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ASHANTHI The CD you have out now, “Sandawathuren”, is that your first CD or do you have other records out? I had a duo album with this guy called Ranidu. We did an album called “Oba Mage Mai” it was released under Sony music and M Entertainment. Is it still available? Where can you get it? It’s still available through www.me.lk as well as any Vibrations or M Entertainment outlet. That was done in 2003 and then after that it was actually an experiment for me because I wanted to branch off as a solo artist so I wanted to see if my music would influence Sri Lanka society. I got a really good response for the duo album and I went on to do a solo album, which was released end of 2006 and kind of really hit it in 2007. That was “Sandawathuren” I released that through Universal Music and M Entertainment. I’m actually like the first female artist in Sri Lanka to be signed to an international record label. How did your album “Sandawathuren” do? It did pretty well. I wouldn’t say that it’s reached its peak as yet. There’s a lot more to do with it. I have done just one video, but I’m planning on doing another video for it and doing more promotions. Also I’ve started work on my second solo album. Because I think to do a proper performance or to do a really big concert you have to at least have twenty five to thirty songs. Otherwise it can be a performance of about ten songs and that’s it. Then the people don’t get what they want out of the artiste. And you got to have a whole range because it has to be like a proper flow. You got to have the fast songs going, and then the slow segment and than the mid segment and stuff like that. So to have that you need about two or three good albums. I want to put the other album out and then do something really explosive. When you were growing up what was the music in your house? Was it more Western music or more Sri Lankan music? It was more Western. I grew up in Colombo. See, my mom was singing when she was pregnant with me, so I think that made me a lot more influenced to music. She is a Pop musician, so I was influenced by a lot of her music, which was the music at that time eighties music. My sister is twelve years older than me and because of that I used to listen to a lot of music that was much older than my age group. The eighties for me is like wow I belong to that. The eighties and nineties is like my music. I think that the music right now is not even comparable to the music of the eighties and nineties. To me that is the basis for music; if you have that as your base you can do anything. Like creating loops and stuff for commercial music is nothing when you have listened to stuff off Boys to Men, Mariah Carey, Back Street, Naughty by Nature, No Doubt, Cypress Hill and stuff like that What is your mother’s name? Antoinette De Alwis. She’s like a Pop and Jazz singer. So music is in my blood, and I always wanted to be a musician. I think before I could even walk I was probably singing. I was very influenced by music. When I was about 13 Rap kind of started influencing me as well because it was playing a big role in music here. When you started listening to Rap who was popular of the American rappers? From the American rappers it was mostly MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. I was just a little kid. I must have been about five, six or whatever and I used to be singing like “Ice Ice Baby” and MC Hammer stuff and all that. I guess that influenced me in a different way as well. Were they playing Rap in the radio or were your friends playing it? How did you get those Rap records? How did those records come to Sri Lanka? It’s a funny story. I had a tape of Cypress Hill and I used to listen to them a lot. It was my sister’s, I used to kind of steal it whenever she went to school put it on to the walkman and listen to the stuff and kind of like rant along. That was the first bit of Rap I heard. Kriss Kross I used to love Kriss Kross. You know how they go… I used to practice it all the time. So that kind of stuff really influenced me. And my age group was pretty young and hip and that really got me. So Kriss Kross, Warren G, MC Hammer, Ice, those guys really influenced me in the beginning. And if you’re talkin about Sri Lankan rappers, when I was going to school when I was just a kid of about 13, Rap was huge here. Not in a Singhalese English mix kind of sense, but in a very urban sense. Rap was very up market. There were two different segments. There were the cool rappers then, and everyone was into these major dance groups and there were also the guys who did the mass market Sinhalese rap. No one ever merged those two. So these guys, Brown Boogie Nation, they were one of the pioneering Rap groups in Colombo at that time, which Randhir used to be a part of. One of my friends, Anushalee, her brother was the leader of Brown Boogie Nation. His name is Nishan. So us being the little sisters of those guys, we just loved to listen to them. We used to go for all their gigs. I thought. OK this guy rap thing is cool but we need some girls to do some Rap. So I got a little Rap squad together in school and we called it the Rap Squad. It was crazy because it was like a little school thing, and every interval we used to practice. I used to delegate: OK this for you and this line is for whoever else. But unfortunately no one was as interested as me so it never worked out. I was like, OK never mind about these people; I'm going to do this myself. How old were you at that time? About thirteen. I was into Rap very young. My friend Anushalee and I—you know how kids have phone conversations? We would be on the phone for a half an hour to an hour, just rapping. And I used to listen. And that was the time that Mariah Carey came out with “Always Be My Baby” and the remake came out with the female rapper, I forget her name. The “Always Be My Baby” remix came out and all I did was listen to it on the radio. I used to try to pronounce my words like her. I used to call my friend up and say, hey do you think this is right? We used to just discuss. That was the beginning. At that time were there clubs in Colombo where you could kind of perform? Because of restrictions from my school, because it’s a girls only private school, we couldn’t do anything in terms of music. Where were you going to school? I was at Ladies College and they were like: no way this is totally not expected from young ladies. You can do anything after you leave school, but while you’re studying here you can’t do any music. But since my mom was in the industry I used to sneak out and do little things, little performances at small places that didn’t get publicized. And the principal kind of knew about it, but she never came out with it. If you grew up in America everyone is doing Rap, and it’s not that unusual for a woman to do rap. But in Sri Lanka to be a woman rapping is very unusual. Was it hard for you to get started? You have to be very strong to do something radical like Rap. Yeah, the first time I rapped on a song I thought, I like to do this but are people going to think badly of me? And this is Rap. I’m a singer I’m not a rapper but I like rap. Then I thought, hey what the hell! I’m going to do this. Let’s see what it sounds like and it’s for my personal pleasure as well. I don’t care what the world thinks. If they accept it then that’s fine. But it flew, it did good. That was on one of Bathiya and Santhush’s songs I just felt like rapping. Then after that I kind of went into doing it a lot more and improving a lot more as well. What about your friends and your parents? What do they say about you being a rapper? My mom has no problem with me singing at all. My dad supports it as well. But when she heard me rap for the first time she was like, “You’re rapping? Girls don’t do that!” I was like, “Just give me a break. It sounds good and I want to do this, so let’s see how it goes.” And after that she got used to it and she was like, “This does sound kind of nice and no one’s done it before.” You’ve got to actually push the bar and kind of raise the barrier and do what you want to do if you want to be heard. Basically what really opened the door for you? You are really a very popular rapper and singer in Sri Lanka. You mean what kind of things opened the door for me to start rapping? No, to be in the industry. How did you get your name around? It was like this: since my mom was in the industry I knew everyone in the industry. They were all my uncles and aunties. But the thing is I never used that to my influence. I don’t think I got any favors from people for my benefit. I found my own path, I proved myself. I’m not doing what my mom does. It’s completely different. First of all I started with singing jingles and got noticed by a couple of producers. One was Ranga Dassanayake, and Bathiya & Santhush were in my singing class at Aunty Marianne’s. We used to do professional vocal training in terms of Opera and Broadway and stuff like that. They came to class, but I was already there before them. They had this idea of putting this album out. They did an album and after they did another album. I thought these guys are doing music together, that’s cool! I had a couple of songs which I had and I really wanted to produce one so I asked Bathiya if I could do the song? Show me how to do this cause I have no idea. I was about 17 years old. He said, come to our studio and we’ll get you started as far as the beats and track and stuff. I said I have composed this melody I just want to put it into music and record it. He told me to come to their studio and work with a producer called Ranga. He did the track for me and Bathiya liked it so much that he put it on their album. My first single was an English single called “Out of the Blue” and they put it on their album. Then they asked me to come sing with them. I said, “That would be cool.” I had not done something like this so I tried it out and we really jelled. Our voices blended really well, and we were all like new age thinkers. From there we just went ahead and it’s continuing from there. That opened the door for you? That opened the door a lot for me to come out and also for doing my duo with Ranidu. A lot of things got me through the door, especially my advertisements. I started doing that at a really young age, and that got me into the industry. What do you mean by advertisements? I voiced radio and TV commercials. I produced them as well. But when I first started singing in these advertisements people started noticing a different voice around and that brought me a lot of attention. From there I was able to get the first foot on the ladder and go up from there onwards. As far as Rap is concerned, how did it develop to what it is right now? Do you think that from the beginning it kept changing musically? I think it’s very diverse now. I mean like when MC Hammer started out it was something completely different. Like real Pop Rap. Now it’s more hardcore and Down Southish. It’s taken roots into different kinds of places. First we thought Rap is America. But now there are rappers everywhere in the world, and they come with different accents and styles. There are the guys who do Raga and Dancehall in Jamaica, there’s Reggaeton in South America. In Sri Lanka is the Rap changing? Has it grown in different directions? Definitely it has grown. Since Brown Boogie Nation first started out way back in the day in the late eighties, early nineties, it has really really progressed. At that time nobody was open to ideas of fusing music; now this fusion has just taken over the world. In UK and even the States is catching on as well. It’s spreading like wild fire. Everyone is trying to fuse music together. To me, the day that we brought Rap and blended it with our culture, that was phenomenal. It was really explosive. People listen to it and they love it. They are like, hey this Rap is different. They are rapping in English but the music is different the beat is different, something really fresh. It’s not something that is just something American anymore. It’s Sri Lankan, something Asian. That’s the thing I was telling Bathiya & Santhush. When we are in America if I want to listen to Rap I can buy a thousand rap albums, all good CD’s. But the only way, as Sri Lankans, that we can really sell in the mass market is if we have our own style of Rap. The roots could be African American. I’m just really waiting to see a Rap album with all Sinhalese or Tamil lyrics. All the Rap beats played with our traditional drums and the rapping in Sinhalese or Tamil. I’m wondering who’s going to be brave enough to do it. Do we still have brave people who will take a risk like that in Sri Lanka? I’ve heard a lot Rap from other countries that just sound like they are copying African American Rap. It’s not interesting. Might as well listen to the American version, because the African Americans do it better. But if I play some Rap that has a different style or different language from their country, that’s exciting. I’m actually planning on merging a bit of Sinhalese and Tamil Rap into my next album. I think if you have the skill to rap you can rap in any language. It’s just a matter of getting the right words down. And if you work on your lyrics really well you can definitely do something really different. So I’m looking forward to that. Do you see other rappers in Sri Lanka going in different directions with their lyrics or using Sri Lankan sounds? You know how Bathiya & Santhush used authentic Sri Lankan drumbeats in their music? A lot of the musicians here are advancing. There has been a phenomenal change in the industry during these couple of years. I didn’t see it when I came out with the duo album in 2003. It was just Bathiya and Santhush as the big artists, and then it was me and Ranidu. That was just two different teams. Also we were one, I sang with Bathiya and Santhush as well. But after that there was this huge tidal wave of music that swept over the nation and everyone was into creating something of their own. So there are a lot of new bands that have come up which are fusing really cool stuff. There are these guys, The Centigradez, I really like them because they have come up with something very different. Just like Bathiya & Santhush or us, they’ve merged with a six-eight beat like a Baila beat instead of a four-four beat and you feel it. They do a bit of Rap as well, but mostly vocals. It’s a very Sri Lankan but Rap. It’s got that certain element in it. Their songs are in English and Sinhalese? They pretty much do what we do, but the thing that defines them is that six-eight beat is basically now theirs. Everyone knows that they are the guys who started the six-eight. Just like we were the ones who started Rap and Raga and Sinhalese/English merge. The Centigradez are the ones who started going with the six-eight beat. Where do you and Bathiya & Santhush and Randhir perform? You have played in a lot of different countries. We’ve done every single country imaginable except for Africa. The response has been really good. There’s one show that comes to mind more than any other show, the show in Trafalgar square in England. We did this concert in collaboration with Sri Lankan airlines and the tourist board. Kind of like trying to promote Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka’s culture to people who live abroad. Companies like ODEL came in with their stalls, the big brand names came in with their stalls. We put on this full on show for about five hours. It was Bathiya and Santhush, I sang some solos, Randhir was there as well. There were a couple of Western bands like Misty, just different elements of Sri Lankan music. We never thought that we’d get such a big response. When we started there were just a handful of people in Trafalgar square and when we ended the whole square was full of people. They knew nothing about Sri Lankan music, they knew nothing about our culture, but they just stuck there. Mostly Britishers and a couple of European people who stood there and they were like going crazy. They were wooing when they heard our songs. I performed it was so amazing because people who couldn’t respond to my language were actually speaking through music to me. That was really really cool. Whenever I go to a Sri Lankan music show in America, basically they play only for a Sri Lankan crowd. Imagine if you can sell a million CD’s to the American crowd there. If our rappers have their own kind of identity they can sell it in other countries. Brazilian Rap is real big, as well as Mexican Rap and African Rap—they totally rap in their language and also they use a lot of tribal drumbeats. They also mix singing in with their rapping like a hook, like you do. We should think about doing some shows in America. Maybe perform with rappers from there. There’s this guy called Nihal on Radio 1 on BBC. He has this thing called Bombay Bronx once a month where you bring people from different cultures and then you get different artists with diverse cultures coming and performing. It opens the horizons of all the youngsters coming and performing. They listen to a whole variety of music so you appreciate different cultures through music. When I talk to people here I feel like in Sri Lanka you have a certain kind of Rap audience and the rappers try to cater for that audience. That audience wants American Rap, the original sound they know. So our rappers try their best to sound like American rappers. They are not really seeing the broad market. Not just performing but also selling CD’s. At the end of the day it’s about survival. If you don’t sell you don’t survive. You shouldn’t go too much to the business side either. You become business people and your creativity just dries up. There has to be a good balance between every thing. You have to have the right people behind you who you can trust to guide you. I pretty much market myself, do my creative stuff and compose for myself, select my producers for my album. Basically Ashanthi as a brand is handled by me. That’s pretty tough. On your CD, your image and everything, you came up with that? Pretty much. Actually I had a bit of guidance from Bathiya. He was saying, if you do it like this maybe you will get a bigger response. So I thought, why not try this go all out change your image. I project this image that I’m very streetwise, I’m very hardcore. Like a blend between Missy Elliot and Eve or something like that. Or Missy Elliot and Alicia Keys or something like that. Where do you think this whole thing is heading right now? Do you feel like you are the first generation when it comes to Rap? It feels like we are the first generation because we’ve kind of laid the foundation for everyone to follow. And looking back it feels good, because you’re looking at all these youngsters coming up with all this cool stuff. You can listen to it and pick it up. This guy is cool he’s going to make it. If he works his way like this he’s going to be that big. Stuff like that which is cool, because you have that edge right? It is competitive; we can’t stay stagnant in the same place we started with all this new talent coming out. We’ve got to keep rolling as well. We’ve got to keep changing our images, got to keep doing new stuff new videos, looking fresh looking new, bring in new beats and sounds into our music. It keeps the ball rolling. Then people have something new to listen to every single time. Even though you are an artist that started about five or ten years ago you still have a major hold in the industry. That’s cool. Do you feel like you’re changing as an artist? I feel like from my first duo album I’ve changed a lot. That first album was just a test album for me. I didn’t have a direction of image or of what the Ashanthi sound was going to be like. I just want to do an album. I just sang. But when it came to my solo album I knew exactly what I wanted to do, who I had to sell my brand to, I knew what my brand had to be, I knew what I had to look like to make my brand work and I knew basically what my sound must be like. And exactly what I should sound like to make that sound work. The whole marketing creative aspect, I knew what I had to do. I would love to hear an album of you just singing. You have such a beautiful voice. I would love to do something for the Western industry to market it to UK and States. The thing is being a Sri Lankan artist here, your base for music being Sri Lanka, and people listening to your brand and music being the kind of people who want to listen to this mix, you are not really open to doing something completely English. But as a one-off thing as a couple of songs to put out on your my space or your website so people know what kind of talent Sri Lanka has as well then that’s cool. I would do something like that in the future. If you make a whole album just singing Sinhalese, that could sell really good. Just say I take it to America and I give it to some rapper and they say, Let’s get her to sing backup for our song. They always want some nice voice. If you sing a little part in one of their songs and somehow it gets to be a radio song, you’ll get calls all day. Then everyone will want to have Ashanthi in their CD. It’s really the opportunity of being heard. One thing I think is over here we have a lack of opportunity of being heard globally. You have to able to push your boundaries and go to the next level even if it means taking a risk. If you want to be heard you have to be where you can be heard. You have to go out there and personally try to do your best. Dancehall music from Jamaica is big in America. They sing in English, but it’s hard to understand what they’re saying because they have such a thick accent. They sell a lot of records. Their sound is unique. When Bathiya and Santhush came out with “Tharunyaye” I thought that they would go more in that direction, but they have taken a more Pop direction. They had some real authentic Sri Lankan drumbeats. It was rooted in our folk songs. I thought they would take it in that direction. People in America and other countries would love that CD. The new one they say is a lot more Pop. I think they are targeting their music more to the Indian and South Asian market. Are they selling a lot there? They are doing good there. It’s baby steps at first, but in about a year or two they could be huge. You think so? In India there are so many artists. When you see it you just think India, but India is such a huge place. You sell even five percent of your album you sold like a million copies, which is so much bigger than the whole of Sri Lanka put together. I think their focus is catching Asia and the South Asian region. But personally for me right now I’m more directed toward Sri Lanka and maybe UK and the States because that’s the accent that I have in my voice and the feel of my music. From my heart it goes more toward that side. That’s where I’m trying to pitch my music at right now. What about the clubs in Sri Lanka and places where you can sell your CD’s? It doesn’t work like it does back in the States where you can actually sell your CD’s at clubs and do club gigs. People here just go to clubs to dance. That’s it. They want that R&B/Hip Hop. They just want to bounce to that beat. In terms of clubs or more youth oriented places we’ve picked up on a lot of those things because in the industry from way before we had that advantage of people knowing who we are. So we’ve captured that youth audience. We do a lot of gigs. We do beach parties. We do a lot of big gigs actually. You are established artists. What about the young artists? I don’t think there is enough of opportunity for them to go up there and be heard in Colombo. There are the one off Y Fm, Sirasa FM Birthday bashes or beach parties and and stuff like that. Since it’s tropical, that’s like their makeshift club for the day. Like on Mount Lavinia beach you put up a sound system and you have a sea of people. It’s free to come in. It really is something new. Because they get to see all their favorite artists for free and have a really good time on the beach and stuff like that. Club gigs are a little less because people just want to come and dance at clubs. They are not allowing rappers to come and perform?
People don’t generally have artists performing at clubs. With your camp, how did you really break through? Music videos are really huge here. With a video you can make a hit. If your song is good and you have a good music video you can shoot right through to number one. Who would play it? It would be the TV stations. Here the media that is really huge for you to capture the market is through radio and TV. So if you capture radio and TV. Not really performing. It’s first radio and TV, then you’re good. And that’s how you get the gigs. What about the stores? I know you can have your CD’s everywhere, but what about an unknown artist, like a newcomer? Let’s say they press 5,000 CD’s, where can they sell it? We have a few record labels here. The label that I’m with is M Entertainment. They are the people who gave me the affiliation for Universal India as well. That’s my main label here and they are the label for Centigradez and a couple of other artists who have come newly, and Bathiya and Santhush also. We pretty much work like this, they are part of the NBC network, the total Sirasa and that’s a huge media organizations. M Entertainment is one of the sister companies of Sirasa and the mother company is called NBC Networks. That’s one of the record labels that can help an artist because if you are an up and coming artist, if you prove yourself to the record label saying hey these are 5 to 10 songs that I have done, and I would like to produce a record, they would cut you a deal. They’ll say, we’ll give you this if you’ll give us that and you add more songs to this and we’ll have a listen to it and we’ll press 1000 or 2000 CD’s and see how it goes. They first run you through M Entertainment with no international affiliations, and after they think you’re fit enough or have captured the market enough they introduce you on to a bigger label like Universal. So you have your Universal Music and your M Entertainments as well. You have to progress to that stage. And they are pretty much the main guys who handle the stuff in terms of advertisements. They can play your spots all the time on Sirasa TV as well as MTV and the radio stations they have like Sirasa FM and YFM and the Tamil channels as well, Shakthi. So if you hook up with M Entertainments in terms of media coverage, you’re pretty sorted. The other labels will cut you various deals. There are different labels that would do different things for you.
If I wanted to buy other independent albums where would I buy it? You could buy it at any store like if you go to places like Torana. Say I’m a tourist visiting Sri Lanka and I wanted to buy some Sri Lankan Rap. Where would I go? You could go to basically any music store like Torana and Majestic City. Do they have underground stuff? Let’s say I’m Centigrades and I have my own label. Would they carry my CD there? Probably not. You’ll probably have to talk to someone about that. But you would most probably have to go through a record label to actually have your CD out in a store. It’s not like in America where I can come out on the street, press some CD’s and take it to the store and they’ll sell it. No. I’ve been to L.A. and I’ve seen guys downtown just giving their CD’s out, saying hey check out my MySpace and stuff like that which is really cool. They sell their CD’s on a little stand over there, you pay 10 bucks and they let you have one. They let you listen to demos and stuff. We don’t have that. I mean people might just walk into gas stations and sell you a CD while you’re pumping gas. Really? That is very cool. I mean hey that’s how Mariah Carey got out. She passed her demo to this guy, right? You write all your lyrics? I write my own rap and I write my own English lyrics and I compose my own melodies as well, but in terms of Sinhala lyrics, I get them written by different writers. What inspires you to write and what do you write about? When I think of doing a song I actually think of a concept first. It could be anything. It could be just an emotion that’s stirring me at that moment. Or it could be something fun like just a fun time I had with my friends and I want to express that. Basically it’s my own emotions and my own experiences that come out in my music so it’s pretty much real. Do you see yourself as a lyric writer? Yeah. I actually write a bit of poetry as well so that’s how it started, getting into lyrics and stuff like that. So poetry became lyrics.
Exactly, because songs rhyme like that. Your song has to rhyme. My poems always rhyme. The third line or second line is always rhyming with the first, so I cannot get myself out of that. I think that’s because I’m more of a song writer than a poet. Once you have your lyrics who puts the melodies into it? Sometimes when I’m writing a song, I make up the melody while I’m writing the lyrics because it all flows together as one. Sometimes I would just hum a little tune and get someone to create a track saying this is what I want as my chorus and this is how I want my verse to be and paste it all together. I produce it myself basically. Or else if I just want a completely different field, there are 4 or 5 producers I work with so I call up one of them and say I want you to do a song for me and just give them complete freedom to create a melody. I think of a concept according to how exactly I see that melody becoming, because I think as an artist when you hear something, it’s just a blueprint. You’re seeing everything that can be built on top of it. It’s like a structure that you just build and build upon. So I take that, think of exactly what I want created upon it and give it to the best possible person who I think can do the best job for that specific field. What’s in the future for you? Upcoming is my second solo album. I’ve just actually started working on it. I’ve just started working on my first single. I’m going to put that out. We’re in Bhathiya and Santhush’s studio right now? Yes we are. My last album was all done here. This place is packed with people’s albums. We’re doing Bhathiya & Santhush’s album. Then we did Randhir’s album, then we did Yashan’s album and my album is going to be done I think because I want to get it done very fast. I think if you stick to one place, the process is a little slow because you have to be really in it and down into it and there’s so many other things to do as well. So I’m working with a lot of producers this tim,e like I did last time, but I’m giving them the freedom to work in their studios as well. I think that if you want the best of everyone you’re working with they have to work in their own space. There has to be that creative space you have to leave. So I’m doing my first single with a guy called Nisal and we’re working in his studio. I’m doing a couple of tracks with Bhathiya & Santhush as well, which I’ll work with right here and the CD will be mastered at Sarigama Studios.
You’re mastering everything here? I’ll master it here. Bathiya is THE guy for mastering. I mean personally for me as a musician with like good ears I think that nobody can top his mastering. Because my vocals come out just the way I want them to and I can hear every single instrument. The way the records are mastered here, everything you can hear really great. I feel when I’m talking to people that there are a lot of young artists coming up. There’re a lot of people coming up. Especially guys like Yashan and stuff like that from Kandy. When I come here I feel like it’s kind of like a whole camp here. Yeah this is like our base. We have two studios over here, one there and another one over there. So we pretty much basically live here.
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