Sid Sriram Kicks Off India Tour This Week with Journeying New Set

If you’ve seen Sid Sriram’s concert announcements on social media, then you know that he’s always clear with his messaging about whether his film songs will be performed, or if it’s an all-original set. Or if it’s a Carnatic set. Or if it’s a Boundless set of improvised music. Clearly, there are a lot of different iterations to the Chennai-born U.S.-raised singer-songwriter and producer, who just released his new album Sidharth.

With the process of making and putting out Sidharth, the artist says he’s begun to embrace “the whole spectrum of my identity” as a Carnatic vocalist, powerhouse singer of Tamil and Telugu film songs and pop/R&B experimentalist. “Are you familiar with Harry Potter?” he asks over a video call from the U.S., going on to describe that dividing parts of his identity as a musician felt like Horcruxes that had “split my soul up into different pieces.” He adds, “That’s just not a good way of living.”

Before, Sriram says he used to “very deliberately work hard to keep the silos all separate” with the reasoning that he was protecting his artistry and “keeping certain things safeguarded.” He adds, “Through the process of making this album, I really realized that is a detrimental way of existing, because you can’t divide yourself into different pieces.”

At the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) on November 25th, Sriram and his band – comprising artists who performed at his half-a-million streamed NPR Tiny Desk set and Indian musicians – will take on different sides in the artist’s kaleidoscopic life. “I really wanted to look at it as a journey through my life, of where I’ve been and I’ve come to this point, all the different genre influences and trigger points that make me who I am,” Sriram says.

The setlist at the Grand Theatre at NMACC in Mumbai includes “reinterpretations” of a couple of film songs, even as the inimitable Carnatic music influence is also colored into the songs off Sidharth. After that, he heads to Kuala Lumpur on November 29th and comes back to Bengaluru to perform a headline set at Echoes of Earth festival between December 2nd and 3rd. He says about bringing his U.S. bandmates in to this part of the world, “There’s a real potency in what we’re putting forth, and I can’t wait for them to also experience India, they’ve never been to India before. And it’s going to be a really interesting and cool cross-cultural conversation going on onstage, and also our time out there.”

Like a true Carnatic performer, he sticks by his idea of giving even the new songs a different live version that still stays true to the studio recording. “[When] I make recorded music, it always feels like a framework to allow me to then bring that to life on stage. The stage is my favorite place to be. And yet, the album and the recorded versions of the songs are almost like a blueprint to reference and reinterpret based on where I’m at,” he adds.

The album Sidharth came at a time when Sriram had moved back to the U.S. after spending years in India, becoming a favorite in the South Indian film music industry and connecting with his Carnatic roots with concerts. He released Entropy in 2019 but that was a different kind of effort compared to Sidharth, in that it was mostly Sriram at the helm as singer, songwriter and producer.

He was done chasing labels for an album deal – something he wanted ever since a cover of Frank Ocean’s “We All Try” blew up on YouTube – and that’s when Def Jam Recordings came on board to launch Sriram in a wholly different way in the U.S. In addition to NPR Tiny Desk, cathartic singles like “Do the Dance,” “Dear Sahana” and “Quiet Storm” have received radio airplay and there was even a campaign to have it nominated at the Grammys.

It amuses Sriram to some degree that so much of this has been serendipitous, starting with meeting Ryan Olson, his producer on Sidharth. Those in the know about American indie music may have heard of Olson for his work on the project Gayngs, but more so because he’s a longtime friend and regular collaborator with Justin Vernon, principal songwriter in Bon Iver.

In a very natural way, Vernon was brought on to work on Sidharth and Sriram has gone on to support Bon Iver on tour earlier this year. Sriram says unlike his earlier material where he was a little reluctant to loosen his grip on the music-making processes, on Sidharth he had “discovered and reveled in the beauty of collaboration.” While there’s no doubt that we’ve often heard an unmistakable Bon Iver influence in Sriram’s solo music – he sampled Bon Iver’s song “Perth” on the song “Entropy” – Vernon is present on this new album, most notably heard adding a few vocals on “Quiet Storm.”  

Sriram says about the recording of the album with artists like Vernon, Aaron Baum, Alex Epton, Chris Bierden and more, “It was just such an egoless process. No one was thinking about power hierarchy or who was going to write the hook or what the publishing splits were going to be. It was just… we were there just jamming, you know? It was truly grounded in the spirit of collaboration and this the joy of music.”

With Olson taking over production duties, Sriram wasn’t worried about the minutiae like “thinking about tweaking the kickdrum” or anything. “Here, I could take a step back and really think about concepts and hone in and focus on melody, singing and what I wanted to talk about,” he adds.

The result is a breathtaking, powerful album that you can get lost in, over the course of just under an hour. There’s a familiar kind of atmospheric, ambient treatment heard right from “Most High” and then, Sriram kicks into gear the more accessible songs but emotionally tender songs like “Do The Dance” and “Dear Sahana.” “Quiet Storm” does live up to its name in being a bit wild, but the change-up comes with “The Hard Way” and its electronic palette, followed by a very slow and melancholy “Blue Spaces.” Choppy beats, experimental approaches to melody and more permeate through the rest of the album, mixed with Sriram’s occasional lean into his Carnatic vocals.

It was in 2008 that Sriram feels the “seeds were sown” for the “cross-cultural conversation” that he was having through the music he was writing at the time. There was a little bit of soul and he would often add an aalaap – “just to be, like, almost contrived,” he says with a laugh. So he never wanted to “tokenize my [Indian music] culture” and says today, Sidharth has been received with a good amount of curiosity from American listeners who are not familiar with India’s traditional music.

If Sidharth has made waves in the U.S. and different territories, it’s a whole different ball game to make a mark in India. There are the shows now, but beyond that, in the streaming scape, the artist’s prolific stance as a singer for film soundtracks means that the album can get buried under the next new film song he’s attached to. Sriram says it’s a good problem to have and is trying to figure it out, but beyond that, Sidharth makes a shift in trajectory for him.

He says, “This feels like I’m stepping into this phase of my career where I’m really putting my original music at the very forefront of what I’m doing.” We’re inclined to agree when you hear him say that there’s no benchmark or barometer for where he’s reached – “the pinnacle of the playback, singing cinema world and live music and now building something from the foundation upwards” as an artist with an English album out. Sriram adds, bringing in a larger perspective about what it means for South Asian artists seeking global listenership, “We haven’t really seen it done so there’s not a blueprint that we can follow. But that’s also what makes it so interesting and exciting. Because we have this opportunity to really blaze a completely new trail and hopefully inspire and show artists, another kind of way to move.”

There are more North American shows upcoming in March 2024, plus remixes of songs off Sidharth. Sriram says he’s slowly starting to work on new music. He says, “I feel like I’m in the most boundless, no pun intended, and creatively open space I’ve ever been in my life and just very self-assured as well of my own vision and my place in the global cultural context.”

Sid Sriram performs at the Grand Theatre, Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Mumbai on November 25th. Get tickets here.