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Raja Kumari’s sound contains multitudes — as does the artist herself, as a singer, songwriter and rapper, who has launched her own label and is working to mentor young musicians as well.
Kumari garnered a Grammy nomination for songwriting even before she fully launched into her own international career as a performer, creating a sound all her own that fuses hip-hop, R&B and electronica with Indian classical music. Her career has featured collaborations with artists such as John Legend, Iggy Azalea, Gwen Stefani, Fall Out Boy, Sidhu Moosewala and Divine.
Born and raised in Claremont, California, as Svetha Yallapragada Rao, she adopted the stage name Raja Kumari. She has recently moved back to the United States after living in India.
Kumari makes a fitting headliner for TAMASHA: An Extravaganza of Desi Fusion, taking place July 12 at Stanford Live, a festival celebrating the South Asian diaspora and culture.
In fact, her 2023 album “The Bridge” celebrates her fusion style with both its title and its sound. Her first full-length release on her own independent label, Godmother Records, the album showcases her skill at uniting a broad slate of influences, from electronica to high-energy pop with Indian percussion, hip-hop and more.
Earlier this year, Kumari released the album “Kashi to Kailash.” She sings in Sanskrit in four of the album’s five tracks, focused on channeling the healing frequencies of ancient mantras. The album’s title references two ancient sacred sites that have relevance for Hinduism and Buddhism, and draws from Kumari’s own recent spiritual experiences.
“I’ve been on this journey the last year and a half, kind of going inwards. I realized whenever I was going outwards, it wasn’t being received well, and something was off about however I was communicating, because there was a gap between how people saw me and how I saw myself. So I went on this journey. I took the year off, and I started visiting Shiva temples throughout India,” she said.
The devotional, meditative quality of the songs takes a slightly different direction from her previous releases, but the album still draws on a fusion of Eastern and Western musical influences. That, and the personal nature of the album, is a thread that runs throughout Kumari’s work, delving into the complexities of identity for a U.S.-born artist who also has built a robust career in India.
She noted that while some of her songs don’t have family-friendly lyrics, her set at TAMASHA is tailored for all ages.
We spoke with Kumari ahead of her show at Stanford Live. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Embarcadero Media: You grew up performing Indian classical dance — what has that background brought to your work?
Raja Kumari: As I grow in my work, and as I evolve, I realize how much more it is the foundation of how I perceive the world. Classical dance, it’s more than just moving your body. We were taught the Navarasas, which are the nine emotions. You’re taught that very early, and you play these characters. It has stamina involved, it has storytelling, and I think that element of storytelling I carried into my work as a musician, because it’s never been just about the recording, it’s always been about the experience on stage.
I call it my mythology, as I create these visual mythologies — I know how much they’re inspired by the blueprint of what I’ve seen that’s ancient, and I feel like that’s why it resonates for me. I don’t even know who I’d be if I wasn’t a classical Indian dancer.
I started at 6 years old, and I think before that, my mother wanted to be a classical dancer. It’s not really an easy thing to pursue, if you don’t have the money for it and it’s not an easy hobby to have. She found the same teacher that she wanted to learn from, and brought her to live in our house when I was 6 years old, and she lived with us and taught me. So I don’t know if I had a choice. I think it was destined, but the dance shapes everything.
Embarcadero Media: What drew you to music as a career?
Raja Kumari: Through classical dance, I had a very close relationship with all these instruments. I was making the rhythms with my feet, and with violins and flutes and mridangams. I would just experience them in a very real way. But growing up in America and having this very Indian expression of my art that was very respected in India — you know, there would be like, “the governor is here in the front row,” or it would be like on the front page of the newspaper, I knew that (classical dance) was important.
But music was this personal thing, it’s something that I discovered, in my bedroom alone, that when I sang along to the song that “I think I sound just like her.” It was this discovery of self, and something that nobody in my family did. Even though they encouraged me to do classical dance, that kind of fits in this traditional mold of what a traditional Indian girl should do.
Becoming a singer is very different — there’s always this issue with girls being on stage and speaking their mind and there was this fear of that.
It was encouraged by my parents. I’m very lucky to have had their support. But it wasn’t easy or natural. I remember writing my dad letters and being like “you can’t make me be someone I’m not. This is who I am and I want”‘ And then they’d be like, “Okay, if you want to be a singer, then go to vocal lessons.” That was their way of helping me. My mom would end up driving me after school, so I could do homework in the car, to go to my music lesson and then a hip-hop dance class, because we were trying to take it seriously. Even though it wasn’t their first choice for me, they did support me through it, which I know a lot of people don’t have.
That’s why I feel like mentorship is such an important part of the next 10 years of my career. Next year I celebrate 10 years as a recording artist, and as a songwriter, even longer than that. I’m trying to create programs where you can speak to other females that have done things like this, create a network.
Kumari Kids is something I’m working on where I want to make a network of female creatives and mentorship and scholarship programs. That’s kind of what my eyes are on for the future, is musical education and infrastructure in India.
Embarcadero Media: Tell us about your show at Stanford Live.
Raja Kumari: I think it’s the right time to be here at Stanford. Every time I’m in California, it’s always such a blessing, because I was born in California, and a crowd like what we’re expecting at TAMASHA is going to be people who love creative arts and celebrating the culture.
This is a really exciting event, and I’m excited to see the other performers and how they interpret the theme of the event.
I tell the story of why I came to hip-hop. Classical dance was this thing that I understood, and then I would be singing along with pop music, but then Timbaland put an entire Indian song in a beat in 2002 and I heard it on the radio. I realized that I belonged on the radio, because if they’re playing Indian music in a sample, why can’t they have me, you know? And that dream came alive.
I think hip-hop has always been this home for me, like I always felt accepted there, because they already had us there before we could step in ourselves. A lot of my music kind of touches on that cross-section of culture.
I’m planning on doing more of a storyteller kind of set where I explain what I’ve learned and seen and talk about culture in between the songs. It’s not like the normal shows I do where it’s just like, “bam, bam, bam,” through all my hits, I want to share a little bit of my feelings and what I’ve learned along the way.
Embarcadero Media: Will you be performing anything from your newest album, “Kashi to Kailash?”
Raja Kumari: I will be doing two songs from it. The one that I want to do, that I’m anticipating will be quite emotional to perform in America, is the title track, because it’s the one that’s written in English, and it’s actually the one song where I worship in my own voice. It freestyled out of me. Basically that recording is the first take.
The purpose of that song was to be able to bring this type of vibration — always being inspired watching my friends sing in church. They could worship with their voice and it wasn’t about vanity, and it wasn’t about their skill, it was about surrender and I really wanted that feeling. To be able to sing these songs from “Kashi to Kailash” and in California, I’m really looking forward to it. I’m probably starting the show with it, actually.
This album was really about worshipping in my own voice, but also these ancient Sanskrit mantras and hymns, as people understand now that there’s frequencies when you say “ohm” and different chakras, like people are starting to understand sound healing. But that’s the nature of what music is and what I believe my duty is as a musician. The album was to create these ancient hymns and bring them to the future. As the last album said, “I’m the bridge,” bring ancient to the future, West back to the East, and this is almost what came from that.
Embarcadero Media: You recently founded your own label, Godmother Records. What inspired you to do that?
Raja Kumari: I went through about seven years with a major label, and it was during the pandemic, and I had an opportunity to either continue to feed into the system, or take a step on my own, and I felt like it was the right time, because it’s very difficult to get people to see a vision that hasn’t been done before.
I know how important the things I do in India are that feed into the things in America, and how important the American things (are that) feed into the Indian side, and how it’s like an ecosystem of its own. And I think with Godmother, me being the main artist as of now, I’m really navigating that, so that when I do find an artist in the diaspora — my goal is to find a young girl from, from a village, or through my songwriting workshops that I’ve been doing in India (I’m working on a songwriting manual that I want to work with). I’m trying to get support from the government so I can give it away and teach the classes.
With Godmother, I want to make a safe space for women. Also there’s this tendency to pit us against each other and turn us into clones. And as a songwriter, and as someone who’s been behind the scenes and understands how to get the best out of somebody being in the room, I feel I can be a stalwart and block that and let people be who they need to be.
I feel I’ve done the work to set the system up, and now I just want to create incredible music and create opportunities. The South Asian voice is becoming heard and I just want to make sure that all types of stories are being told,
Embarcadero Media: What do you hope that your influence on music has been so far?
Raja Kumari: My fusion hasn’t ever been something I’m trying to do. It’s just me expressing both sides authentically at the same time.
That’s what my fusion has been, because I grew up in America, but I grew up with a very unique relationship with Indian classical music — not everyone was touring India at 10 or had their guru live in their house, so I’m aware of that. I feel like, as we grow — as South Asian artists grow, and we go to different places, I just want to see us (coming) from an authentic place and not placate like the stereotypes, not exoticize ourselves. Because I’m a victim of it. In the beginning — and I still like to do it sometimes for fun — but I would talk about mangoes and curry and masala because it was easier to identify, and it was because of what I was experiencing as a person.
But as I’ve traveled the world, and lived in different places and had these experiences, I feel like that’s the surface, and as we get this moment, I want us to talk about what it felt like for our family to grow up so far from (their roots).
My whole hope is that if anybody uses me as an example of being able to do it without selling out, or without giving up the things that were important to me, whether it was fighting my labels in the past to wear a bindi in my video, or fighting to always bring Indian designers in my American moments. I hope that’s just an example, that it’s possible and that we can keep building from here.
You know, West back to East. I just want you to know that this is what my culture is like. This is who we are, because it’s very easy to see people halfway across the world and not relate with them. I think I’ve been planted as a seed in America, because when you hear me speak, I’m a California kid, like, you hear me talk, and you see me move, and you hear the way I work sometimes, and you see the way that we are multicultural.
TAMASHA: An Extravaganza of Desi Fusion is presented as part of Stanford Live’s summer series, kicks off with a marketplace of arts and crafts and food with music from DJ Vani Dewan followed by performances by comedian Abby Govindan and a drag show with The Masala Mahal featuring Bindi Masala, Chai Auntea, and Shaidy Bee and a performance Bay Area-based Duniya Dance & Drum Company. Raja Kumari headlines.
The festival takes place July 12, 5 p.m., at Bing Concert Hall, Stanford; $15-$45; live.stanford.edu.
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