For months, Indian vocalist Asha Puthli has lugged a portable, suitcase-sized karaoke machine out of her condo in West Palm Beach, Florida. The septuagenarian puts her on a minibus that takes her to the recreation room of her retirement complex, where she settles in. the machine, a gift from her new record label, to rehearse from her catalog in an empty room.
“It was quite difficult to find a machine big enough to be able to take to the clubhouse,” he laughed. “I went to a karaoke club in Palm Beach. They had all the standards there, but of course they didn't have any of my songs.”
Puthli's career has taken her through smoky jazz clubs in Mumbai and a hippie camp in Woodstock; her talking to Andy Warhol and being dressed by Halston and Manolo Blahnik while she strolled through Studio 54 in New York City. She has sung with sax giant Ornette Coleman and battled Sean “Diddy” Combs over unlicensed samples.
He has also had financial problems at times and has not toured in 40 years. Although he lived in Los Angeles for five years in the 2010s, Puthli never played here. Until Thursday, that is, when he'll finally headline a sold-out show at Los Angeles experimental music club Zebulon.
The show is a final career laurel for an Indian artist who has captivated and challenged music industries across three continents for decades. His life and his music embody the fascinating and fraught pop culture exchanges between Asia and the West.
After a lovely remix project from a Los Angeles indie label dedicated to lost South Asian pop, Puthli, 79, is no longer ahead of her time.
“The Beatles took that Indian influence and brought it back to the West,” Puthli said. “But back then, you didn't see many Indian artists saying, 'Hey, it's a two-way street.' You have influenced me too.'”
“There were certain traditional expectations, like having an arranged marriage,” Asha Puthli said. “But I was pretty adamant about doing what I want.”
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
In the green backyard of a Silver Lake home (also the office of Naya Beat, the micro-indie label that's re-releasing and remixing Puthli's catalog), she takes a journalist's hand and cautiously climbs the stairs to get her portrait. . taken. She laughed at the unglamorous photo that photographer Richard Avedon took of her for his 1975 LP “She Loves to Hear the Music.” But on that day, Puthli posed with the same poise she learned from her training in classical Indian and Western dance.
“She was always the poster child for 'I can't believe this all happened,'” said Raghav Mani, co-founder of Naya Beat. “That she wasn't a household name, even in India, is kind of crazy.”
“The definition of a star is someone you want to help,” said Douglas Mcgowan, who heads A&R for the Numero Group label, and who was hosting Puthli at his home while she rehearsed for her tour. “She's a star.”
Puthli's life embodies pop music in the postcolonial world, with all its promises and misunderstandings. Raised in what was then Bombay by traditional parents (her father participated in Mohandas Gandhi's “Salt March”), she studied Hindustani classical music, but became captivated by jazz and performed in local clubs with her back to the public to support herself. discreet She was a proto-hippie in her own country and traveled to rural towns to see the wild diversity of India.
“There were certain traditional expectations, like having an arranged marriage,” he said. “But I was pretty adamant about doing what I want.”
A New York writer, Ved Mehta, met her on a reporting trip. “Asha is a beautiful, mercurial girl, fresh out of college, who has applied for a job as a… stewardess simply to go to London and hear a real jazz vocalist, and maybe become one herself,” he wrote. in the essay “Jazz in Bombay,” published in his 1970 book “Portrait of India.”
After earning a scholarship to study with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York, Puthli traveled to the Woodstock festival in 1969 with a flower-power team. She befriended the elite of central New York, including Warhol. She recalled pitching him an idea for bold LP art. (“He said, 'What do you plan for your album cover?' I said, 'Maybe a man's crotch with a zipper, and from there you get pink vinyl.'” A few years later, Warhol used it for the Rolling Stones' LP “Sticky Fingers”).
She was roommates with Holly Woodlawn, the trans actress whose name appears in Lou Reed's “Walk on the Wild Side.” Mehta connected Puthli to John Hammond, record producer of Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan, who signed her to CBS. The then president of the company, Clive Davis, did not get it. He said, 'No, it's jazz. It won't sell,'” Puthli recalled.
“I don't feel like a stranger in any country,” said Asha Puthli, seen here in a file photo. “But the industry made me feel like an outsider. “It was a kick in the stomach.”
(Asha Puthli)
When he sang on Coleman's 1972 LP, “Science Fiction,” a rousing jam that cut through a fierce band, the sax legend gave him a warning about America.
“He said, 'Asha, don't even try to be a mainstream musician. They will only accept you when you make Indian music. My whole reason for being was to build the bridge between one of the oldest cultures, India, and the youngest, the United States. But he was right, of course.”
Puthli recorded four albums for various CBS global labels in the 1970s, including his 1976 crossover disco “The Devil Is Loose,” which included his best-known song, “Space Talk.” The sultry number became a favorite cut at David Mancuso's Loft in New York City and later a gold mine for rap producers (it's the backbone of G-Unit's “The World”).
But record label marketing executives insisted he had a problem. As a South Asian singer in a largely black and white music industry, who was her audience?
“CBS organized a discussion group to study whether it would sell in the United States,” he recalled acidly. “They said, 'You're not going to sell to white people, you're not going to sell to black people.' They said that Indians living in America liked Indian film music.
“I don't feel like a stranger in any country,” Puthli added. “But the industry made me feel like an outsider. “It was a kick in the stomach.”
Puthli never completely disappeared, but she gave birth to her son Janu and bounced between smaller labels in the '80s, when her career slowed. She ran a public relations agency and helped launch the environmental group Cruz Verde with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993. She occasionally appeared at festivals (she played the Central Park SummerStage in New York in 2006) and fought for the legacy of the.
He recalled that Diddy sampled “Space Talk” for Notorious BIG’s “The World Is Filled…” without permission. She tracked him down at a party at the Crustacean restaurant in Los Angeles and sent Janu after him with her CD. She said Diddy threw him out of a car window.
“What infuriated me was not that he tried my music but that he treated my son like that,” Puthli said. “I am a lion. “How dare you?” (He said they settled out of court.)
However, her reputation as an unsung pioneer of South Asian pop music grew in the underground. Several reissue labels attempted to compile her catalog, but her master recordings and isolated instrument tracks from her were on unmarked hard drives buried in her Florida home. Asha Puthli was a star who needed help.
“I don't think Indians really knew what to think of her,” said Raghav Mani, right, with Filip Nikolic of the Naya Beat record label. “It was unheard of for a South Asian woman to do what she did.”
(Naya Beat)
In 2021, Mani and Filip Nikolic, a former member of Los Angeles disco group Poolside who performs as Turbotito, founded Naya Beat, a reissue and remix label focused on reviving ambitious pop from the subcontinent. They had included a Puthli song, “Chipko Chipko”, on their debut compilation.
“I don't think Indians really knew what to do with it,” said Mani, who is of Indian descent. “It was unheard of for a South Asian woman to do what she did. At that time, through the lens of the Beatles and Ravi Shankar, it seemed as if all the Indian musicians were sitting on a rock meditating and playing the sitar. “It’s hard to break that mold even today, and she did it 50 years ago.”
Nikolic had included “Space Talk” and other tracks in his DJ sets, surprised by how good the records still sound today. “'Space Talk' has such a sick foundation,” he said. “A classic. And with 'Chipko' we thought it was just a Michael Jackson cover, but it's about the Indian environmental movement.”
They convinced Puthli to give them a long weekend to go through his house and find the master recordings of his albums, with an eye toward a larger release.
“It felt like an archaeological trip. It was crazy how much stuff I had on 40 hard drives,” Nikolic said. “I think they had been protective of all this. “It was a battle to convince them that we can be trusted and that we are here to help.”
Last year, Mani and Nikolic's research culminated in “Disco Mystic: Select Remixes Vol. 1,” the first in an anthology of Puthli remixes, featuring dance music legends like Maurice Fulton and Dimitri From Paris, along with younger artists like Psychemagik, Jitwam and his own edit of Puthli’s “One Night Affair.”
The EP was sold out in two editions. The couple weren't the only ones who thought Puthli was due a revival: In 2022, Raveena, an Indian-American R&B singer, called her debut Warner Music album “Asha's Awakening” and featured Puthli on the song “Asha's Kiss.” ”.
“There's this second and third generation of children of Indian immigrants, who weren't there when I was making music,” said Asha Puthli, seen here in a file photo. “Now they are between 20, 30 and 40 years old. They are the ones who can still hear me. “
(Asha Puthli)
“There is finally a kind of prominence of South Asian artists,” Mani said. Movie fans have proven that they will watch uncompromising gonzo Indian films like “RRR” and flock to see artists like Jai Paul and Nav at Coachella. Along the way, Mani said, “They are discovering Asha's story for the first time and an incredible moment occurs. It is a compelling full circle in which her music regains popularity, but also restores her legacy.”
Meanwhile, Puthli has to prepare for a formidable touring schedule, which includes a stop at the UK's Glastonbury festival in June and a string of dates in Australia.
“When people ask me how I'm preparing, I do it by going from doctor to doctor,” he laughed. “At my age, that's what we do.”
This album and tour are in no way a final farewell to his musical career. Now that the music world has rediscovered Asha Puthli, she wants to make up for the lost decades.
“I love these little places, but I want to do the Hollywood Bowl. I want Grammys, keep it up,” Puthli laughed. “There is this second and third generation of children of Indian immigrants, who weren't there when I was making music. Now they are between 20, 30 and 40 years old. “They are the ones who can still hear me.”
