SONGS OF MYSELF

Composer, producer and singer Lesle Lewis, among the pioneers of India’s independent music scene, speaks to Bulbul Sharma about his attempts to reinvent his showbiz persona with a new style of music and a new approach to finding an audience.

ow do you look back at your early days as a musician, back when you were making jingles? Was it a phase of struggle? A.

When you look at half a glass of something, you might look at it as either half empty or half full. A lot of people look at struggle as “half empty”, they regard struggle i n a negative way. But I look at it as “half full”. In my opinion, if you don’t struggle you won’t understand what it is like to work towards your goal and achieve it. If things become easy to achieve, you don’t value them. I think I have struggled all my life in a way, and now I am again coming back as a new musician, as a new artiste. I have started my first independent music channel, “Lesle Lewis”, on YouTube. I am hoping to release 20-25 videos on this channel through the span of a year. I am also planning to promote a lot of new talent on this channel.

Q. You are often referred to as the “master of remixes”, and you have indeed created some beautiful remixes, like “Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein”, and “Piya Tu” among others. So how do you go about revamping an old song? A.

I first started with indie pop—with songs like “Pari Hoon Mai”, “Janam Samjha Karo”, “Yaaron Dosti”. And then there were remixes, with Asha Bhosle in “Piya Tu Ab To Aaja”, “O Mere Sona”, which really went crazy, and after which the whole country was into remixes. Then I did “Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein”. I then did classical fusion with Hariharan and Colonial Cousins [a band formed by Lewis and