Charu Suri’s latest album Shayan asks the listeners to slow down

For someone who has spent most of her life on global stages, Charu Suri’s latest work does something quietly radical: it asks the listener to slow down. Shayan, the Indo-American pianist and composer’s first non-jazz album, is a meditative, deeply intentional record rooted in Indian evening ragas, created not for performance but for rest.The album’s recent Grammy nomination in the Contemporary Instrumental Album category has brought Charu global attention yet again, but the impulse behind Shayan is intimate and deeply personal.“I wrote Shayan for my mother,” she says. “After my father passed away three years ago, she had trouble sleeping. But also, I think it’s very fair to say that a lot of people are having extraordinary levels of crisis and stress right now. People are anxious, they’re not able to sleep.”The album, she adds, emerged at a time when she herself was running on empty. “I had such a brutal touring schedule for two to three years. I toured all over the world performing, and as a soloist, composer, bandleader, orchestrator, and the person managing everything, it was a lot. I think I probably burned out from concertising and touring.”Born in India, Charu’s relationship with music began early and instinctively. At five, when her father took up a job in Nigeria, the family home came with a piano. Surrounded by vinyl records — Beethoven, Mozart, jazz, pop — she gravitated to the instrument with unusual intensity. “I was the kid who was playing five or six hours a day without anyone asking,” she recalls. By the time she returned to Chennai at nine, she was performing complex concerti, touring extensively and winning competitions. “Music wasn’t something I did. It was who I was.”That intensity carried into adulthood, shaping a career that spans continents and genres. Known for blending Indian ragas with jazz and contemporary instrumental music, Charu has long been described as a pioneer of raga-jazz. Yet Shayan marks a deliberate pause from virtuosity. “I didn’t want to do yet another flashy album saying, ‘Look how fast I can play.” she says. “I wanted to bring an album that had true depth and benefited people.”Drawing from evening ragas such as Kalyani, Desh, Bageshri, Durga and Jog, Shayan explores a spectrum of emotional states rather than a single mood. “We’re not all going to have happy, cheery evenings,” Charu explains. “You’re going to have evenings where you are very mournful, melancholic. Ragas mirror human emotions. They’re like a universe.” Each track, she adds, was shaped to be its own cosmos. “I worked very hard so that every single track wasn’t repetitive.”The album features a remarkable ensemble, including Premik Russell Tubbs of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, long-time touring partners and musicians she had admired for years.Charu believes music functions as a powerful emotional technology, capable of sustaining people through crisis. “I have people from Ukraine with bombs falling around them who tell me my music is helping them sleep better at night,” she says. “When the world is falling apart, the only thing saving you from going mad is that piece of music. The power cannot be underestimated.”The Grammy recognition, she adds, feels less like a culmination and more like validation, not just of her work but of Indian-influenced instrumental music finding a wider audience. “When I first started doing this style, no one knew what I was doing. They said, ‘It sounds cool, but what are you doing?’” she recalls. “Now I see the possibility of it moving from niche to mainstream, without losing authenticity.”Looking ahead, Charu is exploring new projects, including blending Brazilian rhythms with ragas. Composing for Hindi film is also a thought she is toying with and her major inspiration is AR Rahman. “The greatest respect for AR Rahman. I think he’s like my hero. He’s such a genius. What he’s done for the blending of cultures is absolutely brilliant. We’re just very lucky to be living in a lifetime where he’s producing such great work. I would love, from a film score point of view, to follow in his footsteps.”Yet Shayan remains a defining statement, one that extends beyond concert halls into sleep clinics, nursing homes and wellness spaces. “What I want listeners to feel,” she says softly, “is real peace. To feel held, cared for. To sleep well and feel human again.” In a restless world, Shayan offers exactly that, a rare permission to rest.

Charu Suri’s latest album Shayan asks the listeners to slow down

Gurnaaz

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