'Influences' Part 1: The Music of My Childhood

Unlike most softly-spoken South Indian girls, I find the sound of distortion guitar comforting. My childhood was painted on a canvas of overdrive as my parents captured the imagination of young people with an unprecedented amalgamation of their Christian faith and the popular music of the eighties: rock. I remember falling asleep to the sound of my Dad's guitar weaving melody frantically through the pounding of the bass drum. It was my lullaby.

Our tape recorder, pushed as far back as possible in the bottom shelf of the TV cabinet (Dad's cunning scheme to get subwoofer-quality bass notes without a subwoofer) was always playing something or the other. We listened to everything from Louis Armstrong and Kenny G (who planted the seeds of those deliciously whimsical blues chords in my brain) to Bob Marley and Phil Keaggy (whose songs were light yet weighty with history, justice, truth). There was my "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack (pure lyrical profundity like "Les poissons, les poissons, hee hee hee, haw haw haw" never failed to fill me with glee) and then the variegated rock music selection, Petra and Stryper and Whitecross, for our daily diet of soaring guitars.

It's surprising, all things considered, that I turned out an indie-folk sweetly acoustic artist. Maybe it's because my Dad wouldn't let my grubby seven-year-old fingers on his gleaming Gibson Epiphone. Not like I would have dropped it or anything, really now! Can we all cast our minds back to that one time I managed to get eggs from the corner shop to our house completely unscathed? Well then.


Whitecross Performing

I've never actually watched a video of these guys; it's a bit of a shock to see what the musicians leaping around in my little-girl head actually looked like! It must have been a job untangling their hair post-concert.


The Little Mermaid -- Les Poissons

This video still makes me so happy. Heeheeheehawhawhaw!

Continue to 'Influences' Part 2