Connecting across borders: Singer Arjun Coomarasamy on his musical collaborations

When British Sri Lankan singer and songwriter Arjun Coomaraswamy recorded his R & B remix of ‘Why this kolaveri di’ a decade ago, little did the young, Cambridge-educated architect know that it would go viral and forge a new career path.

The video, with Arjun singing in what looks like a casual, home-recording setting, has got over 17 million views since. “I feel old,” laughs Arjun, now 31, while acknowledging it was “life changing”. “That was the start of a kind of formula…taking a song from an Eastern context and putting my Western spin on it,” says the singer, who was in Colombo recently, to catch up with, among other friends, cricketing star Dimuth Karunaratne.

Born in Colombo, Arjun was raised in London where his parents moved when he was a toddler. His father Indrajit Coomaraswamy is a renowned Sri Lankan economist and a former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Arjun’s mother Tara de Fonseka’s interest in jazz and Western music drew him to music in his early years. “When I was young, it was mostly Western music that I was into; R‘nB and pop, mainly. I learnt to play the guitar and it felt like ‘this is my thing!’.”

Later, growing up amidst South Asian diaspora, he experienced a generous dose of Bollywood and other regional music. “I was around Punjabis, Bengalis, and Pakistanis, attending their parties, weddings, where I was exposed to a lot of their music. It intrigued me.”

In a few years, Arjun found he had imbibed these different sounds, organically. He was able to produce his own music, bringing a distinct, east-west sensibility to the tune and lyrics. That is perhaps what spoke to the scores of South Asian youth growing up in the West. To them, his music represents “home”; his recent English remix of ‘Raatan Lambiyaan’ from Shershaah is a classic example of his style.

The encouraging response to his English take on ‘Kolaveri’, released in December 2011 prompted him to try remixes of popular Hindi numbers and Kollywood hits. Very soon, Arjun attracted over a million listeners on his YouTube channel, his “game changer”. It spared him tedious marketing, while helping him reach listeners world over. In 2014, record label T-series signed a deal with him. “It was a big shift for me,” says Arjun, who also subsequently collaborated with Tamil film music composers Yuvan Shankar Raja and Anirudh Ravichander for Biriyani (’Bay of Bengal) and Vanakkam Chennai (’Oh Penne’).

Even as the Indian market welcomed him, the young musician was eager to fulfil that “Western ambition”, for he began his career in London. “I signed a deal with Universal Music in the UK. It was my dream from childhood to sign a deal with a major Western label.”

And just as his artistic vistas were expanding, Arjun encountered an unexpected, devastating loss in 2018. His wife, colleague, and “best friend” Natasha passed away from a sudden cardiac arrest. “It made me learn that life isn’t just about your career; it is about everything, and things happen to you.” It was not easy getting back to work. Arjun took some time off to process it. After a while, he decided to channel his emotions into something positive, and began spreading awareness about heart health — doing charity walks, fund-raiser shows.

The grief gave him perspective, he says. “Once you have lost someone so dear to you, your song not doing well doesn’t really affect you the way it did before. Earlier, I used to get so stressed if a song wasn’t getting a million views, or I didn’t get so many likes for a picture. This is not to say that the response to your work doesn’t matter anymore, but you know, you begin to see everything differently.”

About a year after his wife’s passing, Arjun released a song ‘One Last Time’, as a tribute . It changed the way fans engaged with him. “Suddenly, we began connecting at a very basic, human level. They shared their own personal stories and losses. There was a sense of community and that was so comforting.”

Drawing strength from that, he slowly got back to making music. This year, while quite a few of Arjun’s Indian collaborations are set to take shape, he is also exploring the Sri Lankan music scene. Yohani’s song (‘Manike Mage Hithe’), he notes, has “changed the game”.