{"id":74028,"date":"2021-08-28T00:18:35","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T05:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=74028"},"modified":"2021-08-28T00:38:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T05:38:44","slug":"tamil-is-the-language-i-speak-so-why-not-put-tamil-words-into-the-songs-i-createasks-swiss-tamil-pop-singer-of-sri-lankan-origin-priya-ragu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=74028","title":{"rendered":"“Tamil is the Language I Speak, so why not put Tamil Words into the Songs I Create?asks Swiss Tamil Pop Singer of Sri Lankan Origin – Priya Ragu"},"content":{"rendered":"

By
\nAlim Kheraj<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Priya Ragu signed her record deal, her parents told her not to give up her day job. \u201cI thought: \u2018I can work and do the music at the same time,\u2019\u201d says Ragu. The problem was that she was employed as a technical purchaser buying aircraft parts \u2013 hardly the sort of job you can do on autopilot. <\/p>\n

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For months, she balanced the two until the burden got too much. \u201cI realised that mistakes were happening, and my boss was like: \u2018Are you sure you want to carry on doing this?\u2019 That\u2019s when I decided to quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was only two months ago, and Ragu still hasn\u2019t told her parents that she quit \u2013 although once they read this interview, her secret will be out. But given the trajectory of her career, they shouldn\u2019t be surprised.<\/p>\n

Since her breakout hit, the buoyant Good Love 2.0, the 35-year-old Swiss-Sri Lankan star has carved out a space for herself with a sound that blends the slinky R&B of Kehlani or Summer Walker with folk music from the Tamil population of south Asia and samples from Tamil-language \u201cKollywood\u201d films. It\u2019s a fusion filled with reverence for Ragu\u2019s heritage and which has picked up praise from Vogue and Radio 1.<\/p>\n

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Ragu\u2019s sound has been decades in the making. Born to refugees of the Sri Lankan civil war, she was raised in the Swiss city of St Gallen. As a child, her parents would host jam sessions with people from the local Tamil community. \u201cEverybody would come over and sing Kollywood songs,\u201d she recalls fondly over Zoom. \u201cThere was a lot of joy. My parents tried to bring in the culture to ensure that I didn\u2019t forget where I was from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Straddling two cultures did result in some clashes, though. Ragu\u2019s parents were conservative and strict, and this interfered with her musical ambitions. They didn\u2019t approve of the R&B music she was obsessed with and refused to allow her to have vocal lessons. When she was 16, she was due to sing an Alicia Keys song at a show that her brother was doing with his rap group, until her father read about it in her diary and forbade her from performing. \u201cThe worst day of my life,\u201d she sighs. \u201cFrom that day on, I decided that I wasn\u2019t going to say anything to them about my music.\u201d<\/p>\n