New Delhi: About 16 miles to the west of Salisbury, in the south-west of the UK, are the Larmer Tree Gardens, home to tropical wild birds and eclectic music. In summer 2010, Raghu Dixit sat here inside a small wooden shed, playing his acoustic guitar and singing one song in Hindi or Kannada to one audience member at a time. The venue, fittingly called Folk in a Box, was probably the smallest Dixit had ever performed in.
The 37-year-old folk-rocker has had a stage look in place since the beginning of his performing career: A colourful lungi, an equally vibrant Fab India kurta and ghungroos around the ankles. But the moody low lighting rendered the singer into a silhouette. Shorn of the frills, it was Dixit’s voice that had to do all the work.
Midway through ‘Ambar’, a simple Hindi ballad about searching for love, a 40-something Caucasian broke down. It wasn’t the lyrics she was responding to, but Dixit’s big-chested vocals. “I didn’t know whether to stop or continue singing as she went ‘boo hoo hoo’,” he grins at the memory.
We meet Dixit on a scorching summer afternoon in a South Mumbai coffee shop. Like his music, Dixit is of a cheery disposition, generous with his wide smiles and self-deprecatory humour. There’s a sense of straightforwardness when he speaks with his South Indian accent, the easy drawl punctuated with full-bellied laughs.
Dixit is in Mumbai to watch the shoot of a track he had composed using South Indian beats for the film Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge. He good-naturedly pokes fun at the title of the film, produced by Yash Raj Films’ just launched youth-focused Y-Films. Like other alternative independent musicians, Dixit has made his peace with filmi music: The Bollywood paycheques go to finance his international tours.
The visit also means some quality time with choreographer wife of 10 years, Mayuri Upadhya, admits Dixit, who has been touring without a break since the 2008 release of his debut album.
He orders tender coconut water, of course, before settling down to tell us how a gold medal winner in microbiology now fronts one of the most successful bands in the country. Growing up in Mysore, Dixit’s initiation into the arts happened through Bharatnatyam: His engineer father noticed him mimicking a cousin’s steps and packed him off to dance school. The 17 years of training explain the élan with which Dixit wears his ghungroos on stage — while also, perhaps, proving a point to a college-mate, who sneered that a Bharatnatyam dancer could never play the guitar.
It was also in college, however, that Dixit got his first taste of Western pop. “During my PUC [Pre-University Course], I noticed all these rich students who had Walkmans and discussed Guns N’ Roses and Metallica,” says Dixit. “Gradually, I grew to worship Michael Jackson and Wham! But the track that defines those days is Phil Collins’s ‘Another Day in Paradise.’”
From music fan to musician, the crossover happened as a lark. “Antaragni, my first band with violinist friend H.N. Bhaskar, was born while I was still in college. It was just a lot of camaraderie, we had no dreams of rock stardom,” says Dixit. But a couple of years later, Antaragni beat 43 bands at Bangalore’s National Law School college fest, with Bhaskar winning Best Instrumentalist and Dixit the Best Vocalist trophies.
When creative differences caused Antaragni to disband in 2004, Dixit, too, was broken. But, by then, he had set his sights on Mumbai, scoping the possibilities for an album deal or as a playback singer. In the first of his lucky breaks, filmmaker Shashank Ghosh (Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part II) referred him to Zenzi, a suburban lounge bar that was looking for a musician. The 2007 show floored Hindi film composers Vishal-Shekhar, inspiring them to set up an eponymous music label with the sole purpose of launching Dixit. “His music has his identity imprinted on it. The fluidity is real, not constructed,” says Vishal Dadlani, when asked what impressed him the most about Dixit.
But the decision to record an album brought to a head the issue of language. “By 2005, I had about 30-40 songs, all in English. But while I could think only in English, I sang with more conviction in Kannada and Hindi, which also reached a wider audience,” says Dixit. Ghosh agrees. “[At my friends’ place] he was this serious boy in a kurta with a guitar. But once he started singing, all of us got lost in the music. I love how he explores Kannada poetry. There’s a similarity with Rabbi (Shergill, who sings in Hindi and Punjabi, referencing North Indian folk music).”
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