AN INTERNATIONALLY-acclaimed singer is appearing in Southampton tomorrow night to perform her varied and highly personal music.

Former Mercury Music Prize-nominated artist Susheela Raman will be bringing her fusion of South Indian Tamil roots and Western culture to the Turner Sims on Friday night.

Over the last decade Susheela has spent several months each year in the Indian subcontinent researching and making connections with music and musicians.

She said she has taken these “ingredients” and used them to create her distinctly personal music.

She said: “It was a long journey. As a kid I learned Indian classical music through my parents. As a teenager I got into sixties rock, in my twenties I decided I wanted to try to bridge all these worlds and find connections.

“I started going back to India. I went there and started looking around and I ended up over a period of 10 to 12 years creating a network of musicians and doing lots of research.

“I’m creating a very British music and I’m just putting these ingredients into it. If you think about modern rock music it comes from African music.

“I see what I’m doing that I’m making something that’s very heavily British.”

Susheela, 41, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize – the most prestigious music prize in British music – for her 2001 album Salt Rain.

Her multi-cultural background is something which she feels passionately.

She said: “As a musician my work reflects the weaving of culture. I see its hybridity as a strength.

“I don’t see how one can look at either British culture or Indian culture as some kind of fixed, unchanging thing but here are these defensive, conservative voices on both sides.

“In my world, culture is something porous and very adaptive, an unrestricted, endless encounter. I have played with musicians from all over the world and there are always things to learn. Nothing is complete in itself.”

Susheela is appearing at Turner Sims, tomorrow at 8pm. For tickets visit or call 023 8059 5151.