Susheela Raman has taken a bold leap into a new musical terrain with the new album – the overall feel of Queen Between is acoustic, live and organic but very powerful and features some stellar musicians from Pakistan (the Rizwan-Muazaam qawwals, Nusrat’s nephews), Rajasthani master musicians (Kutle Khan, Nathoo Lal Solanki and Rana Ram Bhil), Vincent Segal the great cellist from France and other collaborators from France and UK.

The album showcases Susheela Raman’s bizarre voyage into different musical worlds and styles which draw their rhythmic sense from South Asian and African origins. The album is a journey which is harmonically and sonically adventurous with an overall experience of acoustic, live and organic and yet very powerful. The mood ranges, as ever with Susheela, from very intense and fierce to mellow, gentle and meditative. There is always a sense of pushing at psychic and cultural boundaries, of tapping into an ecstatic universality. The album is really about songs and voices, but the musical landscape is very dynamic and psychedelic. There are some recognizable elements but the sound is absolutely unique.

Susheela Raman on her new album: “‘Queen Between’ is a new chapter in my work and I’m really excited to share it.It’s an album really about songs and voices, but the musical landscape is very dynamic and psychedelic. I am so privileged to collaborate with so many great artists from across the world. I think this album has a great potential to connect with an Indian audience and I have been getting amazing reactions so far. It was also great that we used a crowdfunding site (pledgemusic.com) to fund the album. It’s a new kind of relationship you can have with the audience.”

Queen Between is a crowd funded album. It is also very different from anything she has done so far, very intense and very powerful, combined with her distinguished voice. The album has a lot of folk music infused in it along with Western music, it is truly a melting pot of the West meeting the East. Susheela Raman is also a very interesting person to speak with, she has a lot of insights on taking Indian music to the world as she is of Tamilian roots and based out of the UK. 

Tamil Londoner Susheela Raman has established her place as one of the most creative artists to emerge from the South Asian diaspora. Blessed with a mesmeric voice and a captivating stage presence, Susheela has enraptured countless listeners with her own songs and with her interpretations of songs from her Indian roots. She makes the lines on the map dissolve; a South Indian sensibility radiates through her happily hybrid Euro-Afro-Asian musical landscape, just as an Indian voice is infused with a Londoner’s feeling for rock, blues, soul.

Susheela was born in London to parents from Thanjavur in Tamilnadu. Her family moved to Sydney, Australia when she was four. She grew up learning Carnatic and other Indian songs but then as a teenager plunged into the world of rock music, fronting her own band in Sydney. After some time she was inspired to revisit the music of her Indian roots and spent time in India studying singing. In 1997 Susheela moved back to London and quickly teamed up with producer and longstanding collaborator Sam Mills as well as London tabla player Aref Durvesh. After three years work they made their first album Salt Rain which won immediate acclaim, including the Mercury Prize in the UK and a Gold record in France Susheela’s ability to sing her way between musical worlds and thereby to create her own, has few parallels. She is moving with the tide of the times: India is now a centre of gravity within the Anglophone world, and is increasingly in the global spotlight. Finding sophisticated and adventurous pathways between Indian and global culture is the real challenge; one which she boldly and instinctively meets.

With a justified reputation as an incandescent live performer, Susheela has made five classic albums: After Salt Rain (2001) came Love Trap (2003) which was recorded in Spain and featured her version of the Mukesh classic Ye Mera Divanapan Hai which was used by Mira Nair in her film "The Namesake”. Music for Crocodiles (2005) was her third album and was recorded partly in Chennai. That was the time she really started to make music in India, an adventure that is still unfolding. She took a interesting step in 2007, recording 33 1/3 in Iceland which was an album of reinterpretations of some classic rock tracks such as Dylan Like A Rolling Stone, and Voodoo Chile: It wasn’t about doing ‘covers’, it was about trying to take each song somewhere quite different. All her albums chart a personal relationship with musical history and her own role as a conduit where musical oceans meet. Each Susheela album is a big vision that retains its freshness and uniqueness for a long time to come. “I find new people are discovering, sharing my previous album all the time. I’m glad each has their own life” she states.

Her most recent offering before Queen Between is VEL, which means ‘spear’ in Tamil, which was released in 2011. Susheela: She says “VEL is half English, Half Tamil. As a record it documents my own journey as a European with South Indian ancestry into the heartland of Tamil music. From a personal viewpoint there is always a journey of discovery. As you go deeper into the culture, away from the mainstream, you find whole areas of music that are less known and which command you to bring them into the light.  A few years ago I started to spend a lot more time in South India. I was drawn very much to the music world of Tamil devotionalism (‘bhakti’). To the ecstatic music of the popular religion. As a performer, its open-hearted emotion and its ecstatic trance dimension made a connection with me that was very natural. This music is really at the heart of Tamil culture. I sang in temples and at festivals and people were happy. The first time we played these songs in Europe I could see that the intensity of feeling translated very powerfully. I had two amazing teachers in Chennai. Once they realized that I was serious and could sing the music with both the musicality and the huge energy it demands, they taught me without circumspection. It was a great privilege for me.”

Susheela has always made music a vehicle of emotion with the same intensity of purpose that she offers herself and her music and to her audience. The songs she writes and interpret can come form any background, east, north, south or west. The key is that she makes them her own and then shares them, fashioning both into spears that penetrate the soul.

“I don’t want to respect artificial barriers between music; I want to channel everything into the experience. The music of the subcontinent is hugely varied and is always changing. It always has new dimensions to explore. Talk of ‘fusion’ sound like a compromise between unmoving cultural blocs. But music is not like that here, or anywhere. Music is like a Goddess that is always changing its mind, never straightforward. To earn her blessings and stay close to her, musicians have to try new things” she says.