then
#
i moved to new york city when i married rez and when i came back having been newly married to rez
#
came back and did my first concert in toronto uh i remember afterwards she came to me because
#
afterwards we used to sign cds and even if there aren't cds to sign we we go out and we meet the
#
audience and so she came up to me afterwards and said oh you gained weight i was like okay
#
and then i remember uh another moment that she came to me maybe it was five years ago or six
#
years ago and she was very upset and she waited till she was the last person talking to me because
#
i was talking to a lot of people then she waited till she would have a good chunk of amount of time
#
to talk to me and then she really wanted to tell me what had happened in her life and so she
#
she was in love with someone also a woman and she said um i've told i told my friend
#
that i love her and she my my my the person i'm in love with has rejected me
#
and she really wanted to share the sadness with me and it meant a lot to her to be able to share
#
it with me because she's been listening to my music in her ears and even though she doesn't
#
understand any indian languages she has been connecting with that melody she's been connecting
#
with the emotion with the melancholy that you know i hope my songs have been putting out there
#
and and that was that was that was interesting to me it was really special and i was
#
it made me feel good that you know there's times that i feel like okay i'm not an engineer i'm not
#
building bridges bridges what kind of good am i doing for society am i i love the fact that i'm
#
doing music but i am am i helping in society am i helping society in every which way and these
#
songs that i'm doing you know against cultural intolerance and trying to have people get along
#
are they going to really change the world i don't think so you know is my song about muslim
#
marginalization is that going to change anyone's mind at all like what good am i doing in in society
#
and then a person like that comes along and i can see that my songs have been helping her heal
#
or have been giving her company in her sadness and that makes me feel like okay i i helped her out
#
and i think i think she if you when she hears your new album she'll appreciate your song
#
yes such a beautiful line such a beautiful moving song
#
thank you i mean you said it so much better than
#
let's see a little bit of the song since we are at it and give a sneak peek of what's coming up
#
and then we'll continue
#
I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do
#
I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do,
#
I don't know what I don't know, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what I don't know.
#
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
#
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
#
so you know let's let's start off with your journey which really fascinates me
#
that you know you're you're born in patna and you grow up a little bit in delhi and then at the age
#
of nine you're you're kind of uprooted or whatever you know you go to toronto and it's sort of a
#
different life what do you remember about those early years like what were your parents like what
#
kind of music did you listen to at home you know what was the vibe yep i was born in patna so my
#
family is from delhi my my dad was born and i'm going into this detail just because i'm familiar
#
with your format and so i know that you know your guests go into this kind of detail and i love it
#
so uh my my dad was born in rawalpindi and my mom was born in lahore and they both lived through
#
partition came over to the india side after partition so they they they saw that violent
#
violent turbulent time uh in our shared pakistani indian history and my mom's family is from delhi
#
and that's really where i mostly you know i associate with delhi most as home in india
#
even though i lived in bombay for many many many years in hadrabagh as well but i called you know
#
delhi home in in india and so uh but my dad happened to be working uh he's he's a microbiologist
#
or uh and he was working in patna at the time and that's when i happened to pop out
#
in patna and then right after i was born he got a scholarship to do a phd in new zealand
#
so we went to new zealand and the first five years of my life were in new zealand
#
and the first memories of my life are from new zealand and so the first language really that
#
i learned is english and then at the age of five after my dad got his doctorate we came back to
#
patna again and we lived there for four years in patna and there i went to noter dame academy
#
and it was really really hard to learn hindi and i remember being separated from the class
#
like the class is sitting down and i have a memory of me being alone on the side of the board
#
and i was being made to practice my hindi writing and i remember that uh and at that time
#
i remember that there was a feeling of loneliness about that that i'm not with the others
#
but i'm so super glad that i learned hindi well because that it's never left me
#
so so yeah so that was patna then my my mom and my dad were basically what we called economic
#
refugees in canada they felt that their prospects my mom was a teacher i also had noter dame academy
#
where i was a student so they felt like their economic prospects here you know they weren't
#
they weren't going to flourish here so that's why they decided to immigrate to canada and i was nine
#
at the time and once again i i felt like i was the other in canada and it was a really really
#
hard journey to to be the other in this canadian landscape so that was a difficult time
#
and like i when i landed there i was in grade five i don't talk about my childhood that much
#
you know the time that i i got to canada because it's a it's a disturbing and painful time period
#
in my life so i generally don't talk about it right now uh i mean i definitely don't talk about
#
um so that happened and then oh so so so what i actually i forgot to say is that when i was in
#
patna that's the first time okay so you asked about music and what kinds of music and how music
#
entered my life so i should rewind a little bit and i would say that the first the very very first
#
type of songs i sang were mother goose nursery rhymes in new zealand and i also sang like new
#
zealand kind of folk songs like there's a song called it's a song that's like the words are i
#
will not marry a farmer's wife and i i forget what it is like i don't know for whatever reason
#
and then i will not marry a i will not be no i will not be a farmer's wife i will not be a
#
plumber's wife and you go through all these like different occupations saying um i will not marry
#
like all these kinds of different people and it's a children's song so i sang that and my
#
parents have a recording of that but these are the type of songs i sang in new zealand in english
#
and then when we came to patna i eventually was listening to radio there because my parents
#
were hobby singers and they sang ghazal and they they sang also you know mostly ghazal they sang
#
but there was a lot of music in our household there were only the three of us i don't have
#
any other siblings but there was a lot of music in our household and so we listened to the radio
#
and i sang bollywood songs my parents were my first teachers but i didn't sing ghazal at that
#
point but i i also sang i started to sing shabad which are six spiritual songs so i started to
#
those are the kind of songs i started to sing and i would perform shabad at sikh congregations
#
that would happen every friday night at different people's homes so you know i guess those were my
#
first performance kind of kind of things where you do a spiritual song as a child so that's that was
#
my oh and then i also learned indian classical music at that time so i started formally learning
#
indian classical music and i did the the the exams that you do so i would go and do the exam
#
that the exams that you're supposed to do for indian classical music and get your little
#
report card or whatever so then when we came to canada my parents sought out a teacher for me to
#
learn indian classical music with and i learned at that time from a classical singer named kalpana
#
Bharat and so i would go to school and i would learn music part-time and this continued this
#
part-time learning of music as a very very strong dedicated passion continued all the way through
#
school all the way through university all the way through my first job um when i was in university
#
i my music teacher in toronto was narendra datar and narendra who is from bombay and is a is a is
#
himself like a like a person who who straddles like you know two different types of worlds he's
#
a accomplished it engineer and also an amazing amazing classical singer who's got records out
#
and who does does concerts he's so accomplished so he's the one who first when he saw my dedication
#
he said why don't you take it to the next level and go to india and be a full-time music student
#
and so he's the one who put that germ of an idea into my head and so after university i
#
i was working for two years in human resources and and i did in university i did my bachelors
#
in political science and labor relations and then i was working in working in human resources for
#
two years and what was happening in that two years was i was able to see my future
#
really clearly like i thought okay if i continue on this exact same path i'm gonna
#
go up the corporate ladder and i'm gonna become a manager then maybe an executive vice president
#
and i'm gonna buy a home in the suburbs and i could see the color of the carpeting in my home
#
and i remember the color that i saw was dusty rose and when i was able to see that future that
#
okay i'm gonna get married and whatever have kids that scared me it scared me that i could see that
#
future because at that time i was not ready for that future and that's what propelled me to
#
say that's not the future i want right now that's not where i want to go
#
and another thing happened a couple of my friends took what they call year-offs so they took a year
#
off to do what they wanted to do one of my friends went to europe to travel europe another one of my
#
friends went to japan to teach english in japan and so i thought i was envious of that i thought
#
well i want to do what i want to do for a year as well and for me that was coming to india and
#
being a full-time music student so i made the decision to quit my job and come to india to be
#
a full-time student of music and i told my mother this that i'm going to do this i said you know
#
what do you think about this and we were out in it was a summer day and we were out in our in our
#
backyard lying down on a blanket and i was i was telling her this i said you know this is what i
#
want to do i want to go to india i want to quit my job what do you think and she said i think
#
you're stupid and she got up and she left so after that there were a lot of arguments and a lot of
#
yelling matches a lot of doors were slammed a lot of tears were shed and my when my parents realized
#
that i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this with or without their blessing they finally came on board
#
and then they helped me prepare for my for my my trip to india they they got me like a 220
#
volt radio player and a small little tv and like a 220 volt iron and they just helped me prepare
#
and i came to bombay and i didn't know anyone in bombay and i started learning with my classical
#
guruji and that year was pure heaven and then i went back but i didn't feel like going back to
#
to to do a job so i thought if i study then i can that that will allow me more of an opportunity
#
to drag out this studying of music more if i go back and study something in an academic institution
#
in toronto i'll be able to do my music so then i ended up for that reason getting an mba in finance
#
and between those two years of an mba in finance in halifax nova scotia at a university called
#
dalhousie university i i came back to india for the summer studied again in bombay went back
#
to dalhousie did my second year in my mba then i became a bond trader on bay street
#
which is toronto's wall street i did that i hated it and i wasn't any good at it really
#
i mean i found finance fascinating in school i loved my finance teacher and it was fascinating
#
but i didn't like trading as much and it was probably because the bank that i ended up with
#
i didn't like the culture of that specific bank and it was really it was it actually turned out
#
great that i didn't like the culture of that bank because then i i you know two things happened
#
they were they kind of pushed me out and i kind of accepted that pushing out and i left
#
and so then i was out of a job and totally confused and other people by this so by this time
#
i was doing concerts in the community in the indian community and there were indian people
#
who knew i sang so what happened is that this dancer found out that i'm not working she hired
#
me to tour with her group so i toured with her group for a month in canada and so i did a lot
#
of the like i did a lot of music with dancers at that point i also ended up composing some
#
thing for a violinist indian canadian violinist and then i ended up going to japan to visit my
#
friend who decided to go to japan to teach english and there in japan i ended up auditioning for a
#
japanese world music record label called king records and when i auditioned for that record
#
label i realized that this wonderful japanese person who's auditioning me doesn't know anything
#
about indian music and so but he knows you know probably about japanese music and so that put the
#
idea in my head that i always thought that all this knowledge that i've gained about in with
#
indian music isn't marketable in canada but maybe i'm wrong about that maybe my knowledge of music
#
is marketable and maybe i can work in music in canada as well instead of
#
instead of being a financial person in canada maybe i can work in the cultural industries
#
so i came back to toronto and i made a list of about 50 organizations that i could get a job in
#
and the number one on that list was cbc the canadian broadcasting corporation
#
and uh ended up getting an interview with them ended up being at the right place at the right
#
time and i got a job at cbc as um like you know as a as a as a trainee in their training program
#
to be an on-air person to be a producer for music shows and there that's where i learned in cbc or
#
started to learn how to market foreign music for lack of a better word non-english music
#
world music how to market world music to an english-speaking audience an english and french
#
speaking audience because in canada the second language is french so that was a really important
#
step for me too like i i remember one day i was i was programming like two hours in this
#
this show called good morning i don't know i think was it called good morning canada i forget
#
but it was the morning show and i remember doing like a motzart piece and then i wanted to go to
#
a track of african flutes but when i was programming this like after the motzart piece
#
the and the motzart the motzart concerto was um what had been played by a contemporary orchestra
#
like it might have been a canadian orchestra or european one i forget but it was contemporary
#
tuning and so when i went to the track of these african flautists these flute players it didn't
#
sound right they sounded bad like the motzart piece sounded so sophisticated and amazing
#
and this flute piece from africa sounded like oh what is this it's so weird like the tuning is so
#
weird so that whole process of thinking how can i package this music so it can shine and you know
#
i was i was racking my brain about how can i do this and so i figured it out that i picked out a
#
classical western classical piece that was played on period instruments and so basically for people
#
who don't know period instruments are instruments western instruments european instruments
#
that exist today that were made in the 1800s and their tuning is from the 1800s it's more
#
for lack of a better word rustic and it doesn't correspond to the current contemporary tuning
#
it's a little bit off to our ears right now and so from this motzart piece i stayed with the
#
classical theme and i went to these this classical piece played on period instruments where the
#
tuning was just like you know a little bit different it's not bad tuning it's just different
#
from what we're used to today and then was able to segue into this piece of african flutes and
#
they sounded amazing and so the period piece sounded great because it was connected to the
#
western instruments the western motzart piece and the african piece sounded great but that's the
#
kind of stuff i was learning was how to package world music to to a western audience and all of
#
this would help me in my own career how to package my own compositions to a western audience so then
#
what happened is about 10 or 15 years of me taking odd jobs in the cultural industry in in in toronto
#
and leaving that like you know i would take a year contract maybe in a television network
#
women's television network and then and then coming back to india and studying indian music
#
for a year so this kind of bouncing back and forth happened and then so i was going first to
#
bombay to learn classical music and then i was learning classical music to to not be a classical
#
indian singer but to be just a better singer of whatever i wanted to sing to get that kind of
#
command in my throat and my voice then i also wanted to compose and you know guzzle was a
#
love of mine and i discovered vitro who was a legendary musician that nobody knew about
#
i was lucky to discover him in hadrabad and i went to learn with him not knowing anyone in
#
hadrabad either and that's where i started to learn a guzzle but more importantly composition
#
because he was a brilliant composer and so that's where i learned my art of composing
#
then you know my last full-time job in the western world was at a record label called
#
putumayo world music which is which was at that time north america's largest world music
#
an independent world music record label and so i worked with them for two years and once again
#
our entire company of 40 people was geared towards packaging world music to a western audience
#
so there i learned a lot as well and all of this helped me in my own career
#
so then the last at first i was working with putumayo in new york city then i went
#
to work with them in their touring office in san francisco lo and behold they they shut down
#
their san francisco office so i was out of a job and i was pretty depressed and by this time my
#
parents they were the ones who convinced me to come back to toronto and to to release my first
#
album because i was sitting on a grant from the canada council for the arts and i hadn't
#
fulfilled the grant to make an album and so i thought okay this time instead of you know when
#
i don't have a job i usually just you know pack my bags and go to india this time around i'm not
#
going to do that i'm going to stay in toronto and i'm going to make an album so i did that and then
#
that's where i ended up after that getting a manager manager and an agent and basically
#
you know haven't looked back for the last 20 years 23 years eight albums later
#
i've been doing these i've been lucky enough to do music
#
what i kind of find fascinating about this is right from this early start it's almost as if you are on
#
two parallel journeys and one journey is just a journey of finding yourself as a musician
#
and refining yourself as a musician and the other journey is a journey of figuring out how the music
#
that you then make can be marketed to people and all of that and you're getting that professional
#
experience as well for the moment let me sort of double click on that journey as a musician
#
and you know you've spoken about how you know you became familiar with punjabi music they were you
#
know a poet friend of your mother invited you to this a recital of various poets and the organization
#
was called punjabi kalma the kafila caravan of punjabi poets and you mentioned how you were kind
#
of blown away by this and you also speak about how later in time you kind of went into punjab you
#
travel through villages you were trying to find musicians who'd never been recorded and you were
#
trying to get away from the kind of punjabi music you typically hear in the club scene and the bhangra
#
and all of that and just trying to you know get to the roots of it so tell me a bit about this
#
musical journey like also you mentioned you know that you spoke about how that first year in
#
bombay with padmatal valkar was pure heaven and and and and i want to dig into that phrase as well
#
like why was it pure heaven you know what was happening what was going on in there so take me
#
through your various journeys of you know discovering these different types of music maybe
#
hindustani classical with padmatal valkar and otherwise discovering punjabi music discovering
#
the guzzle you know all of these separate forms what they meant to you and how you got into that
#
to answer your question why was it heaven when i was in bombay learning with padmatal valkar i
#
can answer that with one word and that word is sur which to people who don't know hindustani is
#
pitch or note and it was the discovery of of pitch that was that was so
#
pure pure pitch that was just just heaven so what had happened is that my toronto teacher
#
narendra datar is the person who first said why don't you quit your job and go to india
#
and be a full-time student he himself quit his job at that time to come to india to stay in india
#
for a year for the dual purposes of doing music and to find a wife
#
so he said you know this is a perfect time for you to come because i'm here
#
so i landed and maybe in maybe i said it in an earlier part of this interview maybe i said i
#
didn't know anyone in bombay and i take that back i narendra was there for me in bombay
#
so so i quit my job i land in bombay and you know i'm staying at my my masi's apartment in juhu
#
and narendra and i had made a short list of people that i would like to learn from
#
the maestros i mean narendra himself is an accomplished musician but he himself suggested
#
go to a different person for a year and learn something else you'll always i'll be here for
#
you to learn from but just go to another maestro who doesn't have a day job as an engineer and
#
you know they just do this day and night and learn something else so we'd made a short list
#
and on the top of that list was someone i who i won't name right now but i had written to her
#
she was she was fluent in english and was educated in the normal what we call you know normal english
#
academic way and she was a maestro musician as well in the indian classical scene and i
#
had written to her from toronto and she'd written back to me and i had found a connection with her
#
super excited to to meet her and learn with her when i landed here and i went to my first couple
#
of lessons with her it didn't click i hadn't landed you know so i went i went uh i used to
#
have lunch with narendra with his family with his mom and his dad and him who were my second family
#
in bombay for a while and you know i was telling him that i'm unhappy with it i'm not getting what
#
i want i wanted to learn in the guru shisha parampara method and for those who don't know
#
what the guru shisha parampara process is it's a process in which you kind of devote yourself
#
entirely as a student to your teacher your guru and your guru passes down their knowledge to you
#
and it's not like come nine to ten and this is your one hour lesson it is a way of life
#
and you sit with the guruji for hours and hours and you you you have to basically
#
enter an insane schedule and you have to give up socialization you have to give up a normal way
#
you have to be a monk for music basically that's what i was looking for and i was aware that maybe
#
this type of of learning doesn't exist anymore after here he after all here i am in canada
#
maybe i'm exoticizing i hope i said that word correctly exoticizing indian music learning
#
thinking that oh okay they used to learn this way and i'm oh i'm gonna land in india and i'm
#
gonna have this indian authentic way of learning and maybe it doesn't even exist anymore so anyhow
#
we made narendra and i made another list of who i wanted to learn from and at the top of that
#
list was padma talwalkar so i was pretty defeated at this point i thought maybe i've made a mistake
#
coming here maybe i was just better off learning with narendra in toronto but whatever i'm not a
#
person who gives up so i just went along with it narendra made an appointment with the padma
#
as i call her and we went to gorigaon where you know she lives in her music room is and uh when
#
we walked in she was singing i remember shudh kalyan at that time and we walked in and she was
#
singing that and we were at the door and she there was there was her and a tabla player there was
#
those were the only two people in that small room and she uh gestured to us me and narendra
#
to come and sit down as well so we sat there and we listened to her the moment i entered that room
#
like her sur was was her note her pitch was so pristine so so basically we you know there's
#
there's being in pitch and then there's being out of pitch right and you want to be in pitch
#
as a singer so you spend your entire life being in pitch so that's one thing you're in pitch
#
but that being in pitch is a really wide space so if you take that pitch being in pitch if you take
#
that pitch visually and you put it under a microscope you will see that the area that
#
constitutes being in pitch is really wide if you look deep into it with a micro with a sonic
#
microscope and her pitch was in the center of that microscopic pitch you know not a little bit to the
#
right of that okay zone not a little bit to the left but right in the center and it just entered
#
my heart and the second i just was out that just just not even sitting in the room i was just at
#
in the doorway as they say i was in the doorway and i just like had this feeling in my heart that
#
i'm in the right place so she finished her song sorry not song but she finished her her rendition
#
of that that rag and then she uh she said okay so she gave me an exam she said i'm going to
#
sing and you repeat after me and and i repeated and i didn't get everything but she said to narendra
#
okay what is she i like she said she was impressed with my focus and she said okay i'll take her on
#
because at that time padmatal valkar was a very busy touring artist as well but she took me on and
#
we i studied with her in that guru shishya shishya parampara way so i would wake up at
#
really early god god i forget like i don't know like god was it six thirty or seven a.m
#
and then i would go to her house and i would i would learn with her and eventually that morning
#
session eventually became me working with a tabla player in the morning uh for one hour then her
#
other students would come like three or four other girls would come my colleagues would come
#
and i would learn in a group environment for two hours about two hours we would learn as a group
#
then i would go home at around 12 12 30 for lunch and around three three thirty i would come back
#
in the scorching heat i would come back and i would be really tired by this time too because
#
it would be really hot but i would just like you know have a coffee and come back
#
and then there i would i would stay at padmatai's house from anywhere from three thirty to it could
#
be seven it could be eight it could be eight thirty and i would do a variety of variety of things
#
she would give me exercises and she would just listen to me doing them and she would leave the
#
room but i would be in listening distance and she would come back if i did something wrong
#
but it was just hours and hours of my own exercises while she's in listening distance
#
then i would learn from her she would teach me as well and then i would also listen to
#
her singing with a tabla player as well so i'd do these these things and then when i would leave
#
first all like like that that that's exactly what i wanted was that type of of learning
#
but it took it took it took weeks if not like you know a couple of months
#
for my focus to develop to be be for for for it to be that solid that i could focus for that many
#
hours on music that was one thing it took a while for my voice to sing that much to sing that many
#
hours so my voice by the end of the end of the day was hoarse i could hardly speak
#
i you know i just couldn't even speak by the end of it and then from my body like my my shirir
#
my body was just so numb from sitting like that and i remember like in the mornings i would like
#
you know take a shower and i would be all clean and i would watch where i'm stepping i had landed
#
in the monsoons so i would be sure not to you know step in a puddle and i would make my way
#
to padma thai's house and i'd be all clean and then i'd be a little less tired you know in the
#
afternoon but by the time i left her house at 8 8 30 pm i did not care where i was stepping
#
i could be stepping in a puddle my feet could be getting dirty i couldn't care less i was so
#
exhausted i just wanted to get to my bed and i wanted to lie down but i was so incredibly happy
#
that i found her and i found this way of learning and i just knew that i was going to learn
#
and she changed my voice she's the she's the person vittal ralji is is the person responsible
#
for my compositional abilities and padma talwalkar is responsible for the for my voice and the way i
#
sound it seems to me that there is a very delicate balance you're having to maintain here that i
#
think all artists have to maintain when they start if they're being as self-aware as they should
#
and it's a balance between believing believing in yourself and your talent and really wanting to
#
do this and at the same time having the self-awareness to be able to look at everything
#
that you cannot do to say that it's okay you know i mean implicit in the act of recognition
#
of padma ji's perfect soor is an act of recognition of how far you have to go also
#
right so on on the one hand to get better you have to be critical of yourself but at the same time
#
you also have to believe that you can make this journey right and what is that sort of balance
#
like because you know it's really easy to you know like whenever we get into something for the
#
first time we will suck at it that's just the nature of the beast you know every great writer
#
starts off writing rubbish that's that's a game and for a lot of people you can just see that hey
#
i'm not good at this i'm not cut out for this and you can just leave it and that's a danger and the
#
other danger is that you think you're the cat's whiskers you're better than you actually are and
#
therefore you don't need to learn and therefore you don't put in that effort and you don't have
#
that hunger and the perfect balance which you kind of found here is to know that listen i love
#
doing this thing i want to be really good at it i know what i can't do but i know i can learn it
#
and and then going and doing that so how is it like that for you like are there moments where
#
you have sort of the imposter syndrome where you say that you know i can't do this i'm not
#
cut out for this forget it man i have a job let me go back and do this and um you know what is
#
that process like for you this delicate balance between being hard on yourself but not so hard
#
that you just give it up yeah well you have basically hit on the thing that creates the
#
civil war inside me so the gurushishe parampara is an amazing process by which you concentrate
#
so much insanely on acquiring knowledge that you do acquire the knowledge you do acquire an ability
#
and your your abilities shoot up like you know within a year you're singing differently and
#
when i landed back in toronto the first thing i you know my mother said even if it was you know
#
even though it was a nice time sing something because right away she was so curious to hear
#
what my voice sounds like she knew it would be transformed there are also like everything
#
there's there's the good and the bad um and like everything different personalities
#
will react to the good and bad in different ways for me personally the bad part that about
#
about this gurushishe parampara process is that it's super strict and it can be brutal
#
and so you know if when i did not sing the way that but what they wanted me to sing which is
#
basically insular or if i didn't repeat exactly what she needed in a thong like if i'd missed a
#
note out i have had bottle caps thrown at me i've had her throw water on my face i've had her slap
#
my hand you know about her be like what i consider super mean be super mean to me
#
and the reason she can do that is because she will also shower me with love when she was happy
#
with me she you know i still remember she gave me a silver coin because i had stunned her this one
#
time so she gives you so much music for next to being next to free like the first time i paid
#
her i asked her what she would like for her fee and she said whatever you want so after a month
#
i went home and i gave her a bunch of money and she returned three quarters of it back to me
#
and she said i'm not doing this for money and she said the reason i'm taking even a little bit
#
is because i've already had the experience if i were if i don't take anything then people start
#
to abuse the system so i am going to take something but you don't need to give me that much so here
#
she is you know you're lucky that she's spending all this time with you and giving you all this
#
knowledge and telling you the tricks of the trade and all these shortcuts and so one thing you're
#
indebted to her for that on top of that she will you know love me she will feed me when i'm hungry
#
if i have a problem in life she'll help me with it because i'm alone there because you know narendra
#
has left now so she has built the right to be brutal with me that's the way that's the way
#
she's looking at it and that's the way the gurushiship parampara looks at it is that i
#
love you and therefore i have the right to be brutal with you as well because this is tough
#
love that's what's happening here from my standpoint of a view i'm not really built for
#
for that kind of uh let's like i work better with positive reinforcement
#
and that's what i found more with my guruji vittal rao um but i also realize that people
#
evolve differently with positive reinforcement that so when i went to study with vittal rao
#
and he only works with positive reinforcement i saw that a lot of his students didn't know a lot
#
of things that i knew and i knew them because i came from a very disciplined strict situation
#
in indian classical music and i'm saying all this because uh to like i'm saying all this because
#
what would happen for me is that
#
when i went out into the world and i sang something for myself or in front of someone
#
on stage or in a recording and if i did not like the way i sang it or if i thought i sang it out of
#
tune or out of pitch i would hear padmatai's voice in my my head so i i developed a very strong
#
self-sabotager and it was crippling for for a time being it was crippling me and i went into
#
therapy for it and we you know we talked about where is this self-sabotager coming from and it
#
was coming from this guru shesha parampara tradition it was also actually coming from my
#
very very first teacher karkana bhara and that's interesting that it came from the two female
#
teachers in my life who were harsher on me because you know they were both females and the male
#
teachers were kind to me i mean all of the female teachers were kind to me as well but in different
#
ways and so i had to really work hard to get rid of that voice get rid of that proverbial
#
water that is being thrown on my face if i if i think i haven't done something the way i want to
#
so therapy helped also what helped is i recorded like video recorded a lot of my performances
#
and i remember this one performance where i thought oh well whatever you know i'm like i
#
think i kind of sucked and i remember that same night i went home and i listened to it and it's
#
really really hard to listen to yourself you know it's one of my least favorite things to do it's
#
it's it's like it's such a it's so awful to listen to yourself but anyhow i was listening to myself
#
and i thought oh oh wow like i was like i liked it i liked my voice i thought that that little
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murky i took didn't land it didn't work and it did work and so i thought like that kind of stuff
#
taping myself and listening to myself and hearing myself and saying that i remember that i was
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thinking that i did not do that the way i wanted but that's not the way it happened so then i
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learned to give myself that the benefit of the doubt maybe it happened maybe it didn't we'll go
#
home and we'll see um and then there's like i i started hanging on to all sorts of different
#
anecdotes my favorite anecdote is uh an anecdote about allah rakha ji who was a maestro tabla player
#
one of the top if not the top 10 the top three tabla players in india of course people will
#
differ in their opinions but that's my opinion and so someone had told me that allah rakha ji was
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recording and the recording and so so the record he was recording something and the recording
#
happened and allah rakha ji ustadji you know left the studio and the sound engineer was going
#
through the recording again and realized that after allah rakha made it he did an improv but
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he didn't land on the sum which is the first beat because in classical music you do this improv you
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go in all sorts of different places and then you have to come right back to the first beat of the
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rhythm and allah rakha allah rakha didn't happen to do it this one time so the sound engineer knew
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where they were having dinner and he rushed to that dinner place and he said to allah rakha ji
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like this is what's happened you know good thing you're still here good thing you haven't left
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you know you can come back i'm at the studio i'll work overtime you can come back and we can over
#
dub it and you can get it exactly perfect you know you did one extra beat here and allah rakha said
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you know he's eating and he's very casual and he said okay i did one extra beat next time i'll give
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you one less and we'll call it even and i love that you know that here's this there's maestro
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and he doesn't care about perfection it's music it's it's about making music it's about the feeling
#
that you felt with his improvisation and he let go of the technicality of it of course you're only
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going to be a musician if you're doing it technically correct the majority of the time
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but you don't have to hang that that it doesn't have to be a noose around your neck you can let
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go of it and you can go in different places and you don't have to expect perfection from yourself
#
and if you don't get it you certainly don't have to beat yourself up what a fantastic inspiring
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lesson and you know what you said earlier about how when you get something wrong or you thought
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you got something wrong you'd hear padmaji's voice in your head and it reminded me of an
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anecdote i think about the musician rubinstein where rubinstein said that and this is a really
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a kator re bhaji kind of anecdote where he said that you know if i don't practice for one day
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i will know if i don't practice for two days the critics will know if i don't practice for three
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days the audience will know and here it seems that padmaji would know if you didn't practice
#
oh absolutely are you still in touch with her absolutely what does she think of your music
#
she has encouraged me i mean she has been supportive of my journey to she has understood
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from day one that i went to her to not be a classical music not uh sing classical music
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on stage but to sing what i want to sing on stage she's been very supportive of it she has
#
come to canada to live in toronto in our home i have been her tour like when you do a tour
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sometimes there's a tour manager i've been her tour manager when she's been on tour in america
#
there's a lot of love there there's a lot of gratitude i feel for her i think she's proud
#
of me she makes me feel like she's proud of me you know but taraji was of course very proud of me as
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well and then of course she's going to tell me you know but when she hears a you know if she
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wants to hear a video of mine like if she wants to know what i'm doing we put on a video because
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i do video myself in performances to learn from it of course she's going to tell me what i did
#
you know where i can improve and and i love that because then i remember that and i actually
#
improve so so it's lovely i mean you know we're out of the gurushe parampara now like i'm not
#
there every single day of my life six days a week so i'm out of that bandhan that kind of cage so
#
i i take and welcome her constructive criticism in a completely different way
#
and it helps me like you know become a better singer fabulous let's let's take a quick commercial
#
break and after this we'll come back and discuss the rest of your journey but even though i have
#
commercial breaks i don't have commercial so why not like play a song by you so
#
what's your most memorable guzzle from your first album oh my god okay so my most i'm gonna say
#
it's one of my first compositions awara and it's a pretty long nazam it's nine minutes long
#
and it's apparently written like the lyrics are written by a distant family member my mom's
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buaji's husband that's what the family lore says that he wrote these lyrics and i picked it up i
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loved it and i composed it and and sang it and it's about falling in love with an awara woman
#
a woman who maybe is not as dedicated to you as you are to her and it's a really beautifully
#
sensuous poem like he's saying okay she comes to him and she offers him the nectar of love
#
from her lips and she decorates his room with her beauty and i just love these words in urdu
#
so these are the words it took me a year to compose it it's one of my first compositions
#
and uh when i first sang it for guruji my guruji in hadrabad when he first heard the recording
#
he was a little upset he said you know
#
but then i sang it for him in concert and he said
#
Aur yeh kahekar apne hothon ko badhati thi
#
Mujhe tum jaise saathi ki
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Sata dhile se pesh aathi thi
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Mujhe tum jaise saathi ki
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Aap sakat pathar ke murat thi
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Sata dhile se pesh aathi thi
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Mujhe tum jaise saathi ki
#
Mujhe tum jaise saathi ki
#
Un dinon mujhe hasne ki aadat thi
#
Ma kaita tan jaise malum hai
#
Na thi aisi, na hai aisi
#
Yeh shak sita pe duniya wale
#
Tere duniya wale kaisi hai
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Sata dhile se pesh aathi thi
#
Mujhe jis se muhabbat thi
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen. I'm chatting with the amazing Kiran Alualya and I want to sort of talk about another interesting aspect of both your music and your life which you've mentioned where you've pointed out that one of the reasons you love both Tuareg Blues and Gazelle is that they come from a time when there was no hurry in your words, right?
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Where it was slow and you weren't rushing from one place to another, a time before smartphones, a time before ASAP, as you put it, you know. So tell me a little bit about that in the sense that modern life has very much become a question of always hurrying, always scrolling furiously or swiping left, swiping right.
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And that's just a pace of life. And I think to myself that often we need to slow down, that too much of everything just goes by in a rush and therefore you live in a very shallow way. It's very hard to immerse yourself deeply into something when you're not slowing time down and just letting it kind of wash over you as it were.
#
So have you always been the kind of person who likes to take it slow and easy and therefore the attraction to these kinds of music? Or do you sometimes, especially in these times, also find it necessary to be intentional about it, to tell yourself that no, I gotta chill, I gotta have my me time, there's no hurry, I don't need to look at the phone?
#
Well, I actually, I never articulated that, that I like, not to my knowledge, that I like, that the reason I like Ghazal and the reason I like Tuareg music is because of its slow pace.
#
These are your words, I'll send you the link.
#
Really? Okay. I guess I said it at some interview. But that's interesting that I do. I mean, I certainly like fast-paced music as well.
#
I do Punjabi folk songs and I do other kinds of songs that are in a much, they're in a faster tempo and are more dancey. I like that too.
#
But in answer to your question that, you know, have I, if I have been conscious, when I first started out my career, I think when I was in India, like as a full-time student, I took on the pace.
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It was, you know, 1990s and India itself was in a much slower pace than it is right now.
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So coming from Toronto, it was a slower pace for me and I totally fit into that. So that was just a natural kind of a thing to do.
#
And then somewhere along the line, I don't know when in my career, definitely I got, I went along with the, with the rest of the world, probably when iPhones came or not iPhones, but mobile phones and the internet started and as it started and our attention spans, you know, collectively started shortening.
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I was on that ride and I did have a realization that, you know, there's something missing by going that fast.
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And I even wrote a song about it. It's called Kuch Aur, Kuch Aur Chahiye Aur Kya Hai Dekhaiye.
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And it's about, you know, kind of like being at a vendor's shop, a vendor who's showing you how to live and you're not happy with the way you're living and you're, you've gone to the shop to ask for a different style of living.
#
And so somewhere along the line, I definitely made a conscious effort to slow down and it's really hard.
#
So for example, if I'm eating and if I say to myself, I'm going to eat at 50% slower, that is really hard to do.
#
So then I just, I say, okay, 25% slower. And then I can, you know, manage that.
#
So I do, I do do conscious things to try to live a slower life, but also I like it. It's, you know, I enjoy it slower.
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Sometimes you have to be fast and, you know, you're on tour and you've got to grab your next connecting plane, otherwise you'll miss it. So you have to run.
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But yeah, I enjoy taking my time.
#
So let's go back to your chronological narrative and, you know, through the time you spent learning from Withal Rao.
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And there's another account of yours where you've described so beautifully the first time you called him.
#
You know, you went into a phone booth and it was noisy and there was rain pouring down all along and you dialed and you spent three minutes explaining who you were and why you had come.
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And then at the end, he simply asked you the question, okay, so when are you coming?
#
So tell me about that journey. Tell me about him. Tell me about your love with the Ghazal because obviously that's part of whatever is happening.
#
So, you know, you've described so beautifully about how you learned with Padma Talwalkar and what you learned with her and the sort of regimen that you went through and all of that.
#
Now tell me about Withal Rao. What was it like with him and what was that journey like?
#
Right. So I was introduced to Ghazal by my parents who were a hobby.
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When I say hobby, it kind of diminishes it. They had a very serious passion about Ghazal and they were Ghazal singers themselves or they still are, but they don't sing anymore.
#
And when they didn't know each other and they were in college in India, in their own colleges, they would compete in college competitions for Ghazal.
#
And so I grew up with Ghazal around me and would go to Ghazal concerts with them and they would sing Ghazal and I would also sing Ghazal.
#
And so I was a fan of Ghazals from my childhood.
#
And in the early 90s, that's what I thought I wanted to sing was Ghazal.
#
Later on that I branched out into doing fusion music and doing hybrid modern contemporary Indian music.
#
So at that time, I wanted to be a better Ghazal singer and Withal Rao was a maestro.
#
He was a legend, but he was not known in the industry because his students and I, we always have discussions of why wasn't he known.
#
And a couple of things, one is that he went to Bombay, but he didn't stay in Bombay.
#
And in his time, I think people in Bombay are the people who got bigger, but he came back to Hyderabad.
#
The other thing is that he was not business minded or marketing minded at all.
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Whereas some of his other contemporaries like Ghulam Ali or Mendiasen might have been more business and marketing minded.
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Guruji Withal Rao was more of a simple man.
#
And so maybe for that reason.
#
But when I say that he wasn't known, he was known in the industry, but by people who work in the industry.
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But he wasn't known in the general public of India.
#
So he wasn't popular that way.
#
But Sunil Dutt celebrated his 50 years of being in the music industry.
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And there's a picture of him, black and white picture of Guruji and Sunil Dutt.
#
So people who were in the know knew who Withal Rao was.
#
So he was a hard person for me to discover because he had never recorded in his life when I met him.
#
I discovered him because a student of his came to Toronto and my harmonium player at the time was called to play harmonium with her.
#
And the compositions she was singing were amazing.
#
And he asked her, where have you gotten these compositions from?
#
And she said, my Guruji Withal Rao.
#
So then I hadn't gone to that concert, but I called her to my house and I spoke with her and hadn't heard Withal Rao's voice,
#
but heard the compositions that she sang and then no doubt the compositions were stunning.
#
And so I said, I have to go meet this person.
#
I have to go learn how he made these compositions.
#
And so I came to Bombay because that's where I would, you know, I was still learning from Padmatai, you know, on an ongoing basis.
#
And I thought, OK, this week I'm going to tell Padmatai that I'm going to go to Hyderabad and learn kuzil now.
#
And I didn't have the guts because remember, it was a very strict and brutal system of learning.
#
And kind of, you know, in the classical world, non-classical music is frowned upon.
#
And so I was afraid to tell her this and it took me three months to tell her that I want to go to Hyderabad and learn.
#
But, you know, after three months, I built up the courage to ask her permission to go and learn kuzil,
#
expecting her to get all crazy, not crazy, but upset.
#
But she didn't get upset and she understood it.
#
And so then same day, I went to an STD booth because we had no mobile phones at that time and it was raining outside.
#
And I phoned him and someone else answered the phone, I think his son, Shantanu.
#
And then I finally got him on the phone and I explained to him who I am.
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I've been learning for so long and I've come.
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And this is how I found out about him.
#
And I think his compositions are stunning.
#
And then, you know, finally I said, and I want to come learn from you.
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And all he said was, so then come, why not?
#
And yeah, it was great.
#
And then I went to Hyderabad, managed to, through a friend's friend, managed to get like a pain,
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not a pain guess, but an empty flat situation where I was staying.
#
Didn't know a single soul in Hyderabad and understood how to get to his house, which is an old Hyderabad Gosha Mahal.
#
And for the first, oh, actually, before this, I had landed and I had also secured just private cassettes of his singing.
#
So I knew that his voice was also very commercial and very young sounding, very good.
#
So when I came to meet him, he, of course, wanted me to sing something, which I did.
#
I, you know, it was, it was, it was again, you know, once again, I felt like I'd landed when he sang.
#
It was a different kind of learning from Vitthal Rao.
#
So Vitthal Rao was a court musician.
#
And what that means is that in Hyderabad, Hyderabad was one of the few areas in India that was not under direct British Raj.
#
But it was a British protected state.
#
And so that means the Nizam gave some amount of money or whatever.
#
And the Brits, they protected the state with their troops.
#
And the Nizam was the richest man on earth at that time.
#
And in 1936, the Nizam of Hyderabad was on the cover of Time magazine as the richest man on earth,
#
richer than the then King, King Edward, I think.
#
And so the Nizam had two sons and the second son, Prince Muazzam Jashaji, used to live in Hillfort Palace.
#
And so actually, first of all, I should back up.
#
Now, Guruji Vitthal Rao was a radio musician.
#
So he sang on the Nizam's radio because this is pre-independence.
#
He sang on the Nizam's radio even when he was like seven years old.
#
And so when he sang, at the same time, the Nizam had a very big harem.
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He had like 40 legitimate legal wives and, I don't know, 300 concubines or something like that.
#
So these 40 wives of the Nizam, they wanted to learn music.
#
But because they were from the Islamic tradition and they were royalty,
#
they were not allowed to show their face to strange men.
#
But they heard Guruji Vitthal Rao as a child at the age of seven on the Nizam's radio.
#
And because Vitthal Rao wasn't a strange man to them, he was just a strange boy,
#
at the age of seven, it was allowed that he could teach them.
#
So he would go and teach the wives music.
#
A couple of the wives, he would teach tabla.
#
A couple of the wives, he would teach singing, a couple of wives harmonium.
#
He was more than seven, I think, at this time.
#
I think it was he was 11 or something, but he was very, very young.
#
So every day, a car from the palace, Nizam's palace, would come to Guruji's house in a small little alleyway
#
and pick him up and take him to the palace.
#
And he would teach the wives and then he would come back.
#
And then this continued for a few months until Guruji's father found out what's happening.
#
And Guruji's father put a stop to this because he felt that his young son might get somehow sexually spoiled
#
by being around 40 women who he thought might be desperate for male attention.
#
So Guruji has lots of little vignettes like that.
#
So then partition happened. Guruji is older.
#
And then Guruji lived and the Nizam has two, you know, his first two sons and his second son,
#
Prince Muazzam Jah Shaji, is living in a palace called Hillford Palace.
#
And in that palace, Prince Shaji, who was himself a Ghazal writer, so he would write the poems,
#
he would have these nocturnal Ghazal mehfils, these Ghazal parties that would start at 10 p.m. at night.
#
And so lots of different Ghazal writers would come to these, would be invited to these,
#
and as would be the court musicians.
#
And so at 10 p.m., a dinner, a huge feast would start and then they would go into another room
#
and that's where the mehfils would start.
#
And sometimes there would be dance, but sometimes there would be recitation of the Ghazal
#
and Guruji would take a freshly written Ghazal and right on the spot compose it and sing it.
#
And he took Prince Shaji's Ghazals as well and composed them.
#
And Guruji was invited to basically live in the palace, so he lived in the palace for 12 years.
#
And that's what I mean by saying he was a court musician.
#
So he had all these lovely vignettes, but also because he was surrounded by royalty,
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by teaching the women of the harem, by taking Prince Shaji's poems and composing them.
#
And if, you know, it didn't quite fit into the meter, he would suggest to the prince
#
what words to move around so it would fit into the meter because he was used to dealing with royalty.
#
Even when he was dealing with us, his students, he was nothing but sweet.
#
He was just pure honey. There was no harshness in his teaching.
#
So he wasn't going to push me to learn anything the way my classical teacher was going to push me.
#
So it was a very different style of learning.
#
And he also, Guru Vitara wasn't so much a teacher as just a plain maestro.
#
So he would just come into the music room with his harmonium in front of him and he would just sing.
#
That's it. And it was up to you to figure out how to learn from him
#
and to ask him the questions to figure out how did you do this and how did you do that
#
and focus in on something as you say, double click on something and figure it out.
#
So it was a completely different experience and a beautiful one.
#
And you mentioned that, you know, whereas from Padma Tai you really learned singing,
#
from Guru Ji you also learned composing and how to come.
#
Tell me a little bit about that. Were you composing stuff before this?
#
What was this whole process like where you learned to compose?
#
What does it even mean to learn to compose and how did Guru Ji help you?
#
And I'm guessing a lot of it would not be direct instruction,
#
but just creating that kind of enabling ecosystem where you get curious and you get inspired and all of that.
#
So just take me through those days.
#
That's basically really it. I mean, in the West, they have composition courses that you take in school.
#
And so you go, you look at other people's compositions and you break them down.
#
You see, what did Mozart do? What techniques did he do here?
#
How did he build suspense and tension and release?
#
And you dissect compositions to figure out how they were made.
#
Or you dissect not just Mozart, but any kind of a jazz composition or really anything, even pop music, you can dissect.
#
But the Indian musical tradition of learning music doesn't have anything like that.
#
Not to my knowledge, anyways, maybe things have changed and it exists, but to my knowledge, it didn't exist.
#
And there's no such thing as learning to compose in Indian music.
#
And all of us who have figured out how to compose have just done it on our own,
#
have literally like banged our heads on the wall and tried to figure it out and almost go into labor to get that first composition out.
#
Like my first composition, Avada, took pretty much nine months to push out of my brain.
#
But then that first composition takes so long and you have to just be dedicated to the process.
#
And then something clicks in you.
#
Something clicks and something opens up and another part of your brain just opens up a little bit and you can start to use that part of your brain.
#
And then, you know, it becomes easier.
#
And so with Guruji, it was just studying his compositions, you know, seeing what he did and imbibing it.
#
That's, you know, that's how I don't really have a more articulate answer than that.
#
That's a great answer. And from this journey, take me to your first album.
#
Like now you go back, you start composing, you said it took many months to get Avada out and to get it done.
#
And, you know, what was that whole period like? Did you have to fight self-doubts?
#
Did you have to, you know, think about the kind of music you were doing and why and all of that?
#
Just, you know, how did that first album come about?
#
Because I'm guessing that that must have been your toughest album because it's the first, right?
#
There's so much learning that is happening in there. What was that like?
#
Yeah, it was. So when I was working on the first album, at least the compositional part,
#
I was still working at Pudumaya World Music in New York City.
#
And I was actually also being offered a record deal at the same time as an artist.
#
So because I was being offered the record deal, I was motivated to compose something of my own
#
because the record label asked for something of my own as well.
#
Because I told them I'm going to sing a couple of ghazals composed by my guruji, Victor Rao.
#
I'm going to do like a Punjabi folk song.
#
And they said, you know, give us a couple of things of your own.
#
And so, but there wasn't a time limit. Like they didn't put any time limit on me.
#
Like I was one of the artists they were interested in.
#
And whenever I was going to deliver a record, they were going to be happy to put it out, apparently.
#
And so I was working at Pudumaya World Music.
#
And so I would work, you know, the nine to five or ten to six, whatever, and that would come home tired.
#
And then I would do, you know, my hour of music.
#
And on the weekends, I would do more.
#
And it was a painful process and a lot of like going back to the drawing board, a lot of recording myself.
#
And seeing what was done, a lot of going back to the drawing board, a lot of being really kind of honest.
#
Like, because you feel like, OK, Tika, you know, I just I got this one.
#
I've got this one couple of sentences figured out composition wise.
#
I'm done. Let's move on.
#
But then going back to those and then just seeing, does that melody really do justice to the words?
#
And if not, then having the courage to wipe it all off and clean the proverbial drawing board and going back to it.
#
So, yeah, it was. But I'm I get my relentlessness from my mother.
#
She doesn't give up. She's a fighter.
#
And that's where I get my my ability to stay on a train and not get off.
#
And so basically I was on that train and I did not get off until I had a finished composition.
#
And there's another delicate balance I think artists have to face that I want to ask about, which is that, you know, what Martin Amos called the war against cliche.
#
Right. And in music, I imagine that that is, you know, a constant balance to maintain, because on the one hand, you're in a form where the convention of the form itself can be a little bit like a cliche.
#
I mean, there's that thin line between convention and form.
#
So on the one hand, you want to do something new.
#
But on the other hand, you're working in a convention which is a convention for a reason and which forms this kind of a package for all the originality that you put in it.
#
So how do you sort of is that something that, you know, gave you trouble in terms of how do you navigate that?
#
That you want to put in something original into this form that has, you know, survive for all this time.
#
Like the form of the guzzle in a sense is a particular form. It is a particular thing.
#
Now, within that form, you have great composers like Vithal Raoji, you know, doing their thing.
#
So how do you how do you kind of navigate that?
#
Because there is always a danger that, you know, if you keep too much of the of what's there, it can, you know, that it has a danger of lapsing into cliche.
#
And at the same time, you don't want to go too much outside the form or outside the convention because then, you know, you might stand the danger of losing the essence of it.
#
So how did you manage that?
#
Right. Well, in the very beginning, in my first two albums, I wasn't really worried or I wasn't really cognizant of trying to do anything new, especially in my first album.
#
I just thought that, OK, I've got a grant. I don't have a job.
#
So instead of coming to India this year, I'm going to do the album and then I'll have an album.
#
And so all I wanted to do was put out an album.
#
At that time, I didn't think that I would be in music full time 23 years or that I would have a career.
#
I didn't think anything of it. I would just I just thought, OK, I'll just do an album.
#
And it was not concerned about doing anything new myself.
#
But, you know, at that time, the record label had asked for something new.
#
So then I ended up with something new.
#
But when and in terms of the form, yeah, you do have to in a puzzle.
#
You I did have to stick to a form, but I had my own style in that form and I had my own aesthetic in that in that form.
#
And my musicians weren't people who do hustle day in and day out in Hyderabad.
#
They were people who live in Toronto, who do all kinds of stuff.
#
So there was just an organic, different style of of doing things.
#
And so there wasn't too much of a worry at that time of sticking to the form.
#
And then when I wanted to have outside influences like twarig music that I just knew weren't going to work in that form out of that necessity, I started writing my own lyrics and started.
#
Then I left the puzzle genre and started to do contemporary music.
#
And that's when I changed the form of what I'm doing.
#
And again, there weren't any rules.
#
I just, you know, wanted to do something that would be a good mixture.
#
It would be good for that twarig sound that I wanted to incorporate and just, you know, went with it.
#
So I haven't really worried about form so much.
#
And how did you how did you like a question that a lot of young writers ask me is how do we find our voice?
#
Right. And in a sense, how did you find your voice?
#
Not as in voice voice, but your distinctive style or whatever.
#
Like when I listen to some of your mid career and later songs, which I'm otherwise familiar with.
#
So, for example, must must. And we've heard a million versions of it.
#
Or in Sonata, you did Lament, which I first heard in Nusrat's album Night Song with Peter Brook.
#
And that's a great version. But your version is also a great version and it's very different.
#
And both your versions are clearly you, even though the song is an old classic and like so many of the songs you've done are kind of old classics.
#
But you made it your own. You made it of a piece.
#
You know, every one of those is clearly sort of Kiranaluwalia.
#
And at the same time, every one of them is a different Kiranaluwalia, it seems like, you know, that journey is so interesting.
#
So how did you kind of arrive at your voice and how did it evolve?
#
Like, did you feel at times that it was a conscious kind of evolution?
#
Was there ever any intentionality or was it that you could look back on yourself and say,
#
But at the time, you may not have known.
#
I mean, what is your sense of your own style and what is perhaps like that one essential thing that you feel is you.
#
But other things have changed around it.
#
Yeah. So, you know, for the students who ask, how do you get your own voice?
#
I don't know. I don't know the answer.
#
I would say people arrive at their own voice in many different ways, seven billion different ways.
#
And I never really set out to like say, you know, like, oh, OK, now I've got to do it differently.
#
It just that's just what came out. You know, I opened my mouth and that's what came out.
#
So it wasn't conscious. It just happened.
#
And then with the fusion of the twarig music, you know, there is no other example of twarig music is new to the world.
#
You know, from 10, 15 years ago, it's new to the world. So there are not very many collaborations that exist.
#
I was one of the few earlier people who collaborated with them.
#
And so there were no blueprints of how to do things.
#
So you can't really go back to anybody else of how they do it.
#
And so you make it up as you go.
#
And my guiding principle is aesthetic.
#
If I like what's happening, then I then I then I use it.
#
It doesn't matter to me what rules are being broken or what rules aren't being broken.
#
And I mean, if you don't use the very same musicians in your band that traditionally are being used by other people.
#
And if you're making your own melodies, then then you're bound to just have your own style.
#
And tell me about meeting Rez and the influence he had, because, I mean, obviously, there'd be that personal influence and the journey that your life takes and all of that.
#
But equally, I'm guessing there would be a very strong musical influence because from the time he starts playing with you,
#
there is this jazz slash blues influence that also comes in that seems to be grounding a lot of the work that you're doing.
#
So tell me about both these aspects, the personal aspect and the musical aspect, because like every morning you wake up and there's a musician with you.
#
Well, if you had Rez here with me, then you would get two different stories of how we met.
#
But it's just me here right now. So you're going to get my version.
#
I'll just point out for my listeners that when Kiran and I were corresponding, I said that I hope Rez is coming with you.
#
I'd love to have both of you on the show.
#
But Rez sadly didn't even apply for the visa because Pakistani origin and getting a visa here is tough and it's just it's a messed up situation.
#
But inshallah, maybe someday we can do that as well. But go ahead.
#
Yeah. And then he'll give you his version.
#
So I met Rez because so OK.
#
So I spoke about, you know, at CBC radio and at Pudimaya World Music, the record label and both of those places.
#
I was learning how to package music that isn't in English to an audience that speaks in English.
#
Packaging world music to an English speaking audience.
#
And so when I was ready to do my own album and I was you know, I was working on that album as I was working in Pudimaya.
#
I was thinking about what my band what what the instrumentation of my band is going to be.
#
And I was contemplating either flute, bansuri or guitar.
#
And a lot of people think that, oh, guzzle and guitar, because remember that first record of mine was still a guzzle.
#
They think that, you know, there's no there's no guitar and guzzle.
#
But actually there is. Jagjit Singh used a guitarist, you know, Chintu Singh and Deepak Khajanjee were his two guitarists.
#
And Ghulam Ali also used a guitarist.
#
I forget if Mehendi Hassan did or not.
#
So these are people that in Toronto I would see in concert.
#
I would literally see the guitarists.
#
But when you heard their albums and even in concert, the guitar was mixed very low.
#
So you had to be listening for it to hear it.
#
But they they use the guitar.
#
So it was there. I knew it existed for me as a possibility.
#
And I basically picked the guitar.
#
I mean, I like I like I loved flute and I loved guitar.
#
So that wasn't that wasn't a problem.
#
But I picked the guitar because I thought that that would be a window for non-Indians to enter my music.
#
Because there's a lot of guitar in Western music.
#
So then I decided that, OK, I'm going to have a guitar in my band.
#
I'm going to have a double player.
#
I'm going to have a harmonium player.
#
And I want to fill out the bottom end.
#
So I'm going to have a bass player as well.
#
And I could not find the appropriate and appropriate guitarist in Toronto.
#
And I happened to get a concert in the Indian community in London, London, England.
#
And that's so I went to London, England for the weekend.
#
And that's where I met my first guitarists and and harmonium player.
#
And they were on my first couple of albums.
#
And I toured with them.
#
But that guitarist, who I'm not going to name, was troublesome for me.
#
You know, it was not a good relationship.
#
And so I was looking for a guitarist and I was advertising in Toronto that I'm looking for a guitarist.
#
And three different people suggested what would later what later I would find out was Rez.
#
But they didn't tell me the name.
#
They just said, you know, there's a guitarist who lives in New York City.
#
He might be good for you.
#
And I said, well, what kind of music does he do?
#
And I said, oh, no, no, no, I don't want a jazz player.
#
And then I was at my computer and I was reading reviews of Indian CDs.
#
And I read a review of a CD put out by by Indian-American drummer Sonny Jane.
#
And in that review, they talked about Rez Abbasi, the guitarist.
#
And they quoted Rez as saying that his father sang Razzle, even though his father is a cardiologist.
#
So I thought, oh, OK, this guitarist knows what Razzle is.
#
He might not have played with it, but he understands what the word is.
#
Maybe he'll work in my band, in my group.
#
So I got a hold of Sonny Jane, whom I did not know at the time.
#
And I asked him, you know, can I be connected with Rez Abbasi?
#
And Sonny connected me with Rez.
#
And then I wrote Rez a giant email about asking him if he would be interested in playing in my music.
#
And I'm living in Toronto and Rez is living in New York City, which by plane are only an hour away.
#
So it's doable for bigger concerts.
#
And he wrote back and he kind of ignored my request and said that I went to your website and I really like your voice and I'm doing an album.
#
And would you like to be would you like to be part of my album?
#
And I kind of just rolled my eyes because I thought, OK, he's not interested in playing with my music.
#
And I just said, OK, yes, sure, I'll be on your album.
#
But, you know, later on, we talked on the phone and he just kind of forgotten to answer that part of my question.
#
And he was going to be very much into playing my music.
#
So the first time we spoke on the phone, there were already romantic sparks.
#
I knew that there was something there, but I love the courting process.
#
So I love the process in which you're courting and you know, you don't quite know where things are going.
#
That's the juiciest part of the relationship for me.
#
Most exciting part. And so the next month I was coming to New York City for a concert.
#
And so we planned to meet then at the concert.
#
And it's eight p.m. It's concert time.
#
And my agent is telling me to start.
#
But I didn't want to start because Rezwan wasn't there and I knew he would come to the concert.
#
I just knew that. But he wasn't there then.
#
8.01 p.m. He walks in with Sonny and sits there.
#
And the second I saw him, I thought, I can't wait to hug him.
#
And so we got through the concert and afterwards I invited him backstage and we had a wonderful evening.
#
My whole group and Sonny and Rez, we went out for dinner and we all shared like different kinds of drinks.
#
We'd order a drink and we'd all take a sip each.
#
It was just like one of those wonderful, magical evenings.
#
And I'm telling you the romantic side, not the musical side yet, just because it's, I don't know.
#
I like the romantic side. Let's continue and then we'll come to the music later.
#
So then my harmonium player at that time, Ashok Biday, who passed away later, at that time he wanted to see Times Square.
#
So we all went to Times Square and we went into one of those, you know, fancy five star hotels with a beautiful view of Times Square and ordered more drinks and just had a lovely time.
#
And it was really late by this time, you know, and where we come down and it's time for now to us finally to part company with Rez.
#
You know, my band is going to walk to our hotel and Rez is going to go to his home because he lives in New York City.
#
And my band was in front of me.
#
So we're walking and my band is walking in front of me and I'm with Rez.
#
And he has, you know, we've said our goodbyes and he's turned around and he's gotten a cab and I'm looking at him and I'm looking at him as he gets in the cab.
#
And the New York taxi driver, he saw me through the open door looking at Rez.
#
And once Rez sat in the cab, the cab driver said to him, she doesn't want you to leave.
#
And so it's interesting that it was in my eyes and in my demeanor that, you know, that that didn't want him to leave.
#
And so it was lovely. So that's how we basically met.
#
And then he came to Toronto.
#
And yeah, so as we chatted on the phone, it still wasn't clear to him that, you know, things were going to get romantic.
#
But in my mind, I knew that there's a spark there.
#
And so we talked about working on his album and he was going to come to Toronto and we were going to rehearse his music.
#
And then he said, if I come to Toronto, will you introduce me to your parents?
#
Which is a pretty like it's a it's pretty early in the relationship.
#
We're not even boyfriend girlfriend.
#
And you are asking to be introduced to my parents already.
#
But I understood it. I was we weren't young anymore.
#
We weren't in our 20s. I think I was like 36 or something, maybe 37.
#
I forget. But, you know, like mid 30s.
#
So I understood that he doesn't want to waste his time with me if I'm not serious.
#
And also, he was a person born in Pakistan.
#
And even though he does not identify with religion at all, with any kind of religion at all, that is his you know, that's his that's where he he grew up in that in an Islamic household.
#
Not a religious household, but still, you know, comes from an Islamic country.
#
And my parents are, you know, I was born in India.
#
They were born in India. We're Sikh.
#
And so there, you know, there could be possible hurdles caused by my parents, maybe.
#
And so he just wanted to get that out in the open.
#
Like, what kind of a ride is this going to be?
#
Is this going to be a roller coaster?
#
Is this going to be a smooth ride?
#
So that's why he said that.
#
Will you introduce me to my to your parents?
#
And I said, Sure, I will.
#
Even though, you know, I hate for my parents to be involved in my personal life, but I understood where he's coming from.
#
So he came, introduced him to my parents.
#
And we became, you know, intimately involved in that in that first visit of his to Toronto, worked on the music, became boyfriend girlfriend.
#
And there was no Bollywood drama in by either parents, not his parents or not mine.
#
Even though both sets of parents lived through partition and saw bloodshed and physical and sexual violence, witnessed it.
#
They understood that hatred of that kind that they have seen and witnessed just cannot be allowed to surface.
#
And even though my parents had lived through partition, they never they never passed down any hatred to me of the other side.
#
And his parents never passed any hatred for India down to him.
#
So Rez and I never grew up with any kind of hatred for the opposite side.
#
In fact, before I met Rez, like three months before I met Rez, I had actually gone to Pakistan to do three two three concerts and had taken my dad back to Rawalpindi to visit his ancestral home.
#
And we had a wonderful time there.
#
So that's how we you know, that's our that's the romantic side.
#
Now in in terms of the musical collaboration, even when I was doing my first two albums, people had approached me by saying, you know, it's traditional music and you've got your audience.
#
Yes, but you can grow your audience more by making it more Western.
#
And I wasn't ready for it then.
#
And I also didn't have that much trust in the people who are offering to produce it in a more Western way.
#
So both of those things, I wasn't ready and I didn't have trust in them.
#
It was only when I met Rez that I found someone who I whose aesthetic I trusted.
#
Like, you know, if he was going to suggest something that we can do this and it's going to sound good, I trusted it.
#
And also with him is what is when my own tastes also did change.
#
I mean, I was already listening to stuff on radio.
#
I was listening to Western music.
#
They're a Canadian band.
#
I had rock and roll albums.
#
I had disco albums, Bee Gees.
#
I was listening to Canadian singer songwriters, Canadian folk artists.
#
I was listening to all of that.
#
But I was not at that time interested in incorporating any of those influences into my own music.
#
And so Rez was there, but I mean, I wasn't conscious of waiting.
#
But now in hindsight, I realize that it was only when I found Portuguese Fado that I said, OK, let's incorporate this.
#
Only when I found Tuareg music and wanted to make it mine, did I say I want to work with it.
#
The guzzle format's not working.
#
I do need to bring an electric guitar that works better.
#
OK, now I want to compose a faster beat and the drum kit is actually helping it.
#
And it's, you know, aiding the tabla player.
#
So I let that all happen organically.
#
And, you know, in Rez, I had a monster guitarist.
#
I had someone who had studied Western classical music and jazz.
#
So he had brilliantly complex, pleasing and new, like chord kind of harmonic structures for my music.
#
You know, something that hadn't been done before.
#
It was new to my ears as well, because I'd heard guzzles with chords.
#
But these were different kinds of chords I was putting in.
#
And, you know, he's a key part of bringing a modern Western sensibility into my music when I was ready to bring it in.
#
Yeah, and you know, the space that we are recording in an eerie way, quarter note studios,
#
has actually had Rez and Sunny performing right here in the same space where we are sitting with Godav recording them.
#
It's such a small world. It's eerie.
#
That's such a lovely story about how both your parents, despite having witnessed partition, kind of were cool with it.
#
And it reminds me of something, a story Yogendra Yadav once told that when Yogendra Yadav was born,
#
his parents had also, his father had also apparently, I forget exactly what happened,
#
but had witnessed a brutality of partition in a very personal and visceral way.
#
And yet, Yogendra Yadav's middle name is Salim, because his father said that we've got to get past it.
#
And that's such a, you know, beautiful sort of story to me.
#
Before we come back to the music, you know, going a little bit down the personal route that it strikes me that, you know...
#
Can I say something more about that?
#
When I was studying in Mumbai, Bombay, I came across a lot of people that were anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistani.
#
And my personal analysis of that is that their pain, the pain that they are carrying about partition
#
and about what was done to their people, to Indians in partition, I'm going to say was more of an intellectual pain.
#
And yeah, I'm going to leave it at that, that it was more of an intellectual pain.
#
Whereas people in Punjab, because Punjab is a state that was literally divided in partition,
#
first of all, they witnessed it.
#
It wasn't that they read it.
#
So people in Maharashtra read about it and heard about it on radio and read about it in papers and heard about it from other people.
#
People in Punjab witnessed it.
#
And their Dukh is more of a pain of the heart.
#
It's a breaking of the heart.
#
And it's a greater pain, which makes you lose hope in humanity.
#
And once you reach that rock bottom, losing hope in humanity, you realize that that kind of pain is not going to let you live.
#
And if you're going to live, you've got to get past it and you've got to start building bridges.
#
And to me, having been in Pakistan, having been in Maharashtra and heard a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric
#
and been in Punjab and both sides, Pakistan, India, and seeing how the Punjabis,
#
there's so much love for both sides in Punjab for the Muslims and the Hindus and the Sikhs.
#
Yeah, that's my analysis that because you lived through it, you know how bad it is and you know you can't get there.
#
You can't go there again.
#
That's really interesting. I'll take time to process that.
#
But I agree with you in one sense about a certain kind of anger being only an intellectual anger
#
because I think a lot of the latent anti-Muslimness among some people in India is rationalized in other ways.
#
Like, oh, Baba did this or oh, there was partition, see what happened.
#
But those are all rationalizations to justify a bigotry that is already there and that is incredibly ugly
#
and that is finding greater and greater expression in these times, I guess.
#
And, you know, I talk about this a lot because it left an impact on me.
#
I've done an episode with Aanchal Malhotra who wrote a great book on partition.
#
And she pointed out that at one point she was in Lahore, I think,
#
somewhere in Pakistan talking to a Muslim family which had crossed through about what it was like for them.
#
And they got lost in their memories and they kept ranting against the Hindus and Hindus are this, Hindus are that.
#
And at one point they noticed Aanchal is sitting there and they said,
#
And my frame for understanding that is the frame of the concrete and the abstract,
#
that in the concrete there was a Hindu girl with them and they were so nice to her and all of that.
#
But in the abstract, it's easy to build up these sentiments.
#
Like a lot of what divides us, nationalism, notions of purity or whatever, all of those things,
#
civilizational differences, a lot of those are abstract notions.
#
In the concrete, you know, there is a strain of our culture which is deeply illiberal and intolerant.
#
But at the same time, there is a strain of our culture which embraces everything.
#
You know, you look at our food, you look at our clothing, you look at our language,
#
you know, where you and I can be confused about should I call it Hindi or Urdu or Hindustani.
#
Because it's one language.
#
And I always long for more of that concreteness somehow.
#
I think every Indian who hates Pakistanis has never met a Pakistani person.
#
Which is why I think outside this country where the diasporas mingle with each other, it's perhaps different.
#
Or maybe I'm just thinking aloud, maybe that's not even true because so much of the support for the Hindu right wing
#
actually comes from NRIs.
#
Yeah, yeah, a lot of the support for them comes from NRIs.
#
So maybe that's not true either.
#
Well, I love the way you put that.
#
That's a really nice way that I like, you know, like that's easy to wrap your brain around that
#
when you say concrete and the abstract.
#
It's the fear of the unknown.
#
And that exists for immigrant, like anti-immigrant rhetoric out in the West as well.
#
I did this traveling festival called LoveFest in 2018.
#
And I took four groups on the road.
#
And so it was called LoveFest, a musical response to hate crime.
#
Because after 9-11, the World Trade Center bombing in New York City,
#
after 9-11, hate speech and violent acts against Muslims and Sikhs rose more than hate crime
#
against any other ethnic minorities in the West.
#
So I got two groups from the Sikh tradition.
#
I got a group of Sikh ragis that do Shabadgirtan, so a traditional group.
#
And then myself, female-led band from the Sikh community and I do modern music.
#
And then I wanted to get two Muslim groups and I got a traditional Egyptian Tanura dancer
#
because I wanted to show dance from the Islamic world.
#
And Suad Masih, an Algerian singer-songwriter.
#
And I did that because I wanted to open doors.
#
I wanted to go into venues and open doors for people who don't come from these traditions.
#
And I wanted to open doors to these cultures for them.
#
Because a lot of the hatred is coming from the fear of the unknown.
#
People there may not know immigrants intimately.
#
They might not have an immigrant sitting in front of them that they can say,
#
I hate immigrants, but not you beti.
#
So I wanted to build an opportunity where they're coming into a hall
#
and seeing music and discovering music from a culture that they might be bickering about.
#
But they can find some connection with it through music.
#
But it goes back to me trying to attack that concrete and abstract
#
and trying to bring it into the concrete through music.
#
And this is just one context in which I think about the concrete and the abstract.
#
But there is also what we referred to earlier, the rhythms of our everyday life,
#
where you can go into a cafe and you can find four friends sitting together.
#
But they're not really together because they're all looking into the black screen in front of them.
#
And they're lost in the abstract while they're there in the concrete with each other.
#
And what an opportunity loss there is to have a conversation.
#
But before I move on to the question I was about to ask,
#
I just remembered you said that Rez's version of the story would have been different.
#
So what is his version of the story?
#
Well, I'll try my best, but hopefully, you know, he'll come here and tell you himself.
#
He will say that he never ignored my question of him being in my group.
#
And he will say that he said, yes, of course, I'll be in your group.
#
He'll probably say that.
#
Well, anyway, it worked out well.
#
So a minor misunderstanding at the start is no longer.
#
Now, my next question is about sort of the role of structure in our lives.
#
I think about how the form in which we live our lives affects the people we become and what we do.
#
In the sense that I remember an earlier guest of mine telling me,
#
not during the conversation, but I think it was in the lunch break or whatever,
#
but something that really struck with me where he said that my job, to me,
#
is like a temple in the 17th century would have been to a person then.
#
And his reason for that was that it gave structure to my life.
#
He was like, if I didn't have my job, which forces me to get up in the morning every day and go somewhere,
#
and I have a team that I'm responsible for, so I have to put in a certain amount of work,
#
and that structure is important.
#
And similarly, there can be someone in the 17th century who is sort of,
#
I mean, the world is complex to make sense of.
#
It's brutal. It's a very different world.
#
But that temple or the church or whatever the case might be gives a certain structure.
#
And it strikes me that when you are in the kind of relationship that you enter with Rez,
#
where you're eventually married and you're living together and all of that,
#
that structure surely impacts the way that you think about the world and the way that you think about life,
#
and in this case, the way that you think about music because you're with a musician.
#
And equally, the kind of music that he does is also giving the possibility of some structure to the kind of music that you want to do.
#
So tell me a little bit about this change from having this new structure in your life and how does it change you?
#
And what are the ways in which it impacts you, impacts your creativity, all of that?
#
Well, definitely, whatever we do makes up so much of our identity.
#
And so when you lose your job or when you're fired or you quit, a lot of your identity is gone.
#
So, yeah, you are very so closely tied to what we do for a living.
#
I wouldn't have continued as a full-time musician if it wasn't for Rez
#
because it was really hard to tour with the group that I was touring with for the first couple of years of my life.
#
It was very strenuous and they weren't team players.
#
And I couldn't have gone long with that. I would have quit.
#
It was a novelty for the first couple of years, but I would have eventually quit.
#
But I found Rez and basically I took home with me everywhere I went.
#
You know, after the gig, you come back to the hotel room and home is right there because Rez is there.
#
So just the physical act of touring, he made possible for me and I kept on touring.
#
And then, of course, with his input and the things that he allowed me to audition,
#
because I don't like everything that Western music has to offer,
#
there's lots of possibilities that he brings me that I don't like.
#
I'm like, OK, well, that's an interesting chord by itself,
#
but I just don't like the way I don't like where it's taking my melody.
#
That's not what I'm envisioning.
#
So he lets me he's someone because because we are together in so many ways,
#
he lets me audition so many possibilities that I want in my music.
#
And even without giving them to me, he's just playing them around the home.
#
You know, if I was working with a guitarist who I'm not living with,
#
I'm only with that guitarist maybe like four hours a week or something.
#
I might not hear everything that has that guitarist has to offer,
#
but I listen to a large amount of stuff that that Rez does.
#
And so I can pick and choose.
#
It's like, yeah, I can have so many options.
#
And the other thing is that I hum.
#
I go around the house humming things.
#
There was this one actually guzzle lyrics written were written by Dennis Isaac.
#
And it's a mishmash of a minor rock and a major rock.
#
So it has like two completely different moods in it.
#
And I was doing that because the song,
#
the guzzle is half pessimistic and half, you know, you could say realistic.
#
You can't really say optimistic, but you can say realistic.
#
The guzzle is saying that be sure to trim the branches of your tree of desires.
#
Be sure to trim the branches of your tree of desires.
#
Why? Because it might become overladen.
#
So, I mean, I don't think I can call that optimistic.
#
So I call it realistic.
#
And so and so because of these two sides that it was trying to present the guzzle,
#
I wanted to have a major minor thing going back and forth with it.
#
And I was struggling with this composition.
#
And, you know, I'd left it and a couple of weeks after Rez said,
#
I haven't heard you sing that thing you were singing because, you know, Rez doesn't speak Urdu.
#
And I said, well, which one are you told me?
#
And so I said, you know, I don't like it.
#
And he's the one who encouraged me to finish it.
#
And so many people afterwards have told me it's their favorite piece.
#
Even after I recorded it, it took me a good couple of years to have it be second nature,
#
to sing it no matter what's happening in my head.
#
So things like that, too.
#
Like he influences me as well.
#
There's a song in the new album called Dil.
#
It's a Punjabi folk song.
#
But basically he came up with the riff first, the guitar riff.
#
And he said, sing that thing you were singing the other day.
#
And I said, well, what thing?
#
And he's like, I don't know.
#
You were like going like ha-hu, ha-hu, ha-hu or something.
#
You mean, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh?
#
Because that's a Punjabi thing.
#
And so that's how that thing happened first.
#
And then I wrote the rest of the lyrics.
#
So we influence each other in many ways.
#
Yeah. And Dil is so lovely.
#
So a good time to perhaps play Dil.
#
So let's move on and talk, you know, go back to another aspect that you have mentioned
#
earlier that you thought a lot about, that you worked in, that you were a practitioner
#
in, which is marketing these kinds of music to a Western audience, right?
#
And one would imagine that there also, there is another delicate balancing act because
#
you want to market it in a way that appeals to them.
#
But at the same time, you don't want to A, compromise on what the music is or B, exoticize
#
So what did you, what did you learn about the marketing of such music and you know,
#
how do you, you know, bridging that gap and so on and so forth?
#
Well, I chose guitar to be my music as a, as a window into my music and that worked.
#
My career did grow because of that.
#
And then basically like I do the kind of, after that, like after having chosen guitar,
#
I didn't really alter my music for marketing purposes.
#
I did what I wanted to do.
#
I needed to have like, apart from rhythm, melody, harmonium, whatever keys, I needed
#
to have another instrument for melody and it was either flute or guitar.
#
And guitar, one reason was because, you know, I did also like it and it was going to be
#
But also this part I forgot to mention is whereas the flute would only play melody,
#
the guitar would give me rhythm and melody.
#
So that, that was another reason why I initially chose guitar.
#
But, but there was like, you know, a small percentage of, of marketing involved in choosing
#
But I just want to say, you know, I do love the guitar as well.
#
Apart from that, I've never really composed in a way or arranged in a way to appeal to
#
I'm actually not referring to your music here because your music obviously is what you want
#
to do and you're just putting it out there.
#
I'm referring more to that when you mentioned that in the earlier part of your career, you
#
were working in these different places and you learned about the marketing of such music
#
So that's more what I'm asking about in a general sense of how do we, how do we build
#
those bridges or what did you learn about that?
#
Well, that is, that has been a challenge.
#
So at the beginning of my career, what used to happen is that I could either do a concert
#
in the Indian community, which means it would be in a like a banquet hall of a hotel where
#
usually Indian weddings would happen in Toronto.
#
So it would either be there or I could do it in the mainstream Canadian community, which
#
would be in a, in a hall downtown in Toronto.
#
And so it would be these two ghettos, the non-Indian ghetto, downtown Toronto, and then
#
the Indian ghetto in the suburbs of Toronto.
#
And I would try, it was a challenge to mix these two audiences.
#
It was a challenge to get the Canadian audience to the suburbs.
#
Well, we're all Canadian there, but to get the non-Indian audience out of downtown Toronto
#
into the suburbs and to get the suburban Indian audience into downtown venues.
#
So that was a challenge.
#
And I did things like, so, so the people, like, you know, my, my team, let's say my
#
manager, my agent, my, my, my publicist and the rest of the team around me are non-Indians.
#
And so they already knew how to market me and get me on CBC radio and get me on a whole
#
bunch of other radios and get a print article of me in the Toronto Star and the Globe and
#
And so that was pretty much covered.
#
But I didn't have anyone to help me market it to the Indians.
#
And that was a challenge.
#
Like all I had was my mom and my cousin, maybe.
#
So we would do things like we would make posters that were going to be for the downtown audience.
#
But we would also make sure to put them in the India Town, India Bazaar areas in the
#
I would advertise on the Indian radio shows that people would listen to.
#
So I would, you know, pick up the phone and call different associations, like, you know,
#
the Indo-Canadian Association of, if I had a concert in Edmonton, I would Google the
#
Indian Indo-Canadian Association of Edmonton or just really pick up the phone and ask them
#
if they could help promote the concert, just do a lot of outreach in the community.
#
Savvy presenters who are not Indian know to know how to do that themselves in the local
#
community so that if there's a non-Indian presenter in Edmonton and they know that they're
#
having me or another Indian artist there, they will go into the Indian community and
#
build their own relationships to get that happening.
#
So there was just a lot of groundwork we did and proactively went after making people aware
#
And then the challenge is that the Indians, because in the early part of a career, they
#
wouldn't come to the downtown concerts because if it's at the CBC, there's a place called
#
the Glenn Gould Studio.
#
They don't know who Glenn Gould is, who was a Canadian pianist, Western classical pianist.
#
They don't think that that venue is theirs.
#
They don't identify with that venue.
#
And it was a challenge to get them out into these venues.
#
But these are the kinds of things that we did to try and get them out.
#
And we got some people out.
#
You know, one of my current favorite song of yours right now, but it will no doubt change
#
with time, but right now it's the one I'm going to play on loop is Zindagi.
#
And the main line of that, Zindagi umbra bhara ka jagra hai, seems to me, and it's very complex
#
and you mean a lot by it, but in one particular context, it seems really true, which is the
#
That when we think of musicians, the survivorship bias kicks in.
#
We look at the guys who made it and have become really big and who are still standing
#
But for most musicians, it's a life of struggle.
#
Everything they do is like a labor of love.
#
There must be so many times where they feel that it's not worth it.
#
Even you mentioned that you were close to giving up.
#
You could easily have stopped touring if life had gone in a different direction.
#
And I want you to tell me a little bit about the ecosystem for music, the fraternity of
#
musicians, as it were, because in your time you have obviously known so many musicians
#
and some of them have left and some of them have turned away and are disillusioned.
#
Some of them must have been so angry and frustrated.
#
They love doing what they're doing.
#
I'm sure you're one of them.
#
Some of them get a certain degree of success as you have, and obviously the rare person
#
might break through into the mainstream and make it really big.
#
We are, I think, fast entering an age where the mainstream itself is dissipating and models
#
And you've also been through times where, you know, perhaps when you started in the
#
late 90s or whatever, when you started thinking about a life in music, it meant a very different
#
You know, where touring is a part of it, where you bring out albums, where you're optimizing
#
for something, something in particular.
#
And today it's very different.
#
There's streaming out there, pressure is put on musicians, give me a 15 second hook for
#
TikTok and blah, blah, blah.
#
I don't even know if albums are a thing anymore.
#
At the same time, you know, Vinayal is making a comeback and there's something interesting
#
And this is a world which is completely unknown to me and unseen to me, as it were, and kind
#
So take me, take me a bit through your journey as a musician among fellow musicians.
#
What is life like for a standard musician?
#
And obviously you'd know about Canada and America because that's where you've been.
#
But what is what is life been like for your fellow musicians?
#
What is that journey like?
#
A bassist in Rez's group got his degree in psychology and so is a part time psychologist
#
because that was also his love.
#
So we're not unidimensional, right?
#
Music is a musician's love, but they might have another passion as well.
#
So a lot of them pursue a second passion as well.
#
And people find different ways on how to survive and there's so many different ways.
#
There's some people who teach.
#
Teaching can provide a really good income for you and stable income.
#
Nowadays there's the world of sync.
#
Like if you put out a song, you also look for a sync agent out in the West.
#
And what sync is, a sync agent tries to place your music that you've already recorded into
#
moving image, meaning into a movie, into a documentary, into a video game, into a commercial.
#
Wow, I didn't know that.
#
First time I've heard the term.
#
So now there are sync conferences or there have been for like the last, I don't know,
#
10 years and you have sync agents.
#
And then there are people who do music only for sync.
#
So they know that sync market so well.
#
They know what's going to sell and they'll put out music that is really just intended
#
And maybe music supervisors, as they're called in the West, know them and they might even
#
like pick up the phone and call them and say, this is what I need for the next film.
#
Now my chances of getting a sync deal in a Hollywood movie are very low, very minuscule.
#
I do happen to have a sync agent only because she's a friend.
#
I met her in Putamayo and I have done music for documentaries, but that's more original
#
improv I've done within a soundtrack.
#
Not much of my music that I've already recorded has been synced.
#
Rez has more of a chance because his is instrumental.
#
So there's that avenue one could do a sync and that's supposed to be the new AR because
#
once you get a good sync deal, that's how people find out about you.
#
They might go see a movie and your song might play a prominent role in the movie or in an
#
Like Feist, her song was in an Apple ad.
#
I think Nick Drake had a sort of a rediscovery moment where Pink Moon got played in a Volkswagen
#
So that's supposed to be, they say, the new AR.
#
That if you get a sync deal, that can really bring your music to the awareness of a lot
#
of people and therefore you will grow your audience.
#
So there's a lot of different ways people can survive.
#
For me, I've survived in a number of different ways.
#
Most of it is touring, well a lot of it is touring.
#
I also happen to get a few commissions.
#
So a couple of years ago, a Kathak dancer commissioned me to compose nine compositions
#
So those kinds of things, commissioned stuff for other people.
#
Also collaborations, I've collaborated a lot with electronica musicians.
#
So last year in the pandemic, I was asked to do a collaboration with Canadian electronica
#
I've collaborated with Delirium, another big electronica group.
#
I've never really taught for money.
#
During the pandemic, I taught my friend's daughter only so that she would have an activity
#
to do, taught over Zoom.
#
But I've never really taught for money because I don't think I have anything to teach.
#
I've learned in bits and pieces from so many different people and I do something that is
#
It's not really, it's not ghazal, it's not classical, it's not Bollywood, it's this thing.
#
And so I wouldn't know what to teach.
#
A major reason why I have survived are arts councils, namely a body known as the Canadian
#
I have to say Tatchwood because I don't want to jinx it.
#
And they've been a lot, they've been really good supporters of my projects.
#
So that when I came up with the idea to make this touring festival, Musical Response Against
#
Hate Crime in the Western World, they supported that touring project.
#
And so I got funded to tour that.
#
Because the fees were good, I mean, they had to be good.
#
There were four bands, but there still wasn't enough money.
#
And then for my own tours and my own composing.
#
So there's also other Canadian agencies that have funded me.
#
But the Canada Arts Council is someone that, you know, without them, I wouldn't have been
#
able to do this life in music.
#
Tatchwood, hope it continues.
#
What was the sort of, how has a reaction to your music varied across time?
#
You know, I guess when Aam Zameen came out, and it's an album that I just absolutely love
#
all of it, you know, and I guess when that album came out, there must have been sort
#
of a sudden new audience because hey, one, you're collaborating with Tanari Wen, and
#
you know, people who are into world music would obviously know of them by then, they
#
Your sound also was evolving.
#
It had this, you know, this sort of, there's a jazzy feel to it with Rez doing his stuff.
#
That immediately, I guess, makes it in a sense more accessible to another kind of listener.
#
So what was the reception to your music like?
#
What were the different ways in which people were, you know, responding to it?
#
And how did that continue to evolve in the years since?
#
So as soon as I started collaborating with people, my audience grew more and more.
#
So even when I collaborated with Natalie McMaster on the self-titled album, Canadians and Americans,
#
that they love collaboration, especially Canadians, they just love it.
#
They love the mixing of cultures.
#
They love the breaking down of boundaries.
#
And so, and then with the Portuguese fado as well, you know, even world music people,
#
like in Europe, if there are radio shows that play world music, I think that they that they
#
really like collaborations, like they'll play an African track, they'll play a Portuguese
#
track or an Indian track.
#
But when they find that two cultures are mixing, there's a sweet spot for people in world
#
music for that kind of hybridity, hybrid music.
#
So with every collaboration, like, you know, my audience was growing.
#
Tenari one, it grew leaps and bounds because I put it out as an independent artist.
#
So I had a distributor, a smaller distributor, which is eventually distributed by a big mainstream
#
But I got a call from a Japanese distributor that they wanted 100 CDs.
#
So I saw I saw that they were very big in the world.
#
And I think that a lot of Indians became aware of me in India through to must must through
#
the song I did with Tenari one because and in Pakistan, too, like I I got an email from
#
someone in Pakistan wanting to buy the album privately because it wasn't available there
#
And I got emails from people in India as well.
#
And it kind of, you know, and it's wonderful that people discover you because of a particular
#
But it also makes me a bit mad because I'm like looking at Spotify right now and must
#
must the song when it begins, the album has got two hundred and ninety six thousand plays.
#
And then there's a Redux version, however you call that, in the middle, which is about
#
nine and a half thousand.
#
And then right at the end, there's a brilliant extended version, which is almost nine minutes,
#
which is thirty five thousand.
#
And Rabbaru, which I love so much, has like ten thousand.
#
Zindagi has six thousand, which is shocking.
#
In fact, is the lowest in the whole album I'm now noticing, which is terrible.
#
So hopefully my listeners will find it in the show notes and kind of do something about
#
And my next question is also about how, you know, music like I've written about music.
#
I am, in fact, the only person in the world who's written for both the Wall Street Journal
#
and the Rock Street Journal.
#
The Rock Street Journal was this Indian rock magazine, which was really big in the 90s,
#
which is when I wrote for them.
#
And I think it continued through the 2000s.
#
And I've realized that it's damn difficult to write about music, that when you write
#
about music, I feel at some level that when I wrote about it, I was almost always winging
#
it unless I focused on what the music meant to me and I could bring that personal element
#
into it, because I think there's a tendency that something moves you, but you don't have
#
And you know, in fact, there's a lyric from Zindagi, which, you know, almost seems to
#
address this, where you write,
#
you know, which is so beautiful, and it almost seems like directed towards me.
#
And the whole song is incredible, so we're going to play it right after this.
#
But what do you feel about that, that there is, on the one hand, a galaxy of music lovers
#
who are responding to your music in a visceral way, and, you know, it makes them feel a
#
particular way, it makes them feel that sense of knowing you, and there's that deep connection
#
But the moment anyone tries to articulate it, I feel that at some fundamental level,
#
Some people come closer than others.
#
But it's like so hard to articulate and sometimes the articulation seems to defeat the very
#
You know, music critics will typically overthink things a lot, and they will always try to
#
then place what they are listening to in perspective of something else that they might
#
have heard before, which will always be limited and restricted and, you know, getting absolutely
#
no sense of the body of an artist's work and a body of an artist's influences.
#
So what do you feel about that?
#
I mean, that, you know, when you look at the music journalism and the music writing and
#
all of that, that is all around, do you feel that it's somehow disconnected from the music
#
That is inherently an extremely difficult job, as I feel it is.
#
I just feel it's much easier to write about films or books or anything else.
#
But writing about music is just so hard and sometimes, you know, one is winging it.
#
Yeah, I agree with you.
#
I should point out that the lyrics of Zindagi are written by an Urdu poet whose name escapes
#
me right now, but it's on my website.
#
And then I wrote, I wrote, I think he, I took half of his lyrics and then I wrote the other
#
half of it myself is from what I remember about Zindagi.
#
And the bit I quoted was from his, yeah, yeah, yeah.
#
And I love those lyrics as well.
#
And in terms of like the the listens, you know, some songs having more listens, I find
#
that if you make a video of a song, it travels more.
#
It gets shared more on Facebook and social media.
#
And so it travels more.
#
And I've never made a video of Rabaru and it's been on my list of things to do because
#
I have archival footage of myself and Tera Kaft, the Tuareg group, recording it.
#
And so I should just go back and just put a bunch of collage together and just, you
#
know, slam it up on YouTube to have a video and then maybe it'll travel more.
#
And also having a video ready when the PR happens, that helps a lot as well.
#
A video after the fact doesn't get as many hits.
#
I mean, even when I was working at CBC radio, it was difficult to talk about music.
#
But I had the benefit that I could I was on radio and I could play the music as well.
#
And when non-Indian writers or even if they're Indian, but they're not into music.
#
So people who are, you know, don't really understand Indian music, being Indian or non-Indian,
#
when they write about music, about my music, I feel like it's more of a description of
#
And then they ask me mostly about my journey.
#
So you know, tell me about how you sat around composing this and what happened and, you
#
know, the stories around the journey and the recording process.
#
It's very few Indians that listen to the lyrics.
#
Like I did during COVID, I did this one interview with someone.
#
He is actually a classical Indian classical musician himself.
#
And he has, I forget what it's called, but like, you know, you have those dedicated audiences
#
that they pay a monthly fee and then you send them information.
#
And it's called something else, just with an R, I think, but I forget.
#
And it was really wonderful because he asked me about my lyrics.
#
So he said, like, you know, what's the meaning of this song?
#
Tell me what that means and tell me what this means.
#
And so that was nice being asked about the lyrics and, you know, what my motivation was.
#
Where did this come from?
#
Where did that come from?
#
But yeah, it's especially in world music, like in the jazz world, the writers tend to
#
know about jazz and in the Western classical world, the writers tend to know about Western
#
A lot of the times they themselves were somehow musicians themselves and, you know, became
#
critics so they know the technical words.
#
In my world where I'm singing in another language and they don't know my music, people are at
#
a loss to figure out how to write about the music.
#
And sometimes it gets very hard to get a quote out of an article.
#
Like sometimes the entire article is just a description of what my music is.
#
And I'm like, well, how did it make you feel?
#
And you know, that's the best when a critic talks about how it made them feel.
#
That's what you really want, you know, regardless of you understanding the words or not.
#
I don't understand all of Tanariwan's words, but it still made me feel in a certain way.
#
And there's another delicate balance that you've handled so well, which is the balance
#
between the two different kinds of music in any song, because one is a music of the music
#
and the other is a music of the words.
#
And just the words taken on their own will have an inherent music of their own.
#
And how do you make both go together and all of that, which all great songwriters managed
#
to, you know, do with such ease and even in, you know, your latest album, Har Khayal,
#
there is this line you sing, Karvi Baatho Mein Ras Bhi Baaki Hai Toh, and then you extend
#
that toh and it's like a magical moment, right? Goosebumps.
#
And, you know, so and it just seemed in this album that there is so much easy communion
#
between the lyrics and the music and everything seems to kind of blend together so well.
#
Is this craft something that you had to work at or did it kind of come naturally to you
#
And you know, hopefully we get it right most of the time.
#
So yeah, we definitely work at it.
#
I mean, Rez and I audition a lot of guitar riffs, guitar rhythms before we settle.
#
Sometimes we'll complete arranging the song and I'll go back and I'll listen to it a
#
week later and I won't like it.
#
That's happened a couple of times where we've finished the song, you know, definitely two
#
times we finished the song, I don't like it, we have to forget about it all, let it go
#
and a couple of months later, come back to it and do, you know, a different approach.
#
So and you know, you can't really put into words what you don't like about it.
#
But there's just no joy in singing it that way because you have to be able to rehearse
#
it a billion times alone.
#
You have to really like where the song has ended up in order to do that.
#
So and then then, you know, and then I myself have to figure out how to articulate what
#
I don't like so that, you know, we can together come up with something different that we do
#
And then we are then we audition the drum rhythm, you know, what kind of a drum rhythm
#
And you know, we'll rehearse, you know, we'll have a five, six hour rehearsal, we'll go
#
back, we'll listen to the tape of the recording and we'll see what sounded good.
#
And something that you overlooked in rehearsal, you listen back to it and you think, oh my
#
God, that's it, that's what we need.
#
Or sometimes, you know, you don't find it and you have to go back and you have to, you
#
know, keep exploring until you find it.
#
Then we'll see what kind of a doubler rhythm is going to work then we then we'll see what
#
kind of a, you know, accordion pads we need or what we need on the accordion or the keyboard.
#
But so it's a it's a building process.
#
And is there a point where you have to discipline yourself to say that, OK, we built it enough.
#
And now we'll, you know, improvise with it when we do it live and all of that.
#
But as far as the actual song is concerned, we are done.
#
Or is there a temptation to just keep going, keep adding and you have to force yourself
#
to stop or do you sometimes just know that, huh, this is done.
#
You know, because if it's a drum part that works, you'll feel it.
#
You'll be like, oh, yeah, that's it.
#
And until that happens, you'll just have this uneasiness in you.
#
Like, oh, my God, it's not working.
#
And, you know, then there's this impatience.
#
If you've been working at it a long time, there's an impatience, a frustration, and
#
you have to calm yourself down.
#
Then you have to say, wait a second, is the process just enjoy the process?
#
Let's do something else.
#
Let's talk about it a bit more.
#
You know, go somewhere else with it.
#
But when it happens, when it clicks, it just fits like a piece that, you know, you get
#
a jigsaw puzzle and you found the piece that fits, then you're not going to look for another
#
piece that fits because that's the piece that makes sense with the entire picture that
#
you're trying to build.
#
Tell me about your new album now.
#
I don't think you've revealed the name to me.
#
Have you decided on one?
#
The album is going to be called Comfort Food.
#
And the reason why it's going to be called Comfort Food is because a lot of it, well,
#
I think all of it was composed during the COVID years.
#
And composing the album was my comfort food.
#
And also, there's a Punjabi folk song that I wrote called Pancake.
#
And I sing it with a Punjabi accent, so I sing it Pancake.
#
And so, you know, that correlates well with the Comfort Food idea.
#
And so I wrote Pancake because there's this trend, there's been this trend that's been
#
happening in Punjabi music, I think probably for the last decade, where they're using English
#
words in Punjabi songs.
#
They'll use words like swag and bling and Obama and all sorts of other English words
#
in a Punjabi Bhangra folk song.
#
So I knew I was aware, I was aware that I wanted to do that as well.
#
I wanted to utilize English words in a Punjabi folk song.
#
And Punjabi folk songs are very much, they're very happy songs.
#
And they're about love, and they're about some aspect of your beloved.
#
And I don't remember how, but I just thought about this, you know, story that I have with
#
When we were dating, we went to Puerto Vallarta, which is a place in Mexico.
#
And it was an all-inclusive, so there was a buffet breakfast where, you know, buffet,
#
the breakfast is included, you can have as much as you want.
#
And we were eating pancakes, and his pancake was finished, and he looked kind of sad.
#
And so I said to him, well, you can have my pancake.
#
And he said, I love you.
#
And that's been a common theme in our marriage, where when I offer him food, he instantly
#
And so I thought that this kind of thing that happens in our relationship might be a cute
#
thing to unfold in a song.
#
And so that's how I made Pancake, which is basically saying, you who's the eater and
#
lover of pancakes, my Multani foreigner, you know, is what I'm saying, even though he's
#
not Multani, he's Sindhi, but you know, I needed something to rhyme.
#
So, you know, for that as well, that also contributed to the title Comfort Food.
#
And what I loved about the album is that it's actually not all comfort food in the sense
#
that some of it can, you know, make people uncomfortable, where you actually address
#
some modern times, Tera Jog and Jaane Jahan, two songs you mentioned that you wrote, which
#
are about what is happening in India today, and Tum Dekhoge, of course, which is Hussain's
#
beautiful take on Hum Dekhenge, and we'll play it right after this as well.
#
But tell me a bit about how, and not all the album is like that.
#
Like you said, Pancake and I hope I'm saying it right.
#
I am half Punjabi, but I'm half Bengali, and Bengalis get all pronunciations wrong.
#
So Pancake and Dil are like folk songs, and Har Khayal is, you know, about longing and
#
lament and all of that, and it's so beautiful and powerful.
#
What I noticed even about the political songs or what have been inspired by the politics
#
of the day is that they are not overtly political in a sense that it doesn't feel forced at
#
It's just really natural, you know.
#
And that's also a kind of a difficult balance, I guess, because, you know, like you mentioned
#
you heard the episode with Varun Grover, and Varun also is deeply political and a great
#
artist, and he points out that the political in your art can never be overt.
#
It might be there in the background, it might be there in the, you know, the sort of backdrop
#
of whatever is happening in your story, but ultimately the story is what drives everything
#
forward and everything else that happens is kind of subliminal, and these are my clumsy
#
I think he put it much more eloquently, but so how did the sort of the impetus for this
#
album come about, and what do you feel about it when you think of it, you know, vis-a-vis
#
maybe your last album, like Seven Million, because I just find that this is, in a sense,
#
it's quite different in some ways, you know, in some very good ways, that it's just so
#
powerful and obviously, like I said, I'm not good at talking about music, so I cannot
#
articulate it, but just in terms of, you know, you being the creator, how had you evolved?
#
What made you think of this album?
#
How did you manage that, another delicate balance of politics and art and, you know,
#
in those particular songs, just?
#
Well, in the last album, Seven Billion, I did do an activist song.
#
It was Hum Gunegar Aartein, which translates as We Sinful Women, and the lyrics are written
#
by Pakistani Urdu feminist poet Kishore Naheed, and I wrote the melody for it, and I mean,
#
I heard that episode with Varun Grover, wonderful episode, I heard it a couple of times, I wonder
#
if he was talking more about film, like the politics in film cannot be overt.
#
He was specifically talking about film.
#
As I find with lyrics, it can be overt, like it's, like Hum Gunegar Aartein, it's pretty,
#
it's right there in your face, ke hum thodi bhi azadi bhi chahenge, hum aapko gunegar
#
kahoge, that if we want any kind of freedom, or if we, if we, we as women, if we want,
#
if we do anything to, to fight for gender equality, we will not be seen as freedom fighters
#
for our gender, we will be seen as sinful women.
#
And so it's plain, that's an activist song, and it's, it's, you know, it's got words,
#
like women who dare to speak out, their tongues have been cut out, that's pretty direct, right?
#
So that was the first time, I think, I can say that I did an activist song.
#
And in this album, I didn't, what happened is that, you know, I was studying Hussain
#
Hadri's poem with my friend, Krupa, and then I just happened to compose it.
#
And then I realized, oh, like, I can make this into a song, because the way Hussain
#
has written it, it's a nazm, and the way hum gunegar or thing was written, like, these
#
poems don't have an established song format.
#
And the, the meter for each line might be different, the rhythm might be different,
#
there's no chorus, you have to figure out what am I going to make the chorus, you know,
#
what's going to be catchy.
#
It's challenging, but to me, I love that challenge, because in that challenge, you
#
discover new ways of composing and doing new things in different ways.
#
So, you know, the Hussain Hadri poem came to me and it became a song.
#
Then when I was studying it more and when I was speaking with Hussain and I heard his
#
five hour interview with you, somehow, I had to do one more song for my album.
#
So what had happened is that I had, because I wanted eight songs in the album, because
#
I am going to put it out as a CD as well, because in Europe, apparently they still buy
#
CDs, they, so I needed eight songs and I had my eighth song.
#
But what happened is that when we arranged it, Rez and I arranged it, I wasn't happy
#
So it was a song, it's called Matwale, it's about someone who only comes to you when they
#
And I didn't like the arrangement that we came up with, so I wasn't ready to record
#
it, so I wanted to shelve it and thought, okay, I got to do another song.
#
And then I thought, you know, why don't I do my own activist song?
#
So that's when I wrote Jaane Jahaan and then I sent it to Hussain Haidari.
#
And he was very helpful.
#
He told me, he told me what isn't working.
#
And so he told me what isn't working and why it's not working, because this was my
#
first activist song that I was penning the lyrics for.
#
I had composed them in melody, but I'd never penned the lyrics for one.
#
So then he told me what isn't working and why isn't working and I changed it.
#
Can you ask what it was?
#
Now, this was all last year and I would have to remember what the lyrics were.
#
I don't remember the exact lyrics, but my lyrics were insinuating that there's a war
#
between Hindus and Muslims.
#
And my, I think I was saying that the pieces of both of us, Hindus and Muslims,
#
are in the battlefield.
#
The battlefield is the battlefield.
#
And he must have pointed out, there's no war, it's one sided.
#
Yeah, that's exactly it.
#
I should have called you as well.
#
Next time I'm going to call you.
#
Please, please, I'd be honored.
#
And he said, you know, there's no war.
#
There's no equal footing.
#
It's a one sided marginalization.
#
And even though I know those words, I know the word marginalization is the word.
#
Somehow it hadn't clicked in my mind that it wasn't a war.
#
And so then I changed it.
#
So I think what I did is, first I did, we belong to the same country.
#
Then I said, we belong to the same body.
#
And then when and he kind of OK'd it as my editor for this, you know, I appointed him
#
He did not take on that role.
#
I, you know, bothered him up to do that.
#
But then that did not click with me as well, because I just thought that no one who is
#
fighting this whatever, no one that is going through this Hindu Muslim hatred thing is
#
going to ever think that they're part of the same human body.
#
So that is just not landing.
#
It's not making any sense.
#
So then I changed it to hum hey, he would think he say, hey, it's a hum key.
#
Hum hey, he would think he is saying, hey, it's a hum key.
#
And what I mean by as a hum is partition.
#
That's the second is a hum.
#
Hey, he would think we are all part of one country.
#
He's saying hey, it's a hum key.
#
We are part of the same wound.
#
And in this case, the wound is partition.
#
What a subtle change that, you know, makes such a big difference.
#
And we'll play two or three songs after this and I'll list them in the show notes.
#
So you know what is coming up and I'll just encourage everyone, of course, to go and listen
#
to all of your albums, including this one when it's out, because you know, podcast is
#
not just going to be heard when it's released, but even later.
#
I had such a trip listening to all your music and of course, I have my own favorites, but
#
everybody will have their own favorites.
#
So do listen to everything and particularly listening to it chronologically was like really
#
fascinating for me because it's like the same way that in this conversation you took me
#
on this journey through your life, I feel that, you know, there's a sense of a journey
#
there as well and all of it interesting and all of it so distinctive in its own ways.
#
I hope that you'll find the words to talk about my music because I really need someone
#
who knows the music to write me a press release for the album that's going to come out in
#
I am not competent or knowledgeable enough about music to do that, but I will at some
#
point write and talk about what I feel about it, which is all I can do.
#
I mean, that's the only thing I know.
#
So can't give Gyan on music, I'm afraid.
#
But before we let you go, you've heard enough of my episodes to know how they end and I'm
#
going to ask you for recommendations for me and my listeners of music, books, films, any
#
kind of art at all that means a lot to you and that you're dying to share with all of us.
#
Well, I mean, I don't know if I'm dying to share it, but I know that this is...
#
I'm dying for you to share it.
#
I just, I know, you know, as an avid listener of the podcast, I know that I had to compile
#
a list of my favorites.
#
And so I am going to start with documentary films.
#
Favorite documentary film of all time is Cities of Sleep, or I think it was City of Sleep,
#
or maybe it was Cities of Sleep and...
#
Cities of Sleep, Shakeel and Ranjeet.
#
Yeah, Cities of Sleep, done by Shaanak Sen, who is now getting a lot of accolades with
#
All That Breeds, which was also beautiful.
#
All That Breeds was absolutely wonderful.
#
Now, there is a film where, you know, the politics was not overt, but it was still there.
#
But Cities of Sleep, oh my God, that man, the protagonist of that person in that documentary,
#
he lives with me every day.
#
Oh my God, he entered my heart.
#
Another documentary is Saving Face.
#
And disclaimer, I did record my voice for Saving Face, but you can't really hear it.
#
So, you know, don't see it from my voice because I can't really hear myself in that.
#
But, you know, the music director from LA flew down to New York City to record me for it.
#
Now, this documentary Saving...
#
Okay, I should say Cities of Sleep, first of all, is a documentary about people in New
#
Delhi who are homeless and how they negotiate where they will be allowed to sleep.
#
Because apparently, you just can't sleep anywhere.
#
You, you know, the police will la-teething you that, you know, they'll beat you away
#
from places and it's really hard if you're homeless to find a place to sleep.
#
So that's what that was about.
#
It was a beautiful documentary.
#
Saving Face, which was directed by Pakistani-Canadian Sharmin Obaid-Chenoy and American Daniel
#
Jung, won the Oscar for best short documentary, but it's not really short.
#
It's like 50, 55 minutes or something.
#
And that is about acid attacks on women in Pakistan.
#
Acid attacks, unfortunately, on women, on their faces, happen all over the world.
#
This documentary was about them in Pakistan and, oh my God, oh, another one of my favorite
#
documentaries, My Octopus Friend.
#
That is a documentary and I don't, I don't remember the name of the person.
#
Basically, the director is the person who's also in the documentary because he does a
#
lot of scuba diving and he makes a friend that is octopus, that is an octopus in, I
#
think, South Africa, maybe, or some part of Africa.
#
Loved that documentary.
#
Another documentary is called Metamorphosis.
#
This is a Canadian production.
#
It was directed by my friends, Nova Ami and Velcro Ripper.
#
And it's about climate change, but it doesn't.
#
First of all, it's shot beautifully, stunning images of Vanuatu Island and different places
#
in the world that they traveled.
#
And the documentary goes to different places in the world to talk about how people are
#
positively dealing with climate change to combat it.
#
Yeah, so that's another good one.
#
And then lastly, there's a documentary called Shooting Indians.
#
And I mean, it's a pun, you know, Indians being, it's a Canadian production and it's
#
by Indian-Canadian documentary film, award-winning documentary filmmaker, Ali Ghazmi,
#
And it was, it's about what, you know, Christopher Columbus accidentally called Indians,
#
the indigenous people of the North Americas.
#
And so this is about the indigenous people of Canada and about their, you know, about
#
legacy, you know, about them being shot at and basically he's shooting them because
#
he's shooting a film about them.
#
And it's about their land rights.
#
And I said lastly, but I do have one more and that's Kaffee Nama.
#
I forget the name of the director.
#
It's an Indian production.
#
And I saw it at a film festival, a virtual film festival online.
#
And it was a documentary about Kaffee Azmi.
#
Seeing the documentary, Kaffee Nama, made me aware of a 1974 black and white film.
#
Or maybe it wasn't black and white.
#
A film called Garam Hawa directed by M.S.
#
So that's a movie I would say.
#
There's a film I discovered called Nan Sukh.
#
So I should go back and say Garam Hawa is about partition and about basically Muslims
#
saying we're not going to leave India because this is our land as well.
#
That's the conclusion of the film really.
#
Yeah, but it's really beautifully told.
#
Nan Sukh is a film about this 18th century painter.
#
And it's done in a beautifully stylized way.
#
I don't know if that goes in the documentary section or if it goes in the film section.
#
It could go into both sections, Nan Sukh.
#
I don't know where people will be able to see it.
#
But it happened to be on the website of the Museum Rietberg,
#
which is it in Germany or is it in the Netherlands?
#
But I'll give you I have a link to it that I'll give you a link for.
#
And oh my God, it was so stunning.
#
It was done in just a completely different way.
#
I don't want to describe it too much, but the format of it was so refreshing and so new and
#
It was a new way of telling the story.
#
The Fall is an American production done by Tarsim Singh.
#
It was beautifully shot.
#
A film called Timbuktu, which is a Mauritian French film directed by
#
Abdur Rahman Sissakal Timbuktu.
#
And I also loved the soundtrack of Timbuktu as well.
#
Timbuktu, you know, we all know Timbuktu from that song.
#
Chal mere ghode, Timbuktu, kahan ki duniya kahan ka tu.
#
And I actually went to Timbuktu and people were like amazed like,
#
oh my God, there is actually a place that is called Timbuktu for real life.
#
And yes, Timbuktu was a very rich kingdom.
#
Now is not so rich in the country of Mali in Western Sahara.
#
And it's sister city, which was built just which was built after it called Timbuktu.
#
I have one bad joke for the episode as you must be embarrassed.
#
So, Tanarwan brought me there and I sang with them in Timbuktu at the Festival des Arts.
#
So there's a film called Timbuktu and it's absolutely wonderful.
#
There is a Swedish director, I'm going to butcher his name, the pronunciation of his name,
#
And the newest film that he's come out with is Triangle of Sadness, loved it.
#
And before that was The Square, loved it.
#
Both of them won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival.
#
I won't tell people what those are about because you can easily Google those.
#
There's a French film called The Innocence, Les Innocents,
#
and that directed by a female director Anne Fontaine.
#
It's about Polish nuns in World War II and how they were raped
#
and how the nuns dealt with both the rape and the pregnancies that followed.
#
Based on a true story and heartbreaking but very well done, a story well told.
#
Another Swedish fantasy film directed by Ali Abbasi called Border.
#
I don't want to talk about that one because that'll give it away.
#
It's best not to Google it.
#
Don't Google it and just watch it.
#
And you will find out in the first half an hour if it's for you or not.
#
And I would probably say my all-time favorite film,
#
or at least my top three, is another French film called Le Hedgehog,
#
which translated is The Hedgehog.
#
And that film is directed by Mona Achache.
#
And I'll tell you what it's about only because you'll find out in the first five minutes.
#
But it starts out with an 11-year-old girl on her birthday planning her suicide.
#
And I'll tell you that it's not a depressing film.
#
It's a heartwarming film.
#
Those are all the films I jotted down in the documentaries last night, now to books.
#
And you can tell me to stop by the way.
#
You can say this is like way overboard, Karen.
#
I'm just so happy and I hope you continue going way, way, way, way, way overboard.
#
I'm never telling you to stop.
#
You are dedicated to the long form.
#
So books, I have to say in the recent past,
#
I have not read any books that I will recommend to people,
#
mostly because I've been doing a lot of research.
#
I am making a documentary on my teacher, Vittal Rao,
#
and I'm researching what courtly life would have been.
#
So I'm reading a lot of books on the British Raj
#
and how the Maharajas, what their daily life schedules would have been about.
#
So I've been reading a lot of books on that.
#
Not all of them are well written, but they're information for me.
#
So these are books that I read more than three years ago.
#
There's a book called A Fraction of the Whole.
#
It's a novel by Australian writer, Steve Toltz,
#
and it was nominated for the Man Booker Award,
#
but it was White Tiger that won.
#
And I actually am going to say, although White Tiger is a wonderful book,
#
my heart would have given it to this book.
#
And the book is about how rules can somehow be futile.
#
And how breaking them can sometimes be a good route.
#
I'm just going to say that.
#
It's chaotic, because once you break a lot of rules,
#
things are going to get chaotic.
#
I love the chaos in this book.
#
Then there is a book called What is the What?
#
It's an autobiography about a Sudanese child refugee
#
who immigrated to the United States.
#
Who immigrated to the United States
#
under a program for Sudanese immigration called The Lost Boys of Sudan.
#
And even though it's his autobiography,
#
it's written by the American Dave Eggers.
#
And the Sudanese child, now an adult,
#
his name is Valentino Ashak Zheng or Deng.
#
And that book, I was on tour when I was reading that book.
#
And I could not get back.
#
I couldn't wait to get back to my hotel
#
so that I could read a few more pages of that book.
#
Even if I had to sleep early to catch another plane,
#
it was such a brilliant book for me.
#
And by the end of it, I wanted to, I don't have children.
#
We don't have, Rez and I don't have children.
#
And I wanted to just adopt a Sudanese child.
#
It just really left an impression on me.
#
Then there is a book that I read a long time ago.
#
It's called Barabas or Barabas.
#
I don't know how you would pronounce that name.
#
It's a 1950s novel by Swedish author Par Lagerquist.
#
And it tells a version of the life of this man, Barabas,
#
who the Bible says was a prisoner with Jesus Christ.
#
When the Romans threw Jesus Christ in prison,
#
Barabas apparently shared the cell with Jesus Christ.
#
And the Romans came and said,
#
one of you will die today.
#
And Jesus said, pick me or something like that.
#
I've not read the Bible ever.
#
And the part I love about this book,
#
I don't know if I should give it away, but I don't know.
#
Somehow Barabas has some symbol of Christianity around his neck.
#
I forget what it is exactly.
#
And he's taken to the Roman emperor or the Romans
#
and the Romans are against Christianity and they ask him,
#
do you believe in God or whatever?
#
And Barabas says, I want to believe.
#
Yeah, that to me was like, oh my God, holy shit.
#
That's exactly what I want.
#
Because I have an off and on relationship with God.
#
Sometimes I believe, sometimes I don't.
#
You know, I have a lot of gusegile with God.
#
And so it really summed it up for me that I want to believe,
#
Yeah, I feel similarly in the sense that I have an off relationship only with God.
#
But there is a hole there and I know nothing will ever fill it.
#
So yeah, I get that completely.
#
Yeah, the hole of never knowing the truth in this lifetime.
#
It is fictional, but it's based on a person that apparently did live.
#
In terms of music, Tenariwen, whom I love, they've got a lot of music out.
#
I would recommend their albums Aman Iman, which translates as water is life.
#
Also Amasakul, which translates as the traveler, and also Imi Diwana.
#
It's written Imi Diwan, but I know that it's pronounced Imi Diwana, and that means companions.
#
I do like West African music a lot, and so my list is going to be heavily based on that.
#
Because people already know Jagjit Singh, they already know Mendisangulamali,
#
they already know Bollywood.
#
So perhaps what I can introduce to them is the Malian music that I love.
#
So there's a group called Amadou and Miriam, the couple actually, Amadou and Miriam.
#
And they're blind, they're both blind, and they do wonderful music.
#
I don't know which album of theirs I would recommend, because I don't really have a favorite album.
#
I have favorite songs, but one album I'm going to throw out is Welcome to Mali,
#
but people will go out and discover what they want for themselves with their music.
#
There's also Fatoumata Diawara, she was on the soundtrack to the film Timbuktu,
#
and her album is called Fatou, the one I recommend.
#
There's a wonderful artist from Mali named Khaira Arbi, and her album that I would recommend is Rasool.
#
And then there's a soundtrack for the movie Timbuktu, I would recommend that.
#
And then on the South Asian side, maybe someone that Indians don't know about is someone who
#
post-partition ended up in Pakistan, is Tufail Niazi.
#
He sings Punjabi songs, but they're Punjabi songs like you've never heard before.
#
They're full of improvisation, and his, just another maestro.
#
I don't know if he's on Spotify, he might be, but I'm sure you can Google him.
#
I have actual cassettes of his, so I've never heard him online, because I just listen to the cassettes,
#
but Tufail Niazi. Then there's a song called Tufail Niazi,
#
then there is my teacher, Vithal Rao, who sang Ghazals.
#
And he never really recorded until maybe the last five years of his life, he put out a recording
#
that didn't really have any distribution, but what you could do is you could Google him,
#
and find some recordings of him. And you know, maybe now that I'm saying this,
#
maybe I should put up some of his music on my website, and I'm going to do that in the
#
near future. I'm going to create a tab that says, here's some of my Guruji's music,
#
and put his music up there, just so there's a place for people to know that this man existed,
#
and he did this. Wonderful compositions. On the classical Indian side, again, my classical
#
teacher Padmatal Valkar, whose work is readily available, another classical person, male singer
#
Ulhas Kashalkar. I love his work. And then someone I discovered in the pandemic, although
#
he's been around, I don't know why I've never heard of him, discovered him in the pandemic,
#
Venkatesh Kumar. And it was his rendition of Lalit that just really just brought me a lot of peace.
#
And there you go. Wow. What I especially love about this list, compared to a lot of the other
#
lists in the past, which are also great lists, but this is, you know, the kind of language I'm
#
using today. So I'll just say this is the greatest list of all time. And the reason this is the
#
greatest list of all time that UNESCO will soon award it the greatest list in the universe ever,
#
is that I haven't actually heard most of this stuff or read any of this stuff. And
#
I think Ruben Auslan Square is the only film I've watched out of the ones you named.
#
So I am just so excited to now kind of dig in and explore all of this. But more than that,
#
I'm so happy that I got to got a chance to sit with you and talk to you and to listen to your
#
music. And it's just enriched my life already. So thank you so much.
#
Thank you for doing what you do. You have enriched my life by bringing so many other people
#
Guft gujodu mille koi gham gham
#
Beh saab pate hum paaz maham zabha
#
Guft gujodu mille koi gham
#
Bidi jaaye apne hi saaye main
#
Bidi jaaye apne hi saaye main
#
Bidi jaaye apne hi saaye main
#
Bidi jaaye apne hi saaye main
#
Bidi jaaye apne hi saaye main
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This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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The people who sell the crops of the living
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They keep their heads down, they keep their heads down
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They keep their heads down, they keep their heads down
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This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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When the truth is revealed, the lies are the signs
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Each and every one of the victims has been punished
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The people who sell the crops of the living
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They keep their heads down, they keep their heads down
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
When the truth is revealed, the lies are the signs
#
Each and every one of the victims has been punished
#
The people who sell the crops of the living
#
They keep their heads down, they keep their heads down
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
When the truth is revealed, the lies are the signs
#
Each and every one of the victims has been punished
#
The people who sell the crops of the living
#
They keep their heads down, they keep their heads down
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
This is me, a criminal woman
#
This is me, a criminal woman
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This is me, a criminal woman
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, if you enjoyed listening to all the songs that just played, just head on over to the show notes, all the links are there, follow her albums, listen to her music, become a fan as I have.
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You can follow Kiran on Twitter, you can follow me on Twitter, you can browse past episodes of The Scene Unseen at www.sceneunseen.in. Thank you for listening.
