For Susheela Raman, music is “all about escaping definition”. If the British-born and based musician seems emphatic on this point, shared over coffee in a park in north London, it’s because she has never really fitted in anywhere. Born to Tamil parents, Raman has spent a career shrugging off labels: world music (“a racist marketing category; I hate it”); ethnic (“I’ve often been told I should sound ‘more Indian’”); feminist. “I’m always striving for expression that could go beyond gender, beyond ethnicity,” she says.
Her latest project is equally liberationist in spirit. On 30 September, Raman will host Sacred Imaginations at the Barbican Centre, a concert of “sacred music for secular people”. The lineup, curated by Raman and her husband/music partner, Sam Mills of Real World Records, boasts esoteric virtuosos from around the globe who are united in their working knowledge of eastern and early Christian music. Parts of it will, says Raman, be like “plugging into something from the fourth century”.
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