Susheela Raman MUSIC FOR CROCODILES

		Susheela Raman Music For Crocodiles
Photography by Robert Leslie	This assured third album marks Susheela Raman’s artistic coming of age. Brimming with creative energy, strong emotion, and musical ambition, the record is both reflective and playful: it draws the listeners close to offer them a wide open landscape. It marks the arrival of Raman as a British artist of real note and delivers on the promise of her earlier albums. Raman has drawn on her rich cultural heritage and at the heart of the album is her own composition, The Same Song where she asks: ‘How many roads have I wandered/none and each my own/behind me the bridges have crumbled/where then will I call my home?’
MUSIC FOR CROCODILES In Stores & Online February 7	That is the resonant challenge at the core of Raman’s music. She creates a new identity through her voice, culture, and song. Raman is Indian, Tamil, English, a Londoner, a European, an Asian, and Australian to boot! Born in London to Tamil parents and raised in Australia, she grew up in a home full of Carnatic music (the South Indian classical tradition). Teenage rebellion led her towards black American soul, blues, and funk, and at just 16 she was leading her own funk and soul band in Sydney. In 1997 she moved to London and met guitarist and producer Sam Mills, renowned for his work with African and Bangladeshi musicians. They began to develop a new sound drawing on Indian and Western influences and encompassing English songs, Sanskrit texts, their own compositions and reinventions of songs from the Carnatic repertoire. Three years of rich experimentation resulted in SALT RAIN, her Mercury Music Prize nominated 2001 debut.

	As an artist, Raman continues to develop and explore issues of identity with new sounds that celebrate multiplicity. She draws her collaborators from across Europe, Asia, and Africa: Cameroonian bassist Hilaire Penda, Guinea-Bissau born percussionist Djanuno Dabo, American drummer Marque Gilmore, British-Asian tabla player Aref Durvesh, and of course British guitarist and producer Sam Mills are at the heart of this album as they were on SALT RAIN. This record is about great songs imaginatively played and beautifully sung. If Raman's voice on SALT RAIN had a charming, perishable naivety, and LOVE TRAP reflected the strains of touring, Raman’s voice here serves notice of an artist entering her prime. Her singing is richer and stronger than ever before. (Listen to the amazing one-take performance on Chorudiya.) Paradoxically, MUSIC FOR CROCDILES is both more English and more Indian than either SALT RAIN or LOVE TRAP. More than half the songs are in English (her first language) and Raman emerges as a formidable songwriter (listen to What Silence Said and The Same Song). And where on the previous albums there were musicians from everywhere playing Indian songs, here we have musicians from India playing songs in English. A new dimension came from recording in India, as well as in the UK and France. The Indian presence adds joy, light, and depth to the record. Oddly, this is her first record to feature musicians from India. The sessions in Madras were a great success; listen to the swooning cinematic strings on Meanwhile, Chordhiya, and What Silence Said and the incandescent contributions from Veena player Devi on Light Years and violinist Kannan on What Silence Said, young adventurous musicians with the full weight of the South Indian tradition behind them. Then there is the Indian repertoire: one Tamil song, the mystical Sharavana, invokes the South Indian god Muruga. Another, Idi Samayam (meaning ‘now is the time’), was composed by the 18th century singer Saint Tyagaraja and unfolds here over a hypnotic funky groove.
Photography by Robert Leslie
Visit Susheela Raman's Official Website	It’s difficult to say where the Indian, African, and European elements begin and end; everything overlaps and intermingles. Listen to Music For Crocodiles, where Aref Durvesh’s tablas leap over an asymmetric East African groove and Raman’s blues based vocal could be from Addis Ababa, Mumbai, or Chicago. Incidentally the amazing Hammond organ is played by Malian Chek Tdjen Seck, the musical godfather of Paris. Light Years recorded in Madras, is a South Indian melody transmuted here into a sublime English love song. Meanwhile is Raman’s melody, sung in English but based on the rare South Indian raga, Kanyakangi, which infuses its sultry, seductive atmosphere. For the first time, Susheela also sings in French on L'ame Volatile. The big, majestic sound of the album is thanks to the mixing genius of Los Angeles based Icelander, Husky Huskvold (Tom Waits, Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones, and sonic experimentalists Fantomas). Raman wanted a big powerful sound and Huskvold was perfect because he works in a very rough and ready way and makes sure the energy of the playing really hits you. The album was produced by Sam Mills and engineered by Stuart Bruce in the same room at Real World studios as SALT RAIN. With much of the same band on the album it was a flashback to recording Ganapati. The buzz and feeling really reminded the whole team of SALT RAIN in. Everybody had that same feeling of excitement and revelation. Raman and producer Sam Mills put everything they had into this record. They took several months off to prepare for the studio and make sure they had the material they wanted and it’s paid off: The buzz the record has created is like SALT RAIN too — Raman and Mills have had a hard time keeping hold of their listening copies as people eagerly requested the album. Now we can all hear it. Music For Crocodiles? The business is fierce, but somehow we all have this voracious appetite for music and need something that is ‘for real.’ It’s feeding time!
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