‘I need to put my heart and soul into a song’

For years, all she knew about India was New Delhi and Ludhiana. For it was in these two cities that she had her extended family where she, along with her parents, came visiting every vacation. “I was born and brought up in Thailand. So during vacations we would visit my mama’s place in New Delhi before boarding a Shatabdi to Ludhiana to be with my maternal grandparents. India to me, for years, was just these two cities,” says the Thai-Indian songwriter and singer Rimi Nique, currently in Noida for an event. 

Things changed in 2014 when she joined the TV reality show The Voice Thailand, becoming the first Indian-Thai to do so. “Then, singer Yo Yo Honey Singh spotted me on Youtube and called me to India for the TV reality show, India’s Raw Stars, leading to the country becoming home for me. Before that India was my motherland which I met during my summer breaks,” she adds with a smile.

Rimi was about to leave for Thailand after India’s Raw Star got over when she got a call from music composers Sachin-Jigar. “They wanted to try my voice for a song. They briefed me on the style and the theme, put the music on loop and told me to sing. The concept of playback singing was alien to me before that. But singing alone is not sufficient for me, I need to be completely involved in the creation of a song. As an artiste, I need to put my heart and soul into it,” she says, adding the musicians understood her viewpoint and took her in. Rimi then wrote the English and Spanish parts and recorded the song – Naach Meri Jaan (for Any Body Can Dance 2) which marked her debut as a lyricist and playback singer in Bollywood and heralded a beautiful journey for her.

In 2015, she wrote and sang Shillong Harvest Song in the Sony album’s Silence Is A Bliss with Indian flautist Naveen Kumar and drummer Sivamani. The same year, she sang Sunny Sunny, The Workout Song for Sunny Leone’s workout video with singer Darshan Raval. In 2018, Rimi worked as a lyricist and singer in Saansein Huin Dhuan Dhuan for Race 3. Last year, she came out with The Chamiya Song with DJ Bravo. “It’s been a smooth journey. To be with famous people has given me a lot of confidence. But the fact that there are hardly any female composers is a bit upsetting,” she says, hoping for  more creative women to come out.

Rimi was six when she began singing shabad kirtan in gurdwaras in Thailand. Being NRIs, her parents were conscious that she and her siblings should not only be able to speak and read Hindi but the mother tongue Punjabi as well. They wanted the kids to be aware of their culture, hence the trips to gurdwaras and singing shabads. This made Rimi adept not only in Thai, Spanish, Chinese and English, but Hindi and Punjabi as well.

“I began with spiritual music in gurdwaras which continued in school. My extracurricular activity in school was always singing. I won many prizes too, but I indulged in singing as it made me feel happy. At that time I didn’t know that I would take it up as a career one day,” she says. And, since there was no opposition from the family made things easier for her. “I love my family for never stopping me to stop loving music. They always believed in me but also told me,  ‘never put all your eggs in one basket’,” she adds.

So, after schooling at Ruamrudee International School (RIS), Bangkok, where she was part of the Jeremiah Singers Choir, Rimi joined Whitman College in Washington (DC) where she majored in economics and environmental studies with a music minor. Even in college, she was part of an Indi-Jazz band Dabbles in Bloom. “I used to mix Indian ragas with English music which were loved by everyone and kept motivating me,” she says. “Adriel Borshansky, Robby Seager and Jonas Myers were the other band members. Our first album, Found It, was released in July 2010, after which toured the Pacific North West,” she says.