Falu, New York’s indie Hindi queen, goes back to Bollywood
The singer trained in classical Indian traditions blends Indian film tunes with contemporary Western pop
Indian-born singer-songwriter Falguni Shah is better known as Falu, an influential musician who has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road project and with A.R. Rahman on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. She has also released two albums with her band.
Trained in the Jaipur Gharana musical tradition as a child, Falu, 37, is known for what she calls “indie Hindi”, a blend of classical Indian melodies and contemporary Western pop music. Now she has returned to the Bollywood music of her parents, backed by an orchestra of Eastern and Western instruments. Roger Catlin spoke to Falu from her home in New York.
Why choose the Bollywood sound after inaugurating “indie Hindi”?
I come from Mumbai. When you grow up in Mumbai, you can’t escape Bollywood. It’s ingrained. It’s a lifestyle. Radio has it. TV has it. Any cultural festival will have Bollywood music. So it’s always there in the back of your mind. And when I had a chance to perform with A.R. Rahman, he really made me fond of it. Sometimes you work with people and they instigate something really cool about that music that I or somebody else would not really think. That really started the process of: why don’t I do something? (Because I’m) living here in America and trying to bring this classic Bollywood music to the two South Asian generations that are here. We have our parents’ generation, who immigrated in the 1960s and ’70s, and now their kids, second-generation South Asians who grew up here. They heard Bollywood music all the time at home. Sometimes children do not think that whatever their parents are into is cool, so they rebel against it.
How did you bridge that?
In creating this orchestra, we have taken the old songs from the ’60s and ’70s and we have treated them with today’s modern music. So the arrangements are a little different and more relevant to now.