Susheela has worlds of music inside her.
A promising European tour* after the release of 'Music for Crocodiles' (without bonuses) saw Susheela Raman (home) and her companion, guitarist Sam Mills, well set on their way from a first stop in Paris with a memorable performance behind them that was a journey in itself.
Live on stage, the two were occasionally alone. For most of an eclectic set of songs from all three albums so far the only fellow musician was Hilaire Penba, the bassist from Cameroon who's been a sturdy part of changing line-ups since the first surprises of 'Salt Rain'.
Just the trio with an ancient Indian hymn to start a very magical mystery tour; it's a "minimal format and new ways", Susheela announced.
"We're broke," Sam joked more quietly.
'Salt Rain' propelled Susheela Raman to fame as the "new Asian vibe" to follow fast, but what was it? She has Tamil parents, says she loves hanging out in the most ethnically mingled parts of her native London and in Paris where the mix is more varied and widespread, but was brought up on Indian classical traditions that have outlasted empires.
Having visited Ethiopia, where she had a fine time, Susheela must have added a multitude of sounds to an already rich "world music" vocabulary during the spell in south-eastern India, where Madras, one of the first big cities in a so-called developing country I've been lucky enough to spend a few weeks in myself.
Rather, a few kilometres outside it, in a village I'll never forget for the warmth of its people, though that extended to a general turnout most times I "had a bath". It wasn't, it was done with buckets and outdoors and it was very hot. The long white, fine beaches on that stretch of coast are remarkable. The famous gaudiness of some Indian temples in the video shown on stage was toned down in the music to make for subtler colours, but they said the beaches got to them and their sound.
Susheela was in centre-stage, grabbing for a sweat towel and making playtime of vocal acrobatics, Hilaire to her right quietly keeping her aloft with the sometimes hypnotic deep melodies of a decidedly west African bass-line and Sam her left-hand man with an acoustic guitar that could have almost been a sitar in a raga mode: at moments like that I found myself watching and wondering: "Just what country on earth are we in now?"
 She was relaxed yet mesmerising. There's only one "label" for Susheela singing lyrics in work such as the love song 'Light Years' and 'The Same Song', one about life's journeys, from 'Music from Crocodiles' in English and then others touching matters of the soul with her parents' tongues: she's become a "world musician" in one person. But she needed the return to those roots -- it was easy to imagine Sam jamming on the beach for the fun of it with Indian musicians using their traditional instruments, how could he have resisted such temptation? -- to come back north and sing us the new focus in her.
'Salt Rain' was an astounding debut. In concert, they performed few numbers from 'Love Trap', which was less well received by critics and indeed fans in 2003. I like the second album featuring versatile musicians from at least three continents. Susheela sometimes brings more of one of the earliest devotional musics remembered anywhere -- Sanskrit's an incredibly old language and part of the basis of what people today call the Indo-European ones, where some words we use predate the Romans and Greeks -- into the 21st century.
Cathy, with me for the concert, likes it less: I think many people do. From before her first CD, Susheela has been absorbing any kind of music she hears. In 2001, she was cover girl on the first issue of the French quarterly 'World - Musique - Destinations'. They've both survived to keep the openness and acquire that focus. With her kind of talent, there's the risk of becoming like a truly bi- or tri-lingual child who grows up to speak each language fluently and with a perfect accent, yet is unable to find real self-expression in any one of them. On 'Love Trap', you can hear this unevenness, there's plenty of soul but it's a stretched-out one doing a lot of searching.
Now she's not and I wish her a tremendous tour, hence last week's injunction here not to miss it if she comes your way. She's matured as a woman, a good fun entertainer, the journey is now a musical one shared with an audience that adored it.
I'm told the togetherness of her fellow musicians is far deeper than it has been live sometimes before. The show warmed up after a meditative start, structured well to alternate between Susheela's more thoughtful songs and others where there was nothing so special about the words. With eyes on Susheela and often to each other, Sam and Hilaire did some first-rate jam sessions.
You might say the trio rocked, but it's too facile, the exchanges during one such session were so sensuous with a pulsating heat as Susheela swayed to the rhythm that many people there seemed multiply turned on. Sam's skill with a guitar is such that he can switch from a jazz-rock style to the crystal showers of descending notes characteristic of some African musics; then it's the pace and tonal subtleties of the fast closing passage of a raga, where a western ear can often catch echoes of the blues while one attuned to Indian classical music listens out for a gift, as in the blues and some jazz, for improvisation within given limits.
This is worth a mention because Sam ventured one to Ethiopian music modes as a basis for some early work. That Abyssinian journey echoed on 'Salt Rain' brought the musicians deeper acquaintance with something that changed in western music when J.S. Bach came along. He decided to tweak notes a wee bit to have different sets of them fit together neatly in "scales". Bach went on a bender and wrote a fat songbook called 'The Well-Tempered Clavier'. He didn't mean a keyboard in a good mood, but helped keep dozens of pianists and piano tuners happy to this day.
"I've had a brilliant idea, have a go and hear for yourself," that's what Bach meant. So many people agreed that ones who listen to nothing apart from symphonies and concertos accuse people in other parts of the world of bending notes that then "sound wrong". They don't. They get it right. To say why means maths, so never mind; who needs arithmetic when Susheela Raman embodies world music and usually has a light heart?
It's a spoiler to give away some of the fun. Listening back before getting into the 'Music for Crocodiles' album, I skipped 'Trust in Me', reluctant to hear Susheela sing perhaps her best-known song too soon after what she did to it on the night. She'll do it again, that's for sure. Suffice to say that in southern India, it can be religious practice to leave milk outdoors for reptiles who terrify some while others worship them.
Just as successful was the 'Love Trap' title song in French, translated by an Afghan poet friend of Susheela's, Barmak Akram, who co-wrote the French song, 'L'Ame volatile,' on the new album. I'm afraid I didn't catch the name of the African man who was summoned on stage to duet -- and very well -- with her for one of the encores. If anyone knows, please pass it on.
What then of 'Music for Crocodiles' (with bonuses; the DVD, where the picture comes from, includes Indian journey film), once again studio produced by Sam?
In concert, we got Susheela the spiritual, the song-writer, the sensual, the silly but funny -- and the sad. The first album track, 'What Silence Said,' is a song about the different emotions we feel when someone we love dies, the grief and the pain, anger too. It was how, as she said on stage, "you claw your way through these feelings to reach some point of acceptance." Before what she called the "unquiet version" that closes the disc as a bonus, there's 'Leela', a hope song for a little god-daughter.
On the album, there are more musicians, lots of hand-drumming, a string section and of course, south Indian instruments. It's the same Susheela as ever, who this time begins with an emotionally varied range of songs in English, but the lyrics are generally more reflective, the games with words less banal.
She's gone deeper to brighten up and where I spoke of "togetherness", her brief intro says it's "six or seven years since I started work with Sam, Hilaire, Djanuno (Dabo on African percussion), Aref (Durvesh plays Indian percussion); time for the sauce to thicken and our complicity to deepen." That's honest and it's audible. The Indian songs are grouped on the second half: if you enjoy adventurous music, you'll like this album, the change is both in the roots and the growth.
The experiments of 'Salt Rain', where she took all the right risks, have become accomplishment. If you're unused to non-western musics -- that's hard nowadays -- chances are Susheela and friends will do it for you, maybe second time round, like a rich curry where the spices work their full magic slowly.
Should Susheela go streamline and come up with a live album on the strength of the current tour, she's got the confidence and the complicity to take that kind of risk now. Imagine it, her equivalent of Alanis Morrissette revisiting 'Jagged Little Pill Acoustic', out in July and selling better than hot cheese naan! If the bread's good, because in many Indian restaurants in Paris it isn't. Fortunately, the French have less mild tastes when it comes to music.
Such things are appetisers for what's to come on a log whose name and layout changed between concert and write-up.
Like Susheela, I need to be be kept on the rails.
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The full dates aren't on Susheela's site or any other I can find, but there's a link to click on the relevant page there to obtain further details.
After I announced this concert at La Maroquinerie, someone rightly observed it was a mediocre venue for a musician of her qualities. It's one of Paris's lively islands of cultural activity in a dull part of town, but the concert-dance hall itself has no seats apart from steps and I'm more accustomed to such environments than was my companion.
She thoroughly enjoyed Susheela, but doesn't like too much smoke in the air and missed a little of the show to get some air. We both smoke but it depends where. I wasn't unduly bothered, just asked the girl next to me when she lit up in the dark please not to drop anything on my jacket, which was on top of my bag on the floor.
Nonetheless, people running La Maroquinerie and other such venues should put an effort into pleasing everyone; the tickets weren't cheap. The issue of who gets to play where is one I agreed is worth going into but a separate one; it's more complicated than suggesting musicians might need to rethink their agents to reach a bigger public.
1:16:28 AM link 
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