MUMBAI: Musician and composer Lesle Lewis is confident that he is yet to scale new heights in music. The consummate artist who has established himself as one of India’s top pop professionals- as a solo artist and as one-half of fusion pop band Colonial Cousins- is sure of his creativity blossoming in the next five years more than ever.
“I have always been at the forefront of music. I started out developing the Hindi pop genre with songs like ‘Pari Hu Main’ and ‘Pal’ then got into remixing with (re)mixing Lata Mangeshkar’s works. In Colonial Cousins with Hariharan, we initiated the Classical/ Folk and pop fusion. Recently with Coke Studio, I believe we started live music with ethnic instruments and sounds and it started a trend for live bands,” he told Radioandmusic.com.
Lewis has however ‘stayed away’ from Bollywood, doing relatively few film projects to maintain his independence as an artist and fulfill his needs to create his own music. He is however currently working on a ‘whodunit’ film project that could ‘end up changing Bollywood.’
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“I see myself at the top of my game in the next five years. My new sound is very contemporary. But ‘starting’ a genre is not something you can decide and develop at your whim- you can’t just decide to ‘start’ a new genre. Take Coke Studio as an example, we set the trend in the first season, and I’d give it two-three years to develop its own genre,” he said.
“It’s not just me who can claim to be at the forefront. The fact is today there are many new talents- musicians and singers- who given the right opportunity might change the music scene,” he said.
While Lewis is all for pushing boundaries, he is happy to produce and present his music the traditional way- making physical records and playing live.
“The whole concept of making music has changed. Today, if you like music you download it. The idea of making a physical album is losing ground to digital platform and is becoming more of a ‘feel good’ factor. But to people like me, there is nothing like a physical album- it has a charm of its own.”
But he admits that with one-two songs making the difference in an album, more artists are moving towards making singles which are cheaper to produce in lieu of a full-fledged album.
“I enjoy making albums but playing live is something else. With a live audience you get an instant reaction,” he adds.
