Songstress on a seamless roll

Her stage presence is infectious as she’s entirely her own person when she’s performing, sans any inhibitions. The versatile artiste has not only sung for Bollywood movie songs (including the title track for Break Ke Baad), but also performed across the world with her band Shaa’ir and Func. We speak to the talented songstress Monica Dogra, who won applause for her role in the film Dhobi Ghat, on her latest album Spit and her shows in Bengaluru.

Monica got Bengalureans groovy with her foot-tapping sounds this week and loves coming back as she feels the city is a great place for artistes. “I was here in February and again in March this year. I also know so many wonderful people who live here. One of my fondest memories is when I was in town for a few days after a gig, and a group of my friends set up a pool-side party for me at one of their plush homes. We swam, danced and ate with ten of our DJ friends playing back to back sets — it was almost a mini music festival with Robby Banner, a designer and DJ and Shilo Shiv Suleiman — two of my closest friends from Bengaluru.”

Monica’s journey began with her mum introducing her to piano lessons when she was five, alongside ballet and tap. “I knew that for certain I was going to be an artist by the time I was 12. I got into NYU’s musical theatre programme, when I was 17 and soon left home for good,” reveals Monica who started writing music through slam poetry in smoky NYC bars and somewhere in the tirades of gut­spilling prose, alliteration, and metaphor, reached out to rooms of perfect strangers, asking to be understood for just a second, when a song emerged from within.

Monica rose to fame with The Dewarists and what tops her list of memorable performances, we ask and she states, “Performing at Glastonbury twice will always be memorable amongst so many shows. But it all ebbs and flows. And I’m becoming attached to the sheer joy of creating rather than being attached to accolades. I’m a natural born collaborator and thrive in this form of art making.”

Her latest album, Spit is raw and aggressive and the singer, spoken word performer, designer at Stylista, activist and actor explains, “While writing this album, I realised the word ‘spit’ kept coming up and it’s a provocative word that makes people think of negative things; besides beautiful things like how we kiss, taste and ingest. My musical career began by virtue of open mics, when I would just step up to a mic and spit, without censoring myself. I wanted to be that brave with this record.

The album is a collection of stories in song, different genres with lots of poetry. It’s also about   me revealing all my secrets and documenting my life through music. I knew I wanted to write a solo album and figure out what that would look like and sound like on my own, after years of collaborating with a lot of my musical heroes. Spit is a snapshot of my life as well as an exploration of musical styles that don’t usually coexist.

Some songs Spit, Rise and Run, Good Thing, Say What You Like, And I Wonder, Into the night, Suspended, Pockets and Shiver are pop, some heavy bass tunes, some drum and bass, and others folk, big band and jazz tunes. Gaurav Raina of Midival Punditz helped with the final mixes. The record is pragmatic but when you stitch it all together, it makes sense.”