KASHI TO KAILASH IS STEEPED IN SPIRITUAL ENERGY AND CULTURAL MEMORY. HOW DID YOU NAVIGATE THE BALANCE BETWEEN DEVOTION AND COMMERCIAL ARTISTRY WHILE CREATING IT?
Well, I didn ' t think about commercial artistry at all.
I was called to make this album. I think a lot of musicians will say they answer the call, whether it be intuition or God, and in this case it was definitely God. I knew that people from experience, I ' d watched my friends and people experienced devotional music, but they had to almost set time aside to experience the devotional music.
Growing up in America, I was around so many people that went to church and gospel music and devotion and prayer. I used to watch people sing in a language that I wrote in, like in English, and I would watch people sing to God and I would feel like they were able to worship. And in some ways, because I wasn ' t a classically trained Carnatic singer, and the songs of worship for me were written in those languages, I always felt like I couldn ' t worship with my whole heart.
So the process behind making Kashi to Kailash was to worship in my own voice and to make music that could just be part of your daily life. You wouldn ' t have to take time aside for it. I really feel like the Sanskrit mantras have a vibration and a power within them to unlock your chakras, and to be able to put it forward in a way that more people can listen to it in their daily life amongst their playlists, that was really the only concept behind it.
But I didn ' t think about how people perceive it or how they want to perceive it. I just made whatever God told me to make.
HOW DO YOU APPROACH SONGWRITING WHEN BLENDING SANSKRIT VERSES WITH HIP-HOP BEATS? IS IT INSTINCTIVE OR DEEPLY MEDITATIVE?
The Sanskrit verses, I think they came from like a cellular memory.
A lot of these things, you know, they were part of different dances that I did. Like Shivathandav was one of the first performances I did when I was 10 years old. Since I ' ve performed these songs in my childhood, I have this instinctive understanding of the rhythms.
It was really fun to explore different ways of performing it. Shivathandav itself, I decided to do all 15 verses because I didn ' t want to do half of it and have to come back and do the rest. It was like a oneand-done type of thing.
We really wanted to take people on a musical journey. We do hear versions where it pretty much remains the same, but with my fanbase and the people I was trying to reach, the people that don ' t normally listen to this type of music, I felt like we had to take them on a journey. So it goes through a few genres and it starts more aggressive and ends more hopeful and joyous.
And I feel like that was really what I wanted people to take back from this.
YOU JUST MADE HISTORY AT THE AMAS. BEYOND THE TROPHY, WHAT DID THAT MOMENT REPRESENT FOR YOU— SPIRITUALLY, ARTISTICALLY, PERSONALLY?
You know, winning an American Music Award is obviously something that you need to pay attention to. I think for a long time I always battled between, you know, sorry that my sorry ain ' t Indian enough when America don ' t love me because I ' m Indian AF, but
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