KARISHMA D'MELLO
INTERNATIONAL
ARTISTS OF
INDIAN ORIGIN
India is home to some incredibly talented musicians, but
while more often than not most of these go unnoticed
without the recognition and appreciation they deserve,
a few do happen to leave their mark in international
music. Some of the most the bigger, more obvious
names include Freddie Mercury of Queen who spent a
pretty big part of his life here in India, Geethali Norah
Jones Shankar or just – Norah Jones, daughter to Ravi
Shankar. But it doesn’t quite stop there. There are so
many incredible indie and hard rock bands out there
whose members have their roots down here in India.
Cornershop’s Tjinder Singh (songwriter, lead vocals,
guitar) – Tjinder Singh happens to be among the co-
founders of this popular British – indie group, whose line-
up also included Tjinder’s brother on the guitar. The band
is credited with featuring on Rolling Stone’s – Essential
Recordings of the 90’s and topping Spin’s Top 20 albums of
the year. Their songs often were accompanied by a sitar
or a dholk and their name itself was allegedly derived
from a strange British belief that all Indians ran corner
shop groceries. The band constantly changed its sound
eventually collaborating with Punjabi singer – Bubbley
Kaur to create their eight record – Urban Turban.
Soundgarden’s Kerela descended Kim Thayil started
off his career with the band “Zippy and his Vast Army
of Pinheads” (now isn’t that a BRILLIANT name?), and
eventually went on to contribute to hard rock history as
a part of Soundgarden with three platinum albums, two
Grammies and a spot for himself on Rolling Stones’ “Top 100
Guitarists of All Time”. Later on after the unfortunate
break up, he went on to contribute to “Pigeonhead”,
“The President of the United States of America”
(just the band) as well as David Grohl’s
“Probot”, and eventually formed his own
punk band called the “No WTO Combo”
alongside Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra
and Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic.
second album and created the artwork and design for the
covers as well. He co-directed the video for “Fallen Leaves”,
for which went on to win the awards for best video and best
rock video in 2007 at the Much Music Awards. In 2017, he
was nominated for producer of the year in appreciation
of his work on “Afraid of Heights” at the Juno awards.
These are just three of the many international musicians
with an Indian past. Sameer Battacharya of Flyleaf,
Siddharta Khosla of Goldspot, Ramesh Srivastava of
Voxtrot, Mallika Sundharamurty of Abnormality and
Parasitic Extripation are few others that you could look
into, if you’d like to get a better sense of the picture.
You could argue that they’re not REALLY Indian, and how
does any of this matter anyway? Well, I’d agree, for the
most part, they were born and brought up in a different
country or in some cases countries altogether, but they
do have their Indian roots. This matters because it serves
as a reminder for the people who doubt that environment
and cultural differences in a given demographic play an
important role in an artist’s struggle to the big leagues.
Bollywood would suffer a quick death in Norway, the same
as black metal would in Papua New Guinea (I checked!).
There isn’t a lack of talented Indian musicians,
but there is definitely the absence of an
environment for it to thrive in.
Ian D’sa came across his soon to be
fellow band mates at a high school
talent show. The band was originally
titled “Pezz” which they later turned
into what we now know as Billy
Talent, inspired by a book by Michael
Turner. In addition to being the band’s
lead guitarist, Ian also co-produced their
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