The Record Music Magazine

Grammy History: Youngest ever nominee in the Best World Music Album category for her 2001 album Live at Carnegie Hall.

The Interview
The Record: Congratulations on the nomination!
Anoushka: Thank you! I was in bed when I found out! [Laughs] I'm on the West Coast [of the US] so a lot of people on the East Coast and in India found out before I did and the phone started ringing. I was hardly even awake, it was lovely.

TR: Tell us a little about the making of the new album Rise.
Anoushka: We had a lot of fun on this album. It was extremely difficult to make it but at the same time it was a lot of fun. We did a lot of things – like on the song Prayer In Passing the live effects are us literally sitting there with a bucket of water, pouring water on to the floor; on Red Sun we used sticks on the floor as part of the percussion. On Ancient Love I’m actually snapping soda cans at one point, and I’m tapping a bottle ~ so we did a lot of silly things as well as going high tech in a way. Mahadeva is the only track that has any direct influence of my father on it. It was a song that he wrote for me when I was young. It got stuck in my head when I was recording in Calcutta and I decided to expand it. So the four lines are his song and the way I’ve turned it into something else completely is my own.

TR: You featured in Time Magazine’s Asia's Heroes: The Top 20 Under 40, you’ve been called the future of Indian classical music… when do you personally feel most honoured?
Anoushka: All of those things are very nice but when it really feels amazing is literally when you’re doing a show. When I’m up there on stage doing what I love and it all comes together and you do something amazing at any given moment, it’s magic. And when there are people there who connect to it, there’s nothing close to that feeling. It’s what makes it totally worthwhile. Recently we played at a 400 year old fort in Morocco and in Lebanon we played in a valley 4000 feet up. Whenever the venue is really beautiful it’s a lot of fun.

TR: How is it playing in India?
Anoushka: India is always scary! [Laughs] Because obviously people know more, so they look for more. But also because they are very critical by nature…the audience that comes to a show in India, 50% of them are coming to enjoy the show and 50% of them are coming just to check you out. Which I don’t appreciate very much but that’s how it is. You always have to prove yourself as a performer as opposed to just play music and enjoy it, you know. That’s always something that makes me nervous.

You can read the rest of our exclusive Grammy Nominees Special in the November 2005 issue of The Record Music Magazine available at your local newsagent.

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