© Instagram.com/priyism
Culture & Living
The artist's debut tackles identity crises with lush fusion
When Mumbai-bred, New York-based artist Priya Darshini received the news of her Grammy nomination—for her debut record Periphery—it was a November morning and she’d just woken up to make some coffee. She says over a phone call from Evanston near Chicago, “I knew they were announcing but I wasn't watching. Normally, I just read the news. But I started getting text messages. And I was like, ‘What is this for? Did it really happen?’ And I had to confirm. So I went online, and when I got a Twitter message from the Recording Academy, I knew it. It was very surreal.”
As much as she tried to put it at the back of her mind, the night before this, a notification she received about the Recording Academy—which hands out the Grammys—following her on social media also pulled her back into the inevitable question of whether she was nominated. “Until the previous night (of the nominations announcement), I was not actively thinking about it,” she says.
While the Grammys are pushed back from their usual January date to now take place in March it arguably gives more room for first-time nominees like Darshini’s music to gain more ears. Nevertheless, the artist is clear that a prefix of “Grammy-nominated artist” isn’t something she intends to use as a calling card. “It’s not the destination, none of this is a destination. There are so many incredible artists putting out amazing music every year and not everyone can get this nomination, but this doesn’t mean my art is any different if I don’t win a Grammy either,” she says. The artist points out that the nomination system and winners are peer-voted, which she counts as a “big, big high-five from peers.”
Darshini moved to the US in 2013, but she had lived in the country temporarily going back and forth even as she worked in India. A singer who was involved in Bollywood film soundtracks such as D Company and more, Darshini says the music space in India left a lot to be desired in 2004 and 2005. Remarking how much independent music can breathe and get its due today—and even how much more creative Bollywood music has gotten—she felt “stifled” about 15 years ago by those peers. “I feel like I'm an explorer, I'm a seeker… I can't be put in a box. So I need to explore, I need to do different things,” she adds.
Periphery, which features hammered dulcimer artist Max ZT (also her husband), ace percussionist Chuck Palmer, drummer Will Calhoun and cellist Dave Eggar, amongst others is very much that story of an explorer and an outsider. Through regal string sections, gentle dulcimer and roomy, shapeshifting vocals that blend Indian classical with western, Darshini grapples with feelings of belonging and othering. “We're constantly in this beast. We are in this place of other people, all the time. It could be culturally, it could be a different language, it could be colour, gender, queerness… caste, there's this constant othering. Living in India, it was so obvious in my face all the time and coming here to the US, it's so obvious in my face all the time. Yeah, racism here and there in India as well. I always wondered, ‘Why am I on the outside of things?’”
Recorded in an old church, Periphery also uses the space as part of the storytelling in a way, the natural reverb making its way into the omnidirectional microphone they used to record live. “It felt like a cross-disciplinary art project in a sense. I wanted to bring out the best in us in a live setting. It's a very old school style of recording, but using very advanced technology. It’s sort of timeless. It's kind of the past and the future,” Darshini says.
While it was her label, Chesky Records, who submitted the album for consideration in the Best New Age Album category, Darshini says she wasn’t thinking about any kind of genre or style to fit this into. “We just wrote the music together and went and recorded it. I’m excited, though. What I'm realising is I think, new age is happening right now. Whatever they pick, this is it. This is like the future,” the artist says.