Need to revive the indie music culture of 90s: Sangeetha Rajeev

Kannada songstress

Sangeetha Rajeev

has been making waves across the country and the world. She has been gaining recognition for her independent music, with two of her songs having been nominated for

VIMA music awards

, scheduled to be held in Malaysia in 2019. Looking back on a musically successful year, which also saw her performing at sold out concerts in the UK, the singer reflects on her achievements and discusses her plans for the coming year. Excerpts:

ON BEING RECOGNISED
A familiar voice in the Kannada music scene, this year Sangeetha also made her debut in Telugu film industry and released two independent tracks titled TuHi and Zindagi. “Till now, I have won awards for film songs, so it was really special to be recognised and nominated for awards along with other independent musicians across Asia in categories like best song of the year, and best Indian songs,” she says. While the singer is jubilant about her UK tour, where she performed for more than 1000 Kannadigas in London, and then Scotland, the icing on the cake was being felicitated by the former Mayor of the

London

borough of Lambeth, Dr

Neeraj Patil

. Recollecting the experience, she says, “I had just finished my performance when I was informed about the honour. I was super thrilled.”

HER MUSICAL PROCESS
Creating independent music is a different ballgame when compared to film music, she says. What is Sangeetha’s musical process when it comes to her originals? “When it comes to creating music, I always start with the Kannada version and then work on the Hindi counterpart. I come up with a tune and then that is programmed by this artiste called Remon, who is based in Netherlands and a Bengaluru-based programmer, Sharan Rao. I give the concept, two lyricists add words to the tune — Pradyumna Narahalli for Kannada and Shashwath Sanil for Hindi. Then we conceptualise and work on the video,” she says.
Does the team not being in the city ever prove a hinderance? “We work well together, and have collaborated often, so the process is quite seamless,” she responds, adding that she also plans to create music in other regional languages.

REVIVING INDEPENDENT MUSIC
With the year coming to a close, the singer has begun planning for on her next projects in 2019. One of her primary aims is to better the independent music scene in the city. “Even today, when I perform, audiences look for Sandalwood or Bollywood numbers. When it comes to performing my originals, I realise that the independent music scene is more concentrated in certain places alone — it does have the air of live film music concerts. We need to revive that culture that there was in 90s and have more people in the Bengaluru pop music scene,” she signs off.