Six-time Grammy® Award-nominated sitarist, composer and producer Anoushka Shankar was recently in Mumbai as part of her worldwide tour of her latest EP “Love Letters’.  

This tour marked her grand homecoming to the Indian sub-continent after more than 2 years, and the release of the EP and also a compilation of songs written across 2018-2019. which will release just before the tour in February 2020.

Verus Ferreira chats up with the world-famous performer who has been hailed as a maverick, seamlessly merging classical with contemporary, East with West.

Tell us about your new EP ‘Love Letters’. 

Well, it's the first time I am releasing an EP as opposed to a solo album, which is nice. I've really enjoyed the process of releasing a song at a time over the last few months and getting to engage with listeners in this way. It’s gentler than, you know a massive album promo kind of vibe. It's been lovely. I just feel really attached to this group of songs; it's been a really gentle process of working with almost exclusively women in all aspects of the songwriting and recording process. I feel like its maybe some of the simplest music I've ever made, if that makes sense. It's just straightforward songwriting and emotional truth telling.

Why did you decide to call your EP Love Letters? 

I don't know (laughs). It was just sort of a phrase that stuck a while ago, because I have been writing these songs on and off over the last couple of years. It's been a very slow process of writing songs around the rest of my life. It wasn't kind of formal, like now I'm stopping everything else and making a record. So there have been lots of storytelling going on and many different aspects of love being gone into, primarily on the back end of a relationship. Lots of aspects to do with breakups, heartbreak, resilience… But it kinda felt like it was the idea that when we think of ‘love letters’, we just kind of think of the beginning bit. We think of the romance and the passion, but actually, there's such a long journey with relationships, even just the years of staying together or the difficult parts that we endure, all of that comes under the journey of love. I found it interesting to use a phrase like ‘love letters’ because you are actually continuing to communicate through all the parts of the journey.

You have said creating this set was a process of catharsis. Could you explain how?

I suppose, it's a different layer of personal for me to be sharing music that's been influenced so directly from my own romantic experiences. I have written from a personal place before. A lot of songs to do with my father's passing on – Traces Of You, for example – or the experience of being pregnant, becoming a mother, on Traveller and so on. So it's not that I haven't been personal before. But I've kept romance sort of slightly separate. And yet, this time, it just felt like, ‘No, these are huge, big, bright experiences,’ and I needed to dive into them musically as well. And it's not to say that the songs are directly influenced at all times by my own experiences. But it was because of my experiences that I needed to look at this entire topic.

Like you mentioned, you've always kept the romance bit out of the public eye, including your separation. But now that there's some distance between then and now, do you think it ever influenced you as an artiste, perhaps not just particularly on these songs, but just your whole creative self?

I mean, absolutely. The thing is… Separation is a long process with a marriage, you know. It's not like breaking up with a boyfriend in high school, that it just takes the amount of time that it takes to say those words. So the separation has been ongoing and I have been writing through that process. For me, in going through the shock of a separation, is not the time that I would be sharing that publicly. I'm dealing with the fallout privately. Whereas now, it's not where I am anymore. I feel like I have come out of it, so now there's enough of a remove where I can go and hear some music, because the music is now not where I am anymore, if that makes sense. And so now I can have that remove and share the music and that feels okay.

2018-19 might have been very tough phases for you with your procedure and your personal life. Was it easier to channel whatever you were feeling into music to deal with it, or was it actually harder to concentrate on creating something? 

It's hard to explain, but it's always been both for me. There are so many aspects to music-making. One side of it is very creative and soul-fulfilling and beautiful, and there's a lot of it that's also very pressured and quite overwhelming, very logistical, very business-related. So when we are speaking about it, it depends which part. Soon after the surgery, for example, it was really nice to listen to mixes of the songs and give my take, because it gave me something to think about. But obviously, I wouldn’t have wanted to be on tour. So it depends. 

You’ve done vocals for the first time as well. What prompted you to sing after all this time?

I think that's probably symbolic of when we say this is personal in a different way. There is a way in which these lyrics were just so simple and so truthful, that they really came from an inner, vulnerable place. So the people I was working with, like Ibeyi, were saying “Well, you should sing that line, it's coming from you.” And I could see what they meant, because I felt the same way. It was something my inner voice was saying, so it needed to come out of me. It felt right in this context, and there is no big, dramatic move. I don't know that I’m gonna move into being a singer at this point or anything. It felt right and I am really proud of it. 

You are coming back to India after almost two years to perform? How does it feel to be coming back?

(Pause) Yeah, it’s been the longest gap. It feels really weird to have been away so long, so it feels important to be coming back. And I’m obviously looking forward to seeing a lot of friends and to sharing this music. But also, it's a really interesting time over there right now. There's a whole other level of engagement that’s going on in a way that I find really exciting and inspiring. I’m looking forward to kind of touching base with that as well.

You’ve obviously been following the news. You’ve spoken earlier of being tremendously affected by Europe's refugee crisis and that was right before you produced Land Of Gold. How do you feel about what's going on currently with the new Citizenship Amendment Act, and the protests around it?

Protests are an important part of democracies across the world. But what hurts is to read about the violence and fear around it. Everyone has the right to peacefully give voice to their beliefs. What's been the most beautiful takeaway for me is to watch the people coming together and protesting and using their voices. That deeply filled my heart with hope. I was deeply moved and inspired. 

Like you’ve said, you have a more global perspective on this, having been watching events play out in America and Europe. How do you see India’s events tying with the global sentiment? Do you think this is part of a global sentiment that is spreading? 

Yeah, I personally believe that. I am not claiming to be an expert, but that is my personal experience. Some of the details change – in California, when they talk about immigrants, it might be Mexicans they're referring when they speak in these horrifically dehumanizing ways or in Italy, it might be Somalians. But the attitude is the same, as is the process of distraction from the real causes of the problems people are struggling with. In other words, the spreading of intolerance due to fear is the same, and an increasingly prevalent shouty sound byte culture around the world leaves less and less room for respectful, nuanced dialogue. That's just my opinion.

Coming back... Pandit Ravi Shankar's centenary celebrations are being kicked off this year. Is there a plan yet?

It's hugely exciting. This is really the big event of my year, as my dad would have been turning a 100 this year, and so we are doing a series of really special concerts, that will never happen again. Incredible collections of musicians coming together on a stage and playing music that people never get to hear live. The details change in different cities, we are kicking off in London, we are going to America, and we’ll be coming to India. And in some cities we have some really amazing guests. For example, on his actual birthday, my sister and I will be playing together live for the very first time, which is really exciting and special. That will be in London. I’m very involved in putting the shows together, choosing some of my favorite music of my dad's, and I am really excited about bringing that back to India later in the year.

I also wanted to touch up on how female your current EP is. And like you said, you've never worked exclusively with just female artistes before. Would you like to tell us more?

Yeah, there were two sides to it. One was, in the aftermath of a breakup, it was a very raw time and I was naturally gravitating primarily towards my close female friendships. The women were the ones who really showed up in that way that carried me through. A lot of women will resonate with what I’m talking about – in those times of crisis, women show up. And that found its mirror in the music as well. My musician friends were coming over and offering that kind of musical solidarity, a space to write together, sing, and put that pain somewhere private. But also, this is over the last two years, in the wake of Me Too and Times Up and Oscars So White, where we were all starting to look at the workplace as well. And I just started thinking, 'Wow, I've been a kind of high-profile female in the music industry for 25 years now, but am I using that opportunity enough to bring other women with me through those doors that I am being allowed through? Can I now push through and bring other women?' So I was thinking, ‘God, I need to be more actively working with more female co-writers, female producers, female engineers…’ So there was an active element of seeking that out as well.

The music industry was not untouched by Me Too; its highest-profile voice was Taylor Swift. Do you think more people should from music should have spoken out?

I can't answer a question like that because I am not a fan of the word 'should'. I think that people who go through any kind of sexual harassment, it's a traumatic event. I firmly believe in the power of speaking out, I myself have done it; I was probably one of the first people to do it. However, I don't like putting that responsibility on women, to feel like they should do it. Because it's a personal event, first of all. You could really risk traumatizing yourself even more by sharing it if you do it when you are not ready. Speaking has power but people have to do that in a safe way for themselves.

Interviewed by Verus Ferreira