Q&A: Raghu Dixit

Raghu Dixit is a happy man. With a packed gig calendar, new management, recording and publishing deals, and a new album in the works, Mr Nice Guy of Indian rock has taken his brand of Indian folk rock international ”“ with a short two years of releasing his debut album. Dixit’s international calendar, this season, started off in May at the prestigious WOMAD festival in Caceres, Spain, before taking over the UK, including fests likes The Great Escape, Larmer Tree and Cardiff Big Weekend. We caught him over the phone from his Bengaluru home, before he heads off to the US, the UK, Australia, Sweden and Dubai.

You’ve been going great guns, Raghu. Now you’re only going to come to India for vacations ”“ you will only perform internationally”¦

[Laughs] No, no”¦ that’s not true”¦

But congratulations! You have lots of new things happening, lots of new deals”¦

Yes, there are three deals. One is an international management deal. Apart from India, for the rest of the world, we will be managed by a collaborative management team of Paul Knowles and Robert Horsfall. We didn’t sign the management deal till almost the last day of this trip. But we were testing waters these past few months ”“ and it looks like both of us pretty impressed with each other.

During this period of 3 months, they got me a record label which was ready to distribute my album ”“ the existing album – to the rest of the world. Vishal and Shekhar have now licensed it out to Wrasse Records for distribution. They are starting with the UK. In October, we will move on to Australia and March next year is when we try and get into the US market.

And you have some pretty impressive labelmates on Wrasse ”“ Fela Kuti, Angélique Kidjo and Pink Martini.

Yeah”¦ [Founder] Ian Ashbridge is one of the legendary people in the industry. He’s been big into African music so far, but he thought our music was no less than the music he’s heard so far; and that deserved to be heard. With his connections and help, we’ll probably break into new markets. Wrasse Records is connected with Universal Music also – Wrasse uses Universal’s distribution network and Universal uses Wrasse’s catalogue where they are not the experts. So it’s like a symbiotic relationship for them, which is good for me because I’m reaching out to major markets through Universal’s distribution. At the same time, Wrasse will ensure that I get the spot that I deserve rather than being shoved into some world music thing. The idea is to not get labelled as a world music artist and get restricted to a niche market, but actually try and see if we can cross over and get into the mainstream market”¦

You have also just got yourself a publishing deal.

Yes, the third deal is the probably the most interesting one, because nobody has got a deal like this from India, atleast when it comes to independent artists. Artists like [AR] Rahman sir have already got it but it’s the first time an independent artist has got signed up by a publishing company. Sony/ATV has signed me on as their first Indian artist for worldwide publishing.

That is huge!

Yes, that is huge. It might not come across as big for people in India; they might not understand what it exactly means. But once I went to the UK, and I saw how artists make money through publishing and PRS and PPL, I realised that ”˜Wow, we just need one big song!’ [laughs].

Coming back to the record deal, is it only for the first album, though?

Yes, it is for the existing album. Again, it’s like testing waters, seeing how far it goes through Wrasse. And if it goes down well for both of us, why not consider a second album?

Speaking of the second album, is it somewhere on the horizon now?

Oh well, the second album has been on the horizon for far too long now [laughs], because we have almost 30-40 ready songs, yaar. November-December is when we go into the studios and actually belt all these songs and put them down. Right now, there are two distinct sounds that the band is confused about – whether we should have a mix of both, or pursue one sound. One is a completely qawwali-sufi-based rock sound, and the other is completely Afro-Cuban-Latino-based Kannada folk.