Vasuda’s journey from a popstar to indie artiste

She recently launched her EP album ‘BeDesi’ with her band ‘Sharma And The Besharams’

Vasuda Sharma grew up in a strict household where she was told from a young age to join civil services. The idea was so engraved in her mind that no other alternate career option even crossed her mind. Music was only meant to be a hobby.

She was all of 20 years old when she heard that a reality show is hunting for the next pop star. Out of curiosity, she auditioned and got selected. It took a lot to convince her family that this is what she wanted to do and she soon became a member of the pop group ‘Aasma’.

That brave move opened doors for her. She eventually dropped out of college and pursued music as a full-time career.

“It was when I joined the Berklee College of Music in the US that I really learnt more about music. It taught me about the diversity of music, world music and gave me the opportunity to explore the indie music world,” Vasuda tells Metrolife.

She’s now set to tour across the country to promote her first EP ‘BeDesi’ with her band ‘Sharma And The Besharams’. The first two tracks ‘Ganga’ and ‘Jazbaa’ are already making the rounds on social media. The third and fourth track, ‘Bailgaadi’ and ‘Rahiman’ is set to release in the coming few weeks.

The album has folk elements and features Indian instruments like flute, Dholak and Morchang with contemporary western arrangements.

She says, “Folk music is the centre of my upbringing, I wanted to draw in those elements with my western music learnings. I wanted to combine the two and use them in my EP.”

When the trend of pop music started to die down, she had to make a decision as to what she wanted to do in the future.

“After 2006, the phase of remixing old songs became popular. People wanted to listen to songs remixed by DJs; there was a demand for music videos for that too. We also started to notice that people were turning to digital means to listen to music. Though exciting, it soon became a world completely new to everyone in the industry,” says Vasuda.

And with digitisation, it gave the opportunity for independent artistes to produce their music without a label backing them up. “The way people are listening to music has also changed since then. Music is mostly consumed via phone now,” she says.

But she feels that listening to music on a phone doesn’t do justice to the work musicians have put in.

She says, “There’s so much detailing an artiste looks into when creating music. From mixing and mastering, those small details make a huge difference to the music we create. So when the song is finally heard through a phone, the quality doesn’t come through. Music is meant to be heard on good music systems; this doesn’t give us the respect it deserves. As a musician, it’s disheartening.”

Nevertheless, she doesn’t want to stop writing music as it’s what she enjoys doing the most. Her hard work has been noticed to the extent that her once-strict parents are now her biggest fans.

“I come from a middle-class family. Coming to Mumbai even for an audition was a big deal in my family. Though my mother thought that I would get back to studying for civil services once my music craze comes out, after seeing that I am passionate about this, she’s one of my biggest fans,” she says proudly.

The playback singer has her hands full this year launching the new EP and is looking forward to the coming year for more collaboration and solo projects.