Already well known and respected in India, Richa Sharma and her beautifully powerful voice have been gathering fans across the ocean too. Recently, she became the first Indian artist in 34 years to be invited to headline for the famous TD Ottawa Jazz Festival. With a repertoire spanning musical forms and styles, Sharma performed for an audience that didn’t need to understand lyrics to find her music, and her persona, captivating and inspiring.
Excerpts from an interview:
A little about being invited to and performing at the festival?
It was really an amazing thing. I was surprised because there are such a lot of very talented, senior musicians and singers in this country, ones I really respect. It was when I saw the reaction from the audience there that thought they had definitely wanted me there. It was such an honour for me to be there and perform. When they booked me, and blocked the dates, my international promoter said that I’d have to prepare a great line-up. He also said that they had watched my videos on youtube and seen other performances, and had especially requested that among other songs, I perform three specific ones. They wanted “Sajda”, one combination of “Aaj Jaane ki Zidd” and “Chhap Tilak” and “Jogi” from Coke Studio. They had also gone through the multiple videos online of “Jogi”, and they wanted me to perform it the way I had in Jalsa. I was very amazed. I hadn’t expected these choices and it was a big honour. The request had come from the Ottawa Jazz team. Also, the day I landed I had an interview with CBC. It was the first time an Indian artist was at their studio and they also asked me to sing these three songs.
How was the response from the audience?
Surprisingly, there were only 30 to 40 per cent Indians in the audience. Only the first three or four rows had a majority of Indians. In fact, before the show began, my international promoter came up to me and said that there was barely any crowd, and we were disappointed, but there was nothing we could really do. And then, fifteen minutes before the show began, one of the organisers came to me and asked if I was ready, since they needed to open the gates! After the gates opened, almost 40,000 poured in. There were also people standing outside with their own chairs! I had been worried about Ottawa not having a very high Indian population, because you at least feel like the Indians will know and appreciate your songs. But the response I got from the foreign audience was heart-warming.
You opened for artists like Aretha Franklin and Steve Martin. How did the opportunity to share the stage with them play into your performance?
While it was a wonderful honour, I was also really worried. It was like a huge responsibility. I had to represent our culture with purity. But because there was such a foreign audience there, I wanted to give something to them too. So I had prepared an 8- to 10-minute segment which included fusion, jugalbandi, taan, and gayaki, and one part of it featuring just the musicians. This came 45 minutes into my performance and after it, the whole ground gave a standing ovation. What a beautiful moment it was! I told them that this was the best honour, best award they could have given us. There had been no question of a language barrier. The next day, it was in all the newspaper there, that for the first time in 34 years, people had danced at the Ottawa Jazz Festival.
It’s been a long journey since you first entered the industry, and faced rejections because of your unconventional your voice wasn’t conventional enough…
When I entered the industry, I used to face rejection every day. I was told that my voice wouldn’t work; that they’d use it for a background alap or in offbeat scenes, but not for mainstream heroines. I used to feel upset about this, but then suddenly things changed, and my voice was used for Aishwarya Rai, the top mainstream heroine then. Trends change. After that, mainstream voices didn’t have to match the heroine’s, instead the concentration was on the singer’s talent. More and more experiments are happening since then, and after that, I have also used the nasal voice in songs like “Billo Rani” and “Jor ka Jhatka”, and nasal voices have become very popular. I think in this industry, for the first five years, you have to create a stable career, and once you have proved yourself, then the music directors start trusting you, and letting you improvise a little, letting you steer yourself. Of course, the final decision is with them, but you get a little more freedom. It was Rehman sir who gave me the most chance to improvise in the Mangal Pandey song, “Chaliya”, where I used three voice styles in one song. It’s great that now things are becoming more experimental, and more and more newcomers are getting opportunities.
Besides You have made a space for yourself as a playback singer, but your career encompasses more, including folk songs and Sufi music.
I love music, I enjoy every song I sing. Yes, of course, Sufi music appeals to me the most, but you know, I don’t know what Sufi really means. I get told I’m a Sufi singer but for me, it’s about connecting with god through my music. Maybe that’s Sufi. I really like Abida Parveen, who is according to me a real Sufi singer. Then there is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rashid Khan and Salamat Ali Khan among others.
What other projects And what’s in the offing, apart from Bollywood projects, do you have other things lined up?
Bollywood projects I won’t even talk about. Nowadays, there is a very unfortunate thing that’s become the norm. Five to six artists are made to sing one song and then they pick which one to keep. So it’s tough to talk about a Bollywood project till it’s actually released. Non-film projects we can have a say in, and I am working on something that’s part Richa Sharma, part Sufi and part today’s beats. It’s something I am very excited and happy about.
