1. How do you describe your music to people?

That’s a figurative question to answer especially as a singer/song writer. Most of the stuff I do is singer/song writer stuff but at the same time I feel like all these years that I have been writing and singing and performing I haven’t found the right definition for myself. So, I don’t know exactly how I would describe it to people but if anything it’s who I am. Most of my songs are about what I feel about life and what I feel about people around me.

 

2. Why did you start singing/ performing?

I’ve been singing all my life. Singing has always been in the family, at any time when there’s a major family gathering everybody will start singing something. But, the way I got into being an artist is when I started following it. I started song writing when I was about 14 years old. It was after the whole song writing process that I fell in love with it. Once you start to write about what you’re truly feeling, and especially when you start to perform it in front of people it’s almost like magic. You could almost say you’re hooked to it or you’re addicted to it, I don’t know how to explain it, but you just kind of fall in love with it and music is really my first love.

 

3. Are you a solo artist only or do you also collaborate with other artists?

I would like to call myself a solo artist, but at the same time I am very open for collaboration. For example, the Nepali album that I released about a year ago I call a collaboration with Rohit Shakya, who produced basically the whole album. What we do is, song writing wise a majority of the input is mine, whereas in terms of the instrumentation and the production you have for actually packaging the song together he puts a lot into it. It’s almost like a mutual collaboration because the final product I like to say is ours. I have had collaboration offers in the past but Rohit is one of those people that I’ve stuck with for a long time and we released another English EP (Extended Play) together as well and we have other future projects pending. So I’m definitely open to collaboration.

 

4. What image do you think your music conveys?

The music industry is very, very saturated and it’s specially tuff for female artists because there is a main stream image that is expected of you if you are doing pop music or popular music. So in terms of how I want to portray myself as an artist, basically just a very down to earth, simple girl who likes to write songs. There is nothing more complex to it or nothing fake, I don’t want to put up a front and pretend to be somebody else, I just want to be real. I think what’s missing in the industry is that everything is formulated and everything is manufactured, and there is always somebody behind a certain image. Nothing is original anymore and I want to introduce that level of freshness especially in the main stream. The factor that no one is unique is missing; I woke up this morning and turned the music channel up and almost every single song that plays consecutively, the female artists in particular, all sound the same and they all are portrayed the same. Till this point in my musical career I’ve made all of my decisions on my own and hopefully in the future when I do need to take a step further I won’t have to compromise that. I want to get to a point where I have enough leverage to create a situation where I can make my own decisions.

 

5. How has your music evolved since you first began playing?

My music has definitely evolved. I remember listening to demos that I did when I just started to write songs. They are all real and mean a lot to me, but at the same time the issues I dealt with and the emotions I felt when I was 14, is all teenage stuff and is nothing compared to what I write now. But at the same time it shows the whole evolution process and it’s nice to have all that material recorded to listen back and compare the two and realize how much I’ve grown. I think I’ve grown vocally as well and the key thing in growth is the magic of forth collaboration, the more people you meet the more people you play with. I’ve got a really good team of people right now, the band that I’m playing with (who are also in the band Jindabaad), just playing with them has taught me so much. It’s a never ending evolving process. I feel I’ve matured more even form the Nepali album which was just about a year and a half ago. But most definitely I’m still growing and I need to grow a lot more.

 

6. What has been your biggest challenge as a musician?

Have you been able to overcome that challenge? If so, how? I think the biggest challenge of being a musician and I think everybody can relate to it is the security and finances. Especially for me when I started this project I was alone and there was a huge financial burden. I was recording so there were studio fees, for rehearsals you need to book the rehearsal space and since I’m a solo artist I always feel that I’m the one who has to take care of all the responsibilities, given which is completely fair. So definitely finance is one thing or probably the most crucial thing that all musicians are most likely worry about. Honestly, dealing with it is being able to budget and really being able to use your network of people. You’d be surprised at how many people are just willing to help you, if you seek it. It might be for a minimal cost but there are ways of working around the budget. When we started with the Nepali album we literally didn’t have anything to start with. But somehow things just worked out; there was a lot of running around, making calls, time crunching, budget crunching and shifting money from here to there and at the same time trying to recoup it. That’s the hardest part once you’ve invested it you obviously want to earn it back. That’s the difficulty of working as an independent musician, who is not helped by a major label funding everything; you face the burden of reimbursing yourself. It’s not just about the money because you’ve invested so much time and energy into it that you have to learn how to adjust the business into your creative self and learn how to balance the two.

 

7. When you compose a song where do you get your ideas from and how does a song develop?

I think inspiration is all around. I feel like I’m a very emotional writer and I tend to write about even little things that strike me. It can be about an object or how I feel about a person that I met or a stranger on the bus. Whatever it is, I feel the most inspired when something just pulls me in and I want to write about it. Now I’ve been trying to practice more demanded song writing, where I just sit down and write about something, but those songs don’t really turn out as good because they feel very formally written. Inspiration is all around you just have to wait and find it.

 

8. Who got you started? Was it with a different instrument?

I think I started with a little bit of keyboard in the beginning. Then I took violin classes for a bit, not that I took them very seriously and I wish now that I had continued, but I stopped for some reason. I played a whole bunch of wood wind instruments when I moved to Canada because we had music classes’ in school and also played a little bit of the trumpet. (Another instrument I wished I had learned more about) At the end of it for some reason I picked the guitar and I stuck with it. That was the instrument I used primarily to write with and for some reason it was one of the friendliest instruments, especially because it helped my song writing a lot. So, I hopped through a lot of instruments, which I wish I had learnt more of, and my knowledge is very limited on those instruments, yet at the same time it was nice to have learnt all of them while growing up.

 

9. Do you have any other projects you would like your fans to know about?

Rohit and I just finished working on our English EP called 11:11 and it’s available on the website www.asthamusic.com it’s free to look through. Right now hopefully while I am here Rohit and I are thinking of working on two more music videos, one promoting the Nepali album and one promoting the English EP. However we may not do songs from the English EP straight away we might be writing and composing more and we also have a whole bunch of songs sitting there that we haven’t done anything with. So, the two videos are our top priority projects pending at the moment.

 

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