A musical melting pot

Aditi Ramesh

Imagine you are served some daal with what looks like dhaniya sprinkled on it. But then you taste it and find out that the herb is actually Italian parsley instead. That's the sort of feeling you get when you hear city-based singer Aditi Ramesh's new EP, Leftovers. The sound resembles a person from a small town in Tamil Nadu who shifts base to the US for a while, and then returns home wearing a hoodie and jeans, but later slips into a lungi when he's in the comfort of his home. The songs, in other words, are dressed in Carnatic lingerie underneath a jazzy gown.

But that's always been Ramesh's signature sound and she's refined it with this album. Does it fall under the bracket of fusion music, though? The singer tells us, "I think that the term is overused. But I get it that things which are called 'fusion' are hard to classify into any other genre. So, in a sense, it's not wrong because it is the blending together of different styles and that's the kind of music I like making. But, it is still a stereotypical word." Let's not box the EP into one genre, in that case, and describe it as a melting pot of eastern and western musical flavours. Either way, Leftovers is a tasty dish for the ears, and Ramesh has cooked up something that's worthy of your time.

Log on to soundcloud.com to listen to Leftovers

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