| Susheela Raman | |
|---|---|
Susheela Raman performing in Paris Plage, 2007 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Susheela Raman |
| Born | July 21, 1973 Hendon, London, UK |
| Genres | Ambient, carnatic, jazz, blues, folk, trance |
| Occupations | Singer-songwriter, composer, arranger |
| Years active | 1997–present |
| Labels | XIII Bis Narada |
| Website | susheelaraman.com Susheela Raman Myspace |
Susheela Raman (born in Hendon, London, UK on July 21, 1973) is an acclaimed British Tamil musician. Raman has released five albums since 2001. Her debut album Salt Rain was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2001.[1]
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Susheela Raman's parents are Tamil Brahmins from Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, India, who arrived in London, UK in the mid-sixties. At the age of four, Raman and her family left the UK for Australia.[2] Susheela grew up singing South Indian classical music and began giving recitals at an early age.[1] She recalls how her family "were eager to keep our Tamil culture alive."[1] As a teenager in Sydney she started her own band, describing its sound as “funk and rock and roll”,[3][4] before branching out into more blues and jazz-based music, which demanded quite different voice techniques. She tried to bring these streams together when in 1995 she travelled to India to rediscover her roots by way of further exploring Carnatic music. She currently resides on Portobello Road, West London.
Returning to England in 1997, she started to work with her partner, guitarist/producer Sam Mills who had made a record called "Real Sugar" with a Bengali singer named Paban Das Baul. This record inspired Raman, because according to her "it bridged a gap and found common ground for one particular kind of Indian music to be expressed to a new audience."[1] In 1999, Raman co-wrote songs for the album One and One is One by Joi, also performing on the track “Asian Vibes.” Mill's had worked with West African musicians in the group Tama which also opened musical contact points within the Parisian music scene.
After a period of three years experimenting and collaborating with Sam Mills, Raman made her first album Salt Rain. Released in 2001 on Narada, an American subsidiary of EMI, it went gold in France and in the UK was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize. She also won the Best Newcomer award from BBC Radio 3. Salt Rain drew on traditional Tamil music blended with jazz-folk and pop influences.[2] It featured original material, as well as old songs Raman sang at recitals when younger.
In 2003 she released her second album Love Trap which featured amongst other collaborators the Nigerian drummer Tony Allen and Tuvan singer Albert Kuvezin of the group Yat-Kha. The title track is a re-interpretation of an Ethiopian song from the seventies by the singer Mahmoud Ahmed.
In 2005, came a third album, Music for Crocodiles. This was partly recorded in Chennai (Madras) in India. This included "The Same Song" which was used by Mira Nair for the end credits of her film The Namesake. (Nair also used Raman's version of the 60's Hindi film song "Ye Mera Divanapan Hai' from the previous album). She sings for the first time in French with the song "L'Ame Volatile". Her training in Carnatic classical music makes its presence felt in Tamil classical titles such as "Sharavana," her singing "Meanwhile" (on the same album) in a rāgam called Kanakaangi, and in the song "Light Years" which features a melody in Kalyani rāgam as well as the veena playing of Punya 'Devi' Srinivas.
In 2006 Susheela was again nominated for a BBC World Music Award and was the subject of a one-hour documentary by French-German TV Channel ARTE, called Indian Journey directed by Mark Kidel.
Susheela's deal with Narada ended in 2006 and that year she independently recorded an album 331⁄3 which is a set of re-imaginings of some album tracks from the sixties and seventies. Artists covered include Bob Dylan, John Lennon, The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, Jimi Hendrix, Can and Throbbing Gristle. The album features long term collaborators Sam Mills on guitar, Vincent Segal on cello, and tabla player and percussionist Aref Durvesh.
The album was released in April 2007 in France on the independent label XIII Bis.
Raman has also garnered acclaim for her live performances.[5] She continues to research and discover music from Tamil Nadu, studying in 2007 with the Bhakti singer Kovai Kamla. Collaborator Sam Mills is currently working with Tamil Nadu film musicians for a future project.[3]
Recently her song "Yeh Mera Deewanapan" got a tremendous fame in India. Even this track made a Pole dance entry in the famous reality show aired in India, "Big Boss" on which, Sunny leon, a porn star did a seductive pole dance. According to Bhuvi, Buzz are, MTV coke studio did first shoot of this Song by Susheela Raman on their Show.