I recently discovered the music of Arthi Meera on Myspace, and even though it’s probably too late to get counted on Siddhartha’s end of the year poll, I think readers might want to go check her out.
Of the songs that are up at Myspace, “Silty Sea” has gotten the most plays — and it’s a lovely song. But “Wander Away” is a catchy and infectious pop melody. Her album is also available via Itunes (I would recommend “In my head” and “It’s not you.”).
Arthi, who plays guitar and sings on all her songs, was raised in Chicago, and lives there now. She says she was trained in classical Hindustani singing, though the songs on her album show no trace of that particular background. Snippets of her voice, singing “Pardesi Jaana Nahin,” are in the closing credits of the film V For Vendetta (listen to BKAB Speechless at Ethan Stoller’s Myspace page; incidentally, Manish mentioned this song months ago). [Correction: that is not Arthi Meera’s voice, I’m told.]
I was a little curious about how she went from ‘A’ to ‘B’, so I sent her an email with some questions. Her reply was pretty thought-provoking.
First, on her own background and musical journey:
As far as my background in Hindustani vocal music, I don’t conflicted from a technical standpoint because the type of music I’m doing now feels entirely different. I learned Hindustani music for about ten years, until my senior year of high school, and picked up guitar my first year of college. I learned guitar by looking up tabs on the Internet of songs by my favorite bands, like the Smiths and the Sundays, and by asking people to teach me things. Soon after, I started writing songs and performing on campus. I think what I loved about guitar and songwriting right away is that it was an entirely personal pursuit. I practiced when I wanted to, played what and how I wanted. With Hindustani music, for years and years, you have to sing what is basically scripted for you, and then only begin to move into improvisation. And even the improvisation is within certain boundaries because of the raga. I love the freedom being able to play and sing what I think sounds good when I write songs.
Hindustani music still strikes a primal chord inside me and I can very emotional listening to it, maybe because it makes me think of my family. But I’ve always been most passionate about bands and indie or alternative rock, which is why guitar-driven songwriting is something I continue to pursue.
And here are her thoughts on why fusion isn’t always a good thing:
I think some South Asian musicians feel pressure to fuse elements of their Eastern and Western backgrounds, and a lot of times I don’t think these always mesh well together. I think it makes a much stronger statement to just play the kind of music I want to play and play it well, without feeling any pressure to artificially combine Hindustani vocals with acoustic guitar, for example. I figure that my background in Hindustani may come out more subtly in the music, and if not, that’s just as well. I don’t feel any less South Asian because of it.
It’s difficult, though, because maybe a South Asian American musician is trying in earnest to figure out how to represent this duality musically and settles on electric guitar with sitar, but that was co-opted by the Beatles 40 years ago, so where do you go from there? (I still love the Beatles!) I remain optimistic that this generation of artists will continue to chip away at a uniquely South Asian American identity that doesn’t rely on anything trite and that may be entirely different from what we see developing as a South Asian American identity right now.
While I do feel that there can be subtle ways to bring together different strands of one’s experience (i.e., Rudresh Mahanthappa), the general point she is making is quite a good one: a lot of young musicians and artists feel a kind of internal pressure to do something fusiony, when they might really be better off following either a purely Indian classical or a western/pop track without overlap. (Admittedly, the possibilities for fusion look a little different if your framework is modern jazz — which has a certain essential formelssness — rather than pop.)
It really depends on one’s constitution as an artist. I often wish Anoushka Shankar — who had the best classical training imaginable — would use less “fusion” too, or at least, less synth. Her attempt to create a “marketable” sound has led, in Rise (and the concerts she did in support of the CD), to something that feels a little diluted at times.
