Colonial Cousins to Return with Fourth Album This Year

“We had never gone anywhere,” insists Leslie Lewis, musician, producer and one-half of fusion duo Colonial Cousins. “We hadn’t taken a break; television has taken a break from music. Television hasn’t been promoting music outside of Bollywood.” Lewis, who along with classical- and ghazal singer Hariharan, had captured the imagination of India in late Nineties, with hits like ”˜Krishna’ and ”˜Sa Ni Dha Pa’ (from 1996’s Colonial Cousins), and ”˜Lady’ (from 1998’s The Way We Do It), says that the band is working on releasing their fourth album this year.

Lewis hopes that new shows like Coke Studio@MTV – which he is the musical director for and which will feature Colonial Cousins on an episode – will bring non-Bollywood music back in focus. “Who’s ever going to know that you’ve done an album because television is not promoting it,” he says. In between their solo projects, and a couple of joint ones ”“ Lewis and Hariharan composed music for Tamil films Modhi Vilayadu (2009) and Chikku Bukku (2010) ”“ the duo have also been prepping songs for the next Colonial Cousins album. “There seems to be absolutely no time to sit together and play as a band. Colonial Cousins is like a timepass band for us ”“ we get together and we have fun. That’s how it started and that’s how it still is. But maybe, by the end of this year, we should be out with the next album,” says Lewis.