Post Description

2 albums:

2003 - Love Trap
2005 - Music For Crocodiles

INFO
Tamil Londoner Susheela Raman has established her place as one of the most creative artists to emerge from the South Asian diaspora. Blessed with a mesmeric voice and an captivating stage presence, Susheela has enraptured countless listeners with her own songs and with her interpretations of songs from her Indian roots. She makes the lines on the map dissolve; a South Indian sensibility radiates through her happily hybrid Euro-Afro-Asian musical landscape, just as an Indian voice is infused with a Londoner’s feeling for rock, blues, soul. She is currently finishing her sixth studio album which features her amazing collaboration with musicians from Rajasthan and Qawwals from Pakistan.

Susheela was born in London to parents from Thanjavur in Tamilnadu. Her family moved to Sydney, Australia when she was four. She grew up learning Carnatic and other Indian songs but then as a teenager plunged into the world of rock music, fronting her own band in Sydney. After some time she was inspired to revisit the music of her Indian roots and spent time in India studying singing. In 1997 Susheela moved back to London and quickly teamed up with producer and longstanding collaborator Sam Mills as well as London tabla player Aref Durvesh. After three years work they made their first album ‘Salt Rain’ which won immediate acclaim, including the Mercury Prize in the UK and a Gold record in France.

Susheela’s ability to sing her way between musical worlds and thereby to create her own, has few parallels. She is moving with the tide of the times: India is now a centre of gravity within the Anglophone world, and is increasingly in the global spotlight. Finding sophisticated and adventurous pathways between Indian and global culture is the real challenge; one which she boldly and instinctively meets.

With a justified reputation as an incandescent live performer, Susheela has made five classic albums: After ‘Salt Rain” (2001) came ‘Love Trap’ (2003) which was recorded in Spain and featured her version of ‘ the Mukesh classic ‘Ye Mera Divanapan Hai’ which was used by Mira Nair in her film “The Namesake”. ‘Music for Crocodiles’ (2005)  was her third album and was recorded partly in Chennai. That was the time I really started to make music in India, an adventure that is still unfolding. She took a interesting step in 2007, recording ‘33 1/3’ in Iceland (!) which was an album of reinterpretations of some classic rock tracks such as Dylan ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, and ‘Voodoo Chile’: It wasn’t about doing ‘covers’, it was about trying to take each song somewhere quite different. All her albums chart a personal relationship with musical history and her own role as a conduit where musical oceans meet. Each Susheela album is a big vision that retains its freshness and uniqueness for a long time to come. “I find new people are discovering, sharing my previous album all the time. I’m glad each has their own life.”

Susheela has always made music a vehicle of emotion with the same intensity of purpose that she offers herself and her music and to her audience. The songs she writes and interpret can come form any background, east, north, south or west. The key is that she makes them her own and then shares them, fashioning both into spears that penetrate the soul.
“I don’t want to respect artificial barriers between music, I want to channel everything into the experience. . The music of the subcontinent is hugely varied and is always changing. It always has new dimensions to explore. Talk of ‘fusion’ sound like a compromise between unmoving cultural blocs. But music is not like that here, or anywhere. Music is like a Goddess that is always changing its mind, never straightforward. To earn her blessings and stay close to her, musicians have to try new things.”

UPLOAD COMPLETE .... enjoy!