New york-based fusion artiste Rini’s Moon Drops India tour comes to Chennai

As a part of the multi-city Moon Drops India tour, New York-based fusion artiste Rini and her band perform in Chennai at Barracuda Brew

The city and its many facets are recurring motifs in Harini ‘Rini’ Raghavan’s music. “Performing here feels like coming back home…it is home after all,” she says with a laugh. The New York-based Chennai-born artiste will perform in the city on Saturday, as part of a multi-city The Moon Drops India Tour.

A composer, vocalist and violinist, Rini, who was born and brought up in Chennai, went on to major in electronic production and design at the Berklee College of Music, and was a part of the famed Berklee Indian Ensemble. There is, of course, a Chennai connection that led her to this as well. 

“I have always been fascinated by timbres, textures, and synthesizers, and I vividly remember listening to A R Rahman introduce synthesizers in 1992 for Roja. Every sound you heard in those songs was so fresh,” she recalls. In her music as a fusion artiste over the years, Rini has brought together all of this, with jazz and her strong background in carnatic music. 

In Chennai, Rini will be performing with Ranajoy Das from Delhi on the drums, Achal Murthy from Luxembourg on bass, Andrew Cheng from Malaysia on the guitar, and Shahar Amdor from Israel on the saxophone. Singer Shakthisree Gopalan will also join Rini onstage, to perform ‘Magizhini’, an indie collaboration single that they recorded in 2023. 

“We will be performing original music with probably a couple of covers. The setlist will be a mix of older songs of mine like ‘Mango showers’, and new ones like ‘Kapi in Rio’ which released over the last year,” Rini says. The songs are across a myriad of genres — carnatic fusion, jazz, alt rock, and more. “’Kapi in Rio’ for instance, has Latin music influences and clave claps, where the audience can clap along and engage with the song,” she adds. The tour is named after Rini’s 2023 song ‘Moon Thuli’. 

Partnering with Quriosity, Bengaluru is the first destination for the Moon Drops tour followed by Delhi, Kochi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad after the Chennai performance. 

“There is an instant connection with my audiences in Chennai, given how many of my compositions including ‘Marina’, ‘Mango Showers’, and ‘Filter Kapi’ are rooted here. I am looking forward to this,” she says. While it has been a little more than a year since her last tour, and performance in Chennai, Rini says she hopes to tour India at least once a year going forward.