Heres the story of how an ex-Mumbaikar who found her calling in New York got nominated for next years Grammy awards
Priya Darshini. Pic/Ben Rosser
There is a sense of displacement that has been a constant feature in Priya Darshini's life, since she started spreading her roots across cities and continents like a banyan tree spreading its roots wide under the ground. The musician was born in Chennai, before moving to Puducherry for a few years in her early childhood. Her family then shifted to Goregaon in Mumbai, where she finished her schooling and college life. After that, she packed her bags for New York in 2005 to study filmmaking. This was followed by a period of back and forth between the US and India — with a defining period in Nashville and even a brief working stint in London — before Darshini finally settled in NYC in 2013. Her life, till then, had been more like the queen piece on a chessboard that can travel across all squares, rather than a pawn that can move only in a single straight line.
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It is this sense of displacement that has informed Periphery, her debut record that achieved no less than a Grammy nomination in the Best New Age Album category this week. "The only way to create music was to be true to myself. That became my way of exploring my identity. What is 'home' to someone like me? Is it a concept, is it a place? What is it? It started showing in my music when I started asking these questions," Darshini tells us over the phone from The Big Apple.
The church in New York where Periphery was recorded. Pic/Radhika Chalasani
It's around 11.30 pm her time and 11 am IST when we talk, and the singer tells us that she hasn't slept properly for two days partly because of all the congratulatory calls she's been getting after the nomination was announced. Yet, a 'five-minute chat' turns into a 45-minute long conversation in which Darshini tells us that her roots — and we are now speaking musically — lie in the Carnatic classical training that her grandmother gave her. But she soon began expanding her horizons to songs from West Africa, Morocco and western styles like jazz. "I was hungry to listen to any type of music. To me, travelling the world meant travelling through art," the 36-year-old tells us, adding that nonetheless, she later started taking lessons in Hindustani classical from a guru named Sunil Borgaonkar, a Mozart-loving "really cool person" who is also a Bruce Lee fan.
All these influences reflect immediately in Periphery, right from Jahaan, the very first song that would have been a place for global cuisine had it been a restaurant. But what's also fascinating about the album is that it was recorded live in an abandoned church in New York, on a single mic. Darshini tells us that she was constantly moving around in the place during the session, which gives her voice an ambient texture where it sometimes sounds like a whisper in your ears and at other times, a cry from afar. And she also tells us that it says a lot that the academy decided to give a nod to a live album in a musical world where tunes are often as heavily produced as food that goes into a fridge and then a microwave, from a supermarket counter. "It's quite telling of maybe what is needed," Darshini says, clarifying, "I am not saying post-production is bad, but I think about authenticity. We have become disconnected with ourselves because we should be thinking more about the art than the commerce [when approaching a song] from a creative aspect. Everyone is looking for their own voice, which is so hard to find, and something like [this nomination] says that it's okay — you just have to be you."
Who the girl from Tamil Nadu who grew up in Goregaon now is, is a woman married to Max ZT, the hammered dulcimer player who helped her conceive the album along with cellist Dave Eggar, with percussionists Chuck Palmer and Will Cahoun also lending their support. Does she miss Mumbai? Yes, the city means everything to her because, "I will always be a Mumbai girl. That won't change." She misses the everyday people including her parents, who are still here, and the children in the NGO called Jana Rakshita that her family runs. She also misses the bhaaji wallahs who would come home and the cycle wallahs who would show up with idli and vada. But, the multicultural fabric of Brooklyn is what ultimately weaved her debut record, and in that sense Darshini is like a nightingale who flew the nest looking for her voice, something that, truly, is "so hard to find".
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