Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I feel a lot closer to music and my relationship with my instrument than I did as a teenager. I have an adult perspective now about getting to do something I love for a living.
When I work on someone else's record, I'm happy to alter the way I approach it, if I happen to like who they are and I'm interested in their music. But I know it's their record.
The lockdown, in general, left me with a sense of needing to become more independent and instead of being intimidated, I decided to do the engineering on some of my new releases.
My father taught me to play the sitar when I was seven years old. He and his elder disciples oversaw my teaching from the beginning, looking after my scale work, the poor things.
I just felt drawn towards the kind of music that really needed a strong female presence female writers, female producers, female figures and that just kind of unfolded on its own.
'Acceptance' is a tricky word. Acceptance about what life is bringing us in a spiritual sense is one thing; but acceptance when there's injustice in the world is completely another.
In a studio context, the music becomes greater than the sum of its parts. When you have collaboration, you have other people's strengths that I don't share, so my song can get stronger.
Parenting put music in the right place for me. Touring was always the first priority before, but it isn't any more. And, paradoxically, that has made my ability to make music much easier.
I hope it isn't exclusively true, but I often find that collaboration is the best way... to reach my highest musical place. Because I get so inspired by another good musician; I feed off that.
We need more women in positions of power so that women's issues are thought of more, because a room full of men in government and in power don't think the type of things needed to make a change.
On 'Love Letters' I focused exclusively on sung music, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.
As a child I'd sit at dinner parties with artists, authors and musicians, some of the best people in their fields. I couldn't avoid the path I took having grown up in such an artistic environment.
I had multiple circles of friends around the world. Some circles were really wild and I was affectionately known by them as 'the nerdy one.' And, with other friends, I was regarded as the wild one.
On 'Love Letters', I focused exclusively on songs with lyrics, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.
Mum's home food was comfy, exquisite and she was also capable of the most wonderful gourmet food. She'd mix the rice and dal with stuff and roll these easy-to-pick-up extra-softened little balls of rice.
Even though my parents raised me in a very individualistic way, they were also strict and traditional, which was good. It was hard to sneak out! I think I was quite wild, but in some ways quite contained.
Usually, I really only look at any one particular album at a time when I'm making it. I've never really sat and looked at the journey through all of my albums to see if I could find a thread through them.
Home' was a special album for very specific reasons. It is an homage to my father. And it is the first classical album I've released in over a decade. So it really felt like a kind-of coming back to my roots.
I've worked hard and tried to approach my career with as much honesty and integrity as possible. I've also had many blessings along the way and feel very fortunate to have a career that speaks so much to my soul.
People are more willing to dislike your music and want to find faults in you when you are given opportunities like in my case. But I think in my case, people love my work and that's why I have to work doubly hard.
There is great strength in vulnerability, as it takes courage to push through the fear and share one's true self with others. In music, that vulnerability really speaks to listeners as it connects with their own hearts.
But when culture becomes a baggage, things don't work. What is good about anything that feels like a baggage? I think we should let go when it feels like a burden. Hold on to the things you love. Then it will be a natural process.
I think I've been lucky to work with so many lovely people. But there's Joshua Bell, who's the world's greatest violinist. We worked together live and once, for his record, but I really would want to work with him on one of my records.
I always had musicians in my band having children, and their wives were the ones at home taking care of the kids. So I never thought much of it. And then suddenly I'm the parent, but I'm the woman, and it's like, 'Ah, what happens now?'
The sitar is a really difficult instrument to play. Physically it's taxing because of the cross-legged sitting position, the length of the neck on the shoulder, the thinness of the strings. There's a lot of pain, especially at the start.
I feel 'Love Letters' has been part of a longer journey towards a very simple, international sound in which the sitar is no longer exotic or classical, but simply a tool of expression when juxtaposed with the voice and cross-genre elements.
I realised how rarely women are involved in all aspects of the music making, how rarely I've worked with female engineers. That became something that I started looking at as well. How many women can I bring into the project across the board.
However, I need to make music that represents my inner truth and inner voice. I've found myself more able to do that within an international space that has an Indianness at its root but branches out to encompass sounds and cultures across borders.
Even though my father had a really successful career before the '60s, that kind of insane pop-culture splash that happened was so massive. People hear the sitar and immediately think, you know, flying carpets and tie-dyed T-shirts and wafting smoke.
I ate Bengali food after my parents married and Dad started living with us, in both Willesden and in Delhi for three years, and then we all moved to California. Dad said he could make a really good dal, but I never saw him cook during the whole time we lived together.
Some of the more intensive scrutiny when I was first starting out definitely used to be tough to handle; I was only a teenager, yet was being analysed in newspapers world over, often by people who already had a strong opinion about my privilege before hearing me play.
I think sometimes when you speak about something like 'Indian classical music' and 'ragas,' and all of that's new to people, it can be quite intimidating, in the same way that I have sometimes found opera and Wagner intimidating - one doesn't know where to begin sometimes.
Someone like my father will improvise as much as 90% of the music in concert, but with me it's maybe 10 to 20%. It's sort of the test of how great someone is, the more they can improvise correctly and still be true to the raga they're playing, and still keep it new and fresh the whole time.
As far as using electronics in my music, I have to do that as honestly as possible. Also, I have a broad range of listeners from a classical music base, as well as people, like me, who listen to a lot of different music. So I'm mindful of letting my sitar playing remain at the center of what I do.
Writing can flow out when I'm feeling something strongly, whether that's joy, pain, fear, desire or anything else. The challenge is actually later, in the second or third or 100th draft of the music, when it can be so easy to cover up the original sentiments by making the music more ornate or cloaked.
It is that kind of space, that little space of longing, whether it is in something like romantic love, or whether it's in something like divine love. You know, that kind of search for something that's not quite in your grasp. It's a very powerful place to explore as an artist, because it's not necessarily sad.
As a disciple of my father's, I was certain I wanted to include one of his own raga creations on 'Home', as they are so beautiful; whilst many of his creations are part of the general classical repertoire for all musicians, many more are only played by those of us who learned from him, and therefore need to be played.
I think the reason being Ravi Shankar's daughter is not such a pressure to me is that I don't look at myself in that way. Of course, he's the best-known Indian musician there is so, people naturally look to me as the next one, but the truth is there are many other musicians out there as well as other students of my father's.
I have been given something really, really special and really unique, and it is not just in and of itself having learned from my father, who is the greatest exponent of this musical style. But it is an oral tradition that is only generally passed on in that manner, and so without the people who continue to... learn it and perform it, it dies.