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Few artists meet with the spectacular success that UK based Raghav has over the past year. With three UK Top 10 Ten singles, a MOBO Award and a Number 1 single in India to his credit, he is with little doubt, one of the hottest properties around. Working with some really big names like super production duo, Sly and Robbie (Bob Marley, The Rolling Stones and No Doubt) and producer Sunship (Craig David), Storyteller is the kind of album that defines the debutante in entirety. Here’s an interview with Raghav who’s Can’t Get Enough is soaring on the charts…
The Record (TR): How’s it been over the last few months? You’ve been raging on the UK charts and now conquering Indian charts.
Raghav: It’s been very overwhelming, but it’s also been very special for me. It’s not something that has happened overnight. It’s something that I’ve worked hard towards for a long time. It also keeps me grounded to realize that there are so many other concepts that I have in my head musically and now’s the time that I can lay them down. Over the next few years we can do some unique things. And this is something that I’ve started to do on the Storyteller album.
TR: In terms of style, Storyteller tends to be rather varied. How did that happen?
Raghav: Yeah, if you look at my history I was born in Toronto and I grew up in Calgary Canada, I moved to Los Angeles after high school and then I went to Liverpool and then to London. And all along that I maintained everywhere that I’m fiercely proud to be Indian. In Calgary, country music is mainstream, in London hip-hop and R&B is mainstream, in Los Angeles West Coast hip-hop is mainstream, so I’ve taken all this in. At the same time, the reggae culture has really influenced me and I also love jazz. But all along the one thing that’s stayed with me is that the very first art form that I was attracted to, semi-classical Hindi music and Hindi film music. So that’s what this album is about.
I mean it’s like, how can I in sixteen tracks show the whole world what I’m really about, not only musically but as a songwriter as well? So songs like Winter In My Mind are very jazz-oriented because that’s part of who I am. I think that Indian music plays a very important part of mainstream music today. And I want people outside of Indian culture to realize that it’s not just dinga-dinga-dinga-dinga-ding (sings). That’s a huge part of our music, it’s important and I love it. But we have so much more of a rich musical history. And it’s a question of how I can incorporate that into my R&B background. So that’s a long answer to your question.
TR: You’ve been one of the few Asian artists who have been able to seep into the mainstream and be a success. Tell us a bit about that.
Raghav: People go, “This is an Asian artist”. But as proud as I am to be Indian I want people to go, “This is an artist…who is Indian”. And that’s special because then you can be equally proud of being both. That’s another reason why I wanted to do this album. It’s not catered necessarily to a mainstream audience. It’s just that this is the music that I am making and wherever it goes wherever it goes. The fact is that lots of people put their radar up to it everywhere. In India I’ve had great success with it, I just heard that it reached #1 today. And that blows my mind. There are a few territories that I need to touch on like America and Canada.
TR: You started out in Indian classical music at age five. And now you do R&B. It must have been an interesting musical journey…
Raghav: As an NRI growing up in Calgary, it was like growing up around country music, wanting to sing R&B music and listening to Indian music. I was the identity crisis boy. It was nice though because it opened my mind up so that I could listen to anything. So going from Indian classical music, it didn’t feel like anything. Because I could sing a Michael Jackson cover when I was ten and realize that it was just music and if you start to segregate your musicality and your culture that you begin to see it as so different. My family too, they encouraged to love everything, to embrace good quality music. So, when I started making music I had all these ingredients.
You can read the rest of feature on Raghav in the October 2004 issue of The Record Music Magazine available at your local newsagent.
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