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TUSHAR and the new golden age of Indie(an) music

Inspired by the jaunty sound of indie rock mainstays like The Drums and Two Door Cinema Club, Melbourne and Adelaide-based Indie(an) Tushar Singh is diversifying a predominantly white genre.

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You’d be forgiven for thinking Indie pop artist Tushar Singh, known by moniker TUSHAR, was born and brought up in Brunswick.

Chatting to him in his leafy back garden on a languid afternoon in December, he tells me excitedly about exploring local markets, his loose fit skater shirt and long black hair tucked under a vintage style baseball cap blending right into the cool, indie sensibilities of Melbourne’s inner north.

Of course, like so many of us young South Asians Australians who’ve grown up on a diet of Coldplay, Tame Impala and Two Door Cinema Club, Singh has spent a long time feeling out of place, in music and in life.

A middle child of four siblings, Singh grew up in Singapore with the dulcet tones of Lata Mangeshkar and Sonu Nigam drifting around the house. When he was six, his family moved to Adelaide’s east, opening one of the state’s first Singaporean Indian fusion restaurants, Unley Rd’s Raj on Taj; still a family-run business, his parents are now staples of the burgeoning Adelaide Indian community.

Meanwhile, as one of the only brown kids at his primary school, Singh started to notice the dissonance between what he heard inside and outside of home. It didn’t take long for the ‘Voice of the Millenium’ to be drowned out by the sounds of a new millennium – Kylie Minogue, The Veronicas and Guy Sebastian.

“My taste started to change…Everyone was like ‘Tush, you’re such a white boy now!,’” he remembers.

“It was funny, I never had any ill intent, but I could feel that change in my mind – I just wasn’t interested in listening to that music anymore, Hindi music is not really my style, I want to venture out and do more things. At that age, I think I also wanted to maybe impress my friends, or I guess, social acceptance.”

Then came the biggest influence on the TUSHAR sound, Two Door Cinema Club.

“I was like, 14, 15, I remember a sleepover with a friend, we were buzzing on heaps of sugar…I had MTV playing and suddenly I heard the intro to ‘Undercover Martyn’. We both didn’t say a word and watched the whole clip, and after I was like, ‘Dude, that was so good!’”

“I just really fell in love with that indie sound, you know, it got me dancing, got me feeling happy. Like, how good is that [sound], it just always makes you feel like you want to be doing something, and it’s just so catchy.”

TUSHAR’s latest tracks harken back to this golden age of indie; bouncy, bright, danceable, Singh’s airy vocals painting pictures of anxious first lovers, enigmatic blue-eyed charmers, afflicted friends and aloof companions who would all equally be at home in a Two Door song.

Together with co-producer Benny Tamblyn-Morrow, their most successful songs, including ‘Sadie, Why Don’t You Love Yourself’ and ‘In Our Own Backyard’, have almost 100k Spotify streams, with ‘Peaches and Wine’ featured on Triple J and Triple J Unearthed.

 

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As one of the few South Asian artists in a genre of mostly white, male antecedents, however, Singh is aware he’s an outlier, certainly too at a time when so many South Asians are finding voice in Hip Hop, Spoken Word and RnB styles.

“The style of music I’m making is still very much dominated by white Australian musicians; for me, it’s how do I fit into this scene and culture as an Indian diaspora artist that’s writing the same music, and how do I feel comfortable in that. No one’s mean to me and stuff – more that I can’t help feeling like the odd one out.”

He tells me about playing to a majority South Asian crowd at SXSW Austin, an experience that’s profoundly affected him.

“It was the turning point for me. They were there, for us. I was so taken aback; I’ve never felt that in Australia, I don’t really see anyone from my culture at my gigs. I remember finishing the show and being like, ‘thanks for coming, but how did you know about this?’ and they said, ‘we saw your name, Tushar, on the lineup, and we knew you were Indian’.”

“Turns out they have a community that pushes South Asian artists breaking into the Western music scene, and they all go to gigs together. I called my mum and was like ‘you’ll never believe what happened’ – it just opened up this world for me.”

tushar performs live
TUSHAR performed at +91 Calling in Tumbalong Park and at the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick. (Source: Supplied)

Since then, the self-described ‘Indie(an)’ has been inspired to connect with and advocate for other South Asian artists; recently, he appeared on the lineup for SXSW Sydney’s ‘+91 Calling’ festival, and his Melbourne ‘Feels Like a Start’ EP gig was co-headlined by Sri Lankan singer-songwriter Githmi, and Indian-led dream pop outfit Manorism.

But has TUSHAR ever thought of swapping ‘Sadie’ and ‘Arthur’ for ‘Suhani’ or ‘Akash’?

“That’s something I’ve been wanting to dive into; I’ve been talking to friends who speak Punjabi or Hindi and I’d love to get them to sing on a track or teach me some words. I want to bridge that gap of having language in songs but still make it super fun and indie – I wanna see them singing the words back to me, I want them to understand it.”

He grins, energised. “Can you imagine a song like that popping off in India or even in Singapore?! It’ll open so many doors, not only for me but for other people.”

READ ALSO: Six young Aussie Desi musicians to follow

Lakshmi Ganapathy
Lakshmi Ganapathy
Lakshmi is Melbourne Content Creator for Indian Link and the winner of the VMC's 2024 Multicultural Award for Excellence in Media. Best known for her monthly youth segment 'Cutting Chai' and her historical video series 'Linking History' which won the 2024 NSW PMCA Award for 'Best Audio-Visual Report', she is also a highly proficient arts journalist, selected for ArtsHub's Amplify Collective in 2023.

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