Like his song ‘I’m in Mumbai waiting for a miracle…’ Raghu Dixit spent months in Mumbai meeting all the recording companies, hoping that one of them would listen to his songs and give him a break. No one did. He waited for hours for an appointment and some of them bluntly told him that they did not have the time to listen to his songs.
Miracles do happen. Crossing the road, in a daze, Raghu broke down. He got a call from his friend Shashanka Ghosh, director of films like Quick Gun Murugan and Bewakoofiyan, telling him that he had fixed up a gig for Raghu at Zenzi, a bar in Bandra.
“I performed in that dark and dingy place listened to by an enthusiastic audience of around 300. At the end of it, as I was packing my guitar, Vishal and Sekhar, the music composers met me. They told me they liked what they heard and asked me whether I had met any recording company. I told them my sob story, a tad exaggerated. They asked me to meet them at their office the next morning where I sang before them, all the while thinking that they would give me a song in their next Bollywood film. They interrupted me in the middle of a song and told me that they were coming up with their new label and if I was ready to be their first artiste.”
That’s how Raghu’s first album titled Vishal-Sekhar presents Raghu Dixit was released. And there was no looking back for this self-taught musician who recently launched his second album Jag Changa.
Angels, Raghu believes, have touched his life at crucial moments. “I have had amazing people walking into my life who did little things, directed my life, moved mountains for me,” says Raghu, before he virtually got the JTpac theatre rocking with his pulsating music.
A young girl, in her shrill voice, shouted out something in Kannada from the audience. Raghu stopped strumming his guitar and asked, “Is my cousin sister out there?” Raghu grew up in a large joint family in Mysore. He had a cousin sister who he used to regularly taunt. She used to learn Bharatanatyam. One day, finding no one around, he began imitating her. “My father who was watching me misunderstood this imitation as talent and the next day I found myself in the midst of 15 girls learning Bharatanatyam.”
Raghu hated this, but the attention and affection he got after a performance along with another boy at the Mysore Town Hall, made him realise the pleasure of being noticed. “That spurred me to continue learning dance. For 18 years I trained under Nandini Eshwar. Dance brought me closer to music; it taught me a lot on stage production, stage outfit, use of stage space. Natyasastra is not only about dance, it applies across all art forms. And dance is reflected in my music too.”
Listen to Raghu’s ‘Mysore se aayi…’ and you cannot miss the rhythm of the ghungroo he wears.
Raghu held the guitar when he was 18. “A classmate of mine told me that I was effeminate to pursue dance, while he strutted about with his guitar. He incited me and I threw a challenge that I would play the guitar in two months. My family was very conservative where listening to western music, wearing jeans or playing the guitar were banned. I began learning the guitar from a seminary on the sly. Yes, my cousin and my classmate led me on.”
With a Masters in Microbiology Raghu began teaching, something that he loves and would like to do sometime later. He landed a job with a pharmaceutical company and flew to Brussels. “Alone in my apartment with the guitar for company, I used to sing. The landlord of the building, Mr. Vermish, who worked with Belgium TV, must have been listening for he came over and asked me if I had a demo of the songs. I gave it and before I realised I was sitting in Radio 21 studios talking about my music and singing. A day later I got a deluge of messages from people who did not understand my language but still loved my songs. This was a revelation. I thought I could do better back home. I quit my job and reached Mysore.”
Back home, Raghu found his savings drying up and not getting anywhere. “It was a conflict of a naïve guy inside a bubble that was hitting the hard wall of reality. It was tough.”
At an L. Subramaniam concert in Bangalore, Raghu met a lady. She had noticed his unbridled reaction to the music. “She, Asha Mokashi, spoke to me and suggested that I meet her boss as their software company was on the hunt for a technical writer. I did and got this job that helped me sustain during this tough phase.” In between, he, and his friend H.N. Bhaskar, formed a band called Antaragni. “Our finest moment was when we were invited to open for Bryan Adams when he came to Bangalore. We played before a 40,000 strong crowd, were booed in the beginning, but later applauded heartily right through the 40 minutes we were given.”
Raghu was still slogging for that big push. He made jingles, did spot recording, made demos, and began meeting countless recording companies. Then came Vishal-Sekhar.
The release of the album was followed by a string of shows and soon the Raghu Dixit Project turned into one of the country’s premier independent music acts. A tour to Hong Kong, Russia, Japan, and South Korea, organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, made him firmly believe that language was no barrier to enjoy music. “Our music is an attempt to represent India. However westernised you claim to be, the cultural tapestry will remain the same at the core. And our music is, at its core, very Indian.”
It’s this music, fresh, straight from the heart , with a lot of soul, earthy, and Indian that has wowed audiences the world over. “These shows abroad and the massive television show on Jools Holland show on BBC 2 was validation for of our band and brand of music. Here we shared space with legends like Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin fame, Mavis Staples, Arcade Fire, Adele and Mona.”
Raghu was trying to make the crowd sing a Kannada song ‘Lokada kalaji madatheenanti…’ He sings and urges the crowd to sing aloud and get their pronunciation right. A rough translation of the song, he says, is ‘don’t worry, be happy, but if you want to worry I don’t really care…’ The crowd joins in; Raghu and his band take over and then you are drowned in some amazing music.
