E-mail: info@f-cat.de | Telefon: +49 (0)30 26 103 29-20 
Tickets
You can get your tickets via the local concert promoter.
See tourdates.
Indian Diaspora Rock
Susheela Raman
| UK, India
Booking-Agent:
Amaya Collantes
+49 30 261032927
ac@f-cat.de
‘How many roads have I wandered/none and each my own/behind me the bridges have crumbled/where then will I call my home?’
That is the resonant challenge at the centre of Raman’s music. She creates a new identity though her voice, culture and song. Raman is Indian, Tamil, Eng-lish, a Londoner, a European, An Asian and Australian to boot! Born in London to Tamil parents and raised in Australia she grew up in a home full of Carnatic music (the South Indian classical tradition). Teenage rebellion led her towards black American soul, blues and funk and at just 16 she was leading her own funk and soul band in Sydney. In ´97 she moved to London and met guitarist and producer Sam Mills renowned for his work with African and Bangladeshi musicians. They started to develop a new sound drawing on Indian and western influences and encompassing English songs, Sanskrit texts, their own compositions and reinventions of songs from the Carnatic repertoire. Three years of rich experimentation resulted in “Salt Rain”, her Mercury Music Prize nominated 2001 debut.
As an artist Raman continues to develop, exploring issues of identity with new sounds that celebrate multiplicity. She draws her collaborators from across Europe, Asia and Africa: Cameroonian bassist Hilaire Penda, Guinea-Bissau born percussionist Djanuno Dabo, American drummer Marque Gilmore, British-Asian tabla player Aref Durvesh and of course British guitarist and producer Sam Mills are at the heart of this album as they were Salt Rain. And again this record is about great songs imaginatively played and beautifully sung. If Raman’s voice on Salt Rain had a charming, perishable naivety and Love Trap reflected the strains of touring, Raman’s voice here serves notice of an artist entering her prime, her singing richer and stronger than ever before. (Listen to the amazing one-take performance on ‘Chorudiya’).
Paradoxically, the record is, both more English and more Indian than Salt Rain and Love Trap. More than half the songs are in English (her first language) and Raman emerges as a formidable songwriter (listen to “What Silence Said” and “The Same Song’). And where on the previous albums there were musicians from everywhere playing Indian songs, here we have musicians from India playing songs in English. A new dimension came from recording in India, as well as in the UK and France. The Indian presence adds joy, light and depth to the record. Oddly, this is her first record to feature musicians from India.
The sessions in Madras were a great success; listen to the swooning cinematic strings on’ Meanwhile’, ‘Chordhiya’ and What ‘Silence Said’ and the incandescent contributions from Veena player Devi on ‘Light years’ and violinist Kannan on ‘What Silence Said’, young adventurous musicians with the full weight of the South Indian tradition behind them. Then there is the Indian repertoire: One Tamil song, the mystical ‘Sharavana’, invokes the South Indian god Muruga. Another, “Idi Samayam’ (meaning ‘now is the time’) was composed by the eighteenth century singer saint Tyagaraja and unfolds here over a hypnotic funky groove.
It’s difficult to say where the Indian, African and European elements begin and end…. Everything overlaps and intermingles. Listen to ‘Music for Crocodiles’, where Aref Durvesh’s tablas leap over an asymmetric East African groove and Raman’s blues based vocal could be from Addis Ababa, Mumbai or Chicago. Incidentally the amazing Hammond Organ is played by Malian Chek Tdjen Seck, the musical godfather of Paris. ‘Light Years’ recorded in Madras, is a South Indian melody transmuted here into a sublime English love song. ‘Meanwhile’ is Raman’s melody, sung in English but based on the rare South Indian raga, ‘Kanyakangi’ which infuses its sultry, seductive atmosphere.
For the first time, Susheela also sings in French on ‘l’ame volatile’. The big, majestic sound of the album is thanks to the mixing genius of Los Angeles based Icelander, Husky Huskvold (Tom Waits, Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones and sonic experimentalists Fantomas). Raman wanted a big powerful sound and Huskvold was perfect because he works in a very rough and ready way and makes sure the energy of the playing really hits you. The album was produced by Sam Mills and engineered by Stuart Bruce in the same room at Real World as Salt Rain. With much of the same band on the album it was a flashback to recording ‘Ganapati’. The buzz and feeling really reminded the whole team of ‘Salt Rain’. Everybody had that same feeling of excitement and revelation. Raman and producer Sam Mills put everything they had into this record. They took several months off to prepare for the studio and make sure they had the material they wanted and it’s paid off: The buzz the record has created is like Salt Rain too, Raman and Mills have had a hard time keeping hold of their listening copies as people eagerly requested the album. Now we can all hear it.
Music For Crocodiles? The business is fierce, but somehow we all have this voracious appetite for music and need something that is ‘for real’. It’s feeding time!
In the end of 2007 Susheela Ramand released her latest album 33 1/3 at XIII Bis, don’t miss that!
