Q&A: Kapil Seshasayee
The Desi Futurist discusses the cultural politics of Bollywood and his forthcoming album, Laal.
Kapil Seshasayee’s A Sacred Bore was one of the most striking debuts of 2018, an ambitious art-rock album exploring caste oppression in India and the diaspora. Layering powerful melodies over industrial beats and guitar work that fuses the microtonal inflections and intricate rhythms of Carnatic music with math-rock and post-punk, the album was a major statement. The forthcoming Laal, the second part of a planned Desi Futurist trilogy, sees the Clydebank-based artist turn his attention to the cultural politics of Bollywood. Musically, it’s a departure too, taking on shades of contemporary r ‘n b and electronic music. He also runs the excellent Desi Futurism, celebrating forward-looking South Asian culture.
Photo: Sean Patrick Campbell
How has lockdown been treating you?
Took some getting used to but I've been very lucky to have a routine of similar hours both work and art-wise since before the lockdown. No longer having a commute has also meant even more time spent creating! It's been very freeing in a sense to be able to have this extra capacity to work on the new record.
Can we talk about your musical influences growing up?
There are a few classical musicians in my family - notably my cousins who performed Carnatic music as vocal duo The Ragam Sisters and I saw them perform a number of times when I was really young visiting family in India. They had a Tanpura in their living room and I have these clear memories of being allowed to play it for short bursts at a time - being mesmerised by the way the strings would oscillate in and out of tune depending on the force you struck them with. It's no surprise you hear similar sounds coming from the tunings I have my guitars in on my solo records! Listening to my cousins improvise over rhythms so alien to what I'd hear in the West would go on to influence my solo music a lot but it took a long time trying to grapple with the ornamentations and structures inherent with Indian classical music.
I've never been formally taught it so resemblances to Carnatic music within my own writing came from a lot of repeated listening to albums by U.Srinivas and Kadri Gopalnath which I'd first heard my parents listening to as a child. When it came to Western pop music - my father had a habit of buying compilations of ‘60s/’70s singles and I'd become hooked on any given one hit wonder as a five year old dancing around the living room. A lack of experiencing music as "albums" as a child meant I didn't really discover milestones like Revolver until I was well into my teens - odd considering how much my work now relies on albums as a format these days. The height of my folk obsession came in my late teens when I'd spend all my free time with albums by John Martyn, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake.
I understand your second album, Laal, has been held up due to the pandemic, but you’ve trailed it with three singles and a series of remixes. Before we tackle those singles, perhaps you could tell us about the overall concept of the album and how it differs to A Sacred Bore in terms of sonics, lyrical approaches etc. Although there are more electronics, you’ve said it’s been written for a live band.
The live band setup was originally intended as a one-off for the LP release shows in December 2018 but the value of re-arranging the songs for live drums, keys and flute went far beyond the novelty of just those shows and that definitely influenced my decision to write these new songs around the strengths of my live band. A Sacred Bore was written as a sonic essay about caste - the opening track which is also the title track is almost an abstract for the whole album and the lyrics touch on me unpacking my own caste privilege before hinting at what themes are to be explored over the remaining nine tracks. Each track is a chapter covering a different topic relating to caste.
Laal functions more as a series of vignettes - an episodic look at Bollywood with similar themes reprising across the whole record. Sonically it's a real departure from my debut with lush synth textures taking the place of the serrated post punk of my old material. I'd taught myself how to construct my own synths in MAX MSP while working on A Sacred Bore and as I grew more confident with this process I found myself integrating them more and more into my writing. I fell for contemporary R&B in a big way in between albums and the influence of artists like D'Angelo and Solange really shines through on these new songs. Their music being no less political but far less confrontational than the noisy punk I swore by growing up was something I could really get lost in and I enjoyed the challenge of writing my recent music in this way. The influence of producers like Arca & Holly Herndon can be heard too - I'm working a lot more closely with my producer on this record to the sort of sonics you might find on those early SOPHIE singles.
‘The Item Girl’ explores Bollywood sexism. It’s also the poppiest track you’ve done to date, with an r‘n b influence in the synths and beats. What were you aiming for musically?
I was originally aiming for something akin to the hazy psychedelica of Solange's last LP When I Get Home but stylistic elements which are typical of all my material like Carnatic-sounding guitar work and crackly granulated synths eventually found their way into the tune - making it what it is today. It also signals how the Neubauten-sounding industrial percussion of all the music I'd released as a solo artist up to that point was no longer part of the sonic palette - it's as much about what you're leaving behind with each new release as it is about what new styles you're channeling in your future work I think. My producer Edwin Stewart McLachlan (also the drummer on this new LP) was as taken aback as everyone else by that song - replacing the Big Black-sounding drum loops with groovier sequences of 808s is something you'll hear all over the new record.
‘The Gharial’ explores nationalist narratives in Bollywood, centred on the image of a crocodile. Can you elaborate?
A gharial is a type of crocodile with religious significance in Hinduism - depicted in art frequently as a river vehicle to the Hindu Deity Gaṅgā. There's a scene in recent hit Bollywood film Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior where cartoonish antagonist Uday Bhan Singh Rathore (inaccurately depicted as Muslim) roasts and eats a crocodile on screen to show off how evil he is - literally just to anger any Hindus watching. To me this is propaganda pure and simple in an age where Hindu / Muslim conflicts run deep with events related to the revoking of the special state of Kashmir and the passing of legislation like the Citizenship Amendment Act over the past 2 years. As the divide between Hindus and Muslims deepens - it becomes easier to profit off that divide and that is exactly what films like Tanhaji and Padmaavat are aiming for. With this single I'm calling out how irresponsible it is to weaponize conflict for profit in a climate where rioting between these communities is so common. The film in question masquerades as a historical re-enactment from the Mughal era of a battle between two Hindu rulers when it exists solely to stoke religious tensions.
Musically, would it be fair to say it builds on ‘The Item Girl’, with the wriggly synth line and snapping beats?
Yeah, I was definitely writing these songs with a live set in mind where ‘The Gharial’ ends where ‘The Item Girl’ begins. For a recent showcase I did for Wide Days I spoke a little in between each song about the narrative themes, but for future touring we'll definitely be performing the LP in its intended format - as a song cycle.
You’ve called in a series of artists to remix the track. Can you tell me about each of those?
It was a very interesting experiment! The pandemic made my usual guise of touring each release impossible so I had to be more creative in terms of how I raised awareness of each new single. Remix culture is one very fundamental to the styles of music I'm influenced by at the moment so I was excited to see how it would go - Curating the artists to remix the singles was a very natural process of reaching out to those I'd already been in regular communication with during the pandemic. Geography is rendered irrelevant in a climate where you're forced to go online for most interactions and this worked to my advantage for collaborating with new artists - something I'd never have thought to do for my first record. Some of those who remixed the 2 singles I'd met through DIY shows over the years while others like DJ Isuru I met through activist spaces - I played a protest event against casteism for him at SOAS last year.
‘The Gharial’ was remixed by Scottish producer Erskine Lynas in this brilliant Garage style you'd have totally found on Kiss FM back when. After an instagram-live performance for South Asian American publication The Juggernaut, I connected with Milwaukee based producer Q The Sun and he remixed ‘The Gharial’ into a lush hip-hop instrumental. Renu who I was lucky enough to interview for Desifuturism.com, reworked it as an experimental D&B tune and I was really impressed at how even my most accessible music could still sound as abstract as prior offerings in the right context.
‘The Pink Mirror’ is named after a film by queer filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan, and discusses problematic narratives in modern Bollywood films, including transphobic tropes. Can you tell me more?
Finding out about The Pink Mirror in the first place was a lot more organic than actively researching Bollywood for what I wanted to cover across the rest of the new LP: A friend first introduced me to it as she thought I'd find it entertaining - there was a novelty to it for her in that she didn't have a cultural context for South Asian films and their production values when they're not big budget Bollywood films. I really enjoyed the film but was shocked to read about it being banned - remaining so to this day in India. Having grown up in a South Asian household - reading that a queer director was being blocked from telling a story based on lived experience was pretty jarring knowing that many tone deaf portrayals in mainstream Indian TV / cinema are still prevalent of LGBTQ+ Indians.
We're still getting very shallow depictions just for comedic relief and just as the Item Girl trope influences the way men view women - a lack of nuance in the depictions of LGBTQ+ indians on mainstream platforms lead directly to the homophobia and transphobia I see so often in South Asian spaces. I've debated instances of these before and often people rely on stereotypes which are very othering - reducing someone to a caricature which is then perceived as a realistic portrayal. Representation matters. The Pink Mirror remains banned to this day in India but it's found an audience abroad in Canada and the US - its director Sridhar Rangayan has worked tirelessly to platform and champion queer Indian cinema through his production company Solaris Pictures and I'm donating all proceeds from the sale of the single to this cause.
As for the remixes, it’s interesting to see which elements each artist has chosen to bring to the fore: Shruti Kumar stripping it back to guitar and voice, making it more cinematic in the process, DJ Isuru dubbing it out, LumbeRoss taking it a hip-hop direction.
That's the thing I really love about remixes - you don't know what people are going to fixate on or whether the original structure of the song will dictate their choices. It's really exciting. Shruti's remix is one of my favourites - she's worked with the likes of Fiona Apple & Hans Zimmer and the cinematic scope of her talents come to the fore in this remix. The brief guitar solo in this song was the most challenging thing to record so I was pleased that it got more attention outside of the original work. Very honoured she agreed to do one. DJ Isuru's dub remix is representative of the sorts of mixes I've heard from him over the years and it was great to hear the single reimagined in the context of the work he's done as part of club nights he's organised in London. Really loved the gamelan-sounding percussion in the LumbeRoss remix - He runs a very interesting site, Exploring Chinese Rap, and I feel like the influence of all these artists he's platforming made its way into the remix itself.
Can you tell us about your DesiFuturism website?
At Desifuturism.com I interview South Asians artists whose work might not fit the traditional mould of what would constitute South Asian / Diaspora Art. This might be down to a narrow colonial mindset of art not revelling in stereotypes as “unmarketable” or structures such as caste presenting a barrier to success. With my music I'm often critical of South Asian culture but with this website I want to celebrate it - particularly what's not celebrated by more mainstream outlets (be they South Asian themselves or otherwise). There is so much to being South Asian beyond rants against Chai / Yoga and Upper Caste lens of Netflix shows like Never Have I Ever. No one knows how popular blast beats, noise music or hardcore punk is to South Asians or how limited the culture that makes it to the West is as a representation of us as a whole. I've gotten to interview a HBO producer hoping to tackle institutionalised racism through surrealism, a stem-cell researcher who uses their research techniques in their musical composition and a documentary film maker looking to explore the influence of famed anti-caste activist BR Amedkar. I'm learning so much too - in interviewing said stem-cell researcher I learned about at least three or four Bengali music styles I'd never come across before - there's so much art outside of Bhangra or Carnatic music and not enough people are aware of that.
What would become this website began with this fantastic article by art critics The White Pube - things came full circle recently when I interviewed the author of the original piece.
What are your plans for the next few months?
Finishing this record is priority #1. I took a short break from interviews for a few weeks as it felt more pertinent to focus on issues like South Asian anti-blackness in the wake of the protests in the US surrounding George Floyd's death but I'll be publishing interviews again soon on Desifuturism.com - I've got so many amazing artists to introduce you all to in the coming months so watch this space!