Raghu Dixit
Why a lungi- and ghungroo-wearing troubadour from Mysore could become the face of contemporary Indian music
However to truly realise just how astonishing Raghu’s journey has been we must flashback to college and the bet. To make sure his college life was worth living Raghu had to learn the guitar, and fast. “I asked all my friends to borrow a guitar and be taught in their house ”“ anything Western was banned in my house, even Bollywood wasn’t allowed – I didn’t have jeans until my dad passed away when I was 21,” recalls Raghu, relaxing on a sofa in bespoke music management agency, Sound Advice, on the Strand in Central London.
Raghu emerged from the challenge with his dignity intact and a new, all consuming hobby. “In the first few days of picking up the guitar, I knew I would do this at some point. In that two months I learnt four chords and a song, and realised the amazing joy in sucking in thin air and putting it out there again in a song ”“ people look at you and clap,” laughs the infectiously upbeat singer/songwriter.
Raghu stayed on the professional path his family expected of him, and topped the year in Microbiology at Mysore University. Wanderlust saw him land up in nearest big city, Bengaluru (where he now lives with his wife), where he began teaching (“It paid Rs 600 per month”) before relocating to Belgium for a foreign currency salary.
It proved the next step towards Raghu Dixit the folk rocker. “My landlord discovered I could sing and took my CD to a radio station. I was invited to play on radio and had my 15 minutes of glory. The station received a huge amount of positive e-mails and one week later I was back in India with my guitar, thinking, ”˜How can I be a rock star?’” he recalls.
By day, Raghu took up an IT job and by night honed his fingerpicking and songwriting skills. “I wrote so many songs in that period; I would work from 9 am to 6 pm and run to my guitar afterwards. I started doing radio jingles, which paid me well. So I quit my day job and got into music fulltime. That was 10 or 11 years ago, and the start of living, sleeping and waking up with music.”
During this period, Raghu evolved his self-taught process of conjuring melodies and writing lyrics inspired by news to fit. “I would strum my guitar and hum over the top and make melodies then I would read newspaper headlines, like a bus crash kills 25 people and put them into the melody. Slowly but surely my songwriting improved; it was a method of trial and error.”
Despite a proven track record with cult Bangalore rock-fusionists Antaragni, Raghu struggled to find a label that understood him and his music. Time and again demos were rejected, and label execs would steer him towards a Bollywood sound. So it’s ironic Raghu was saved by a Bollywood music duo Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani in 2007. “The moment I heard those songs, I told him his music truly deserves to go global,” says Dadlani, reminiscing about their first meeting. “And we decided to start a record label just to put his music out.”
The duo (Om Shanti Om, Bluffmaster, Tees Maar Khan) believed in Raghu, releasing his debut CD and secured video testimonials from Bollywood A-listers Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Sanjay Dutt and Karan Johar, which helped the album become India’s best selling independent release of 2009.
