‘I’ll treat it like another Singer, musician Raghu Dixit talks about performing for the Queen of England next month, debuting a new musical, and appearing at the Andrew Marr Show

‘I’ll treat it like another

Singer, musician Raghu Dixit talks about performing for the Queen of England next month, debuting a new musical, and appearing at the Andrew Marr Show

Being the only Indian to perform for the Queen of England as a part of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations this May, Raghu Dixit has achieved quite a feat! Not just that, he will also be playing on The Andrew Marr Show in the UK (which has had guests including Jay-Z, Angelina Jolie and David Cameron); and will be debuting a big new musical A Tale Retold at the Alchemy Festival. We catch this musical maverick in a tete-e-tete… How does it feel to perform for the Queen of England and the Duke of Edinburgh? It’s a great honour to be invited to perform for the Queen and anytime I’m told that I’m representing India, it feels a little overwhelming. But I try to treat it like another gig and deliver my best, though, I know this is much bigger. I only hope we pull it off smoothly and that it’s a roaring success. I hope she gets up and jumps along to Mysore se Aayi, like the rest of the world does! Any special preparations for the performance? We’ve planned a musical and dance extravaganza with my song Mysore se Aayi. Accompanying me will be 12 dancers from contemporary dance company Nritarutya. Also, I’m told that 500 of the queen’s horses will be dancing in the grounds as well. Moreover, I’ll be backed by a 70 piece Orchestra that is learning the music score for Mysore se Aayi! How did A Tale Retold come about? It started as a discussion between my manager and British Council. We wanted to make a musical with an Indian story and as luck would have it, things fell into place. The members of Bellowhead who we are sharing the music responsibilities with are fantastic. From what we have written so far, it is unlike anything I have ever done before! Tell us more about the performance? A Tale Retold was conceived as an idea last year, and since then all the members involved met for a development phase in India, and we have written 15 new songs that will make up the musical. Gauri, who is taking over the dance responsibilities for this project will be choreographing various sequences of the musical and right now, everything is being played by ear. New things are coming up every day and things are morphing into what I think will eventually be a beautiful product. Immediately, we will be previewing some of the music made for the musical at our gigs later this month at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, but more development work will go in before we can showcase this in India late this year, or early next year.