In the warm chill of the South Indian winter, Sid Sriram will be coming home. The Chennai-born, Bay Area-raised singer and musician will perform in Bengaluru (November 22), Chennai (November 29) and Hyderabad (December 13) as part of his India tour.

Known for eclectic set lists that fuse Carnatic and R&B, Sriram will primarily feature his South Indian film hits in these shows, he told Scroll.

“I’ll be performing songs that I’ve sung for films, reinterpretations of songs I loved listening to growing up, and some of my original music as well,” Sriram said. “The show is going to be a dynamic journey, from high-octane energy to intimately vulnerable moments.”

Contrast is key in understanding 35-year-old Sriram. He learned varnams from his mother Latha Sriram in his Fremont living room. The radio taught him R&B’s curl. A course in music production and engineering at Berklee armed him with craft.

Silk at the core, with grain at the edges, his viral 2011 cover of Frank Ocean’s We All Try drew AR Rahman’s attention. A year later, Sriram was in Rahman’s studio, recording the bluesy Adiye from the Mani Ratnam romance Kadal (2013).

“Frank Ocean’s first project Nostalgia, Ultra came out in 2011 when I was in my third year of college,” Sriram recalled. “That project really changed my life. It felt so free, experimental yet grounded in super catchy songwriting. That and his third album Blonde really pushed me to be boundless with my own art.”

Versatile and ambitious, Sriram swiftly rose up the ranks in the South Indian playback scene. Hits such as Ennodu Nee Irundhaal (I, 2015), Thalli Pogathey (Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada, 2016) and Inkem Inkem (Geetha Govindam, 2018) made him a favourite with Tamil and Telugu composers and listeners.

Two Allu Arjun blockbusters catapulted Sriram to stardom. It was entirely to Sriram’s credit that the lyrics video of Samajavaragamana from Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020), rather than the filmed song, had millions of views and topped the streaming charts. In 2021, Sriram sang Devi Sri Prasad’s Srivalli from Pushpa: The Rise.

Sriram says he owes his continued success to “sitting at home and practising for hours, exploring boundlessly”. He added, “And when I am doing that, my mind is completely clear. I’m not thinking about anything, just staying fully locked in.”

Like Rahman’s discoveries Sukhwinder Singh and Shashaa Tirupati, Sriram too stands out for his clutter-breaking talent. “My own voice feels like it’s at the root of the soul/R&B side of my music,” Sriram observed. “I grew up with many influences like Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, BB King and many more. But my understanding and real grasp of the form came through experimenting on my own endlessly.”

Sriram has maintained a personal creative voice, untamed by the industrial nature of film playback. His first album Entropy (2019) was a statement in which he freely explored his borderless musicality. Across 12 tracks, gamakas snapped into Auto-Tuned hooks and falsettos felt both devotional and digital.

Eyes Open starts with Sriram singing English lines like a Carnatic hymn. A nadaswaram intro follows. The song ends with what can be described as noise music.

Then there’s the swagger of hip-hop in Sriram’s vox and bars: “Red dot on the head, hair tied back tight / In a way that says I don’t care how you feel / I’m not here for reconciliation, I’m here for what’s mine.”

The abrasive darkness of Entropy disappears in his second album, the post-Pushpa Sidharth (2023). The songs are friendlier. There is an attempt to create earworms. But the formal experimentation hasn’t abated.

The albums “came from somewhere deep within me… Sidharth felt like those seeds maturing into a refined vocabulary that I could use to bring my worlds together intentionally.”

For Sriram, Carnatic, R&B, electronic music and hip-hop are part of a “vast kaleidoscopic continuum”. He observed, “I’m listening to various forms every day, making music every day, practising every day. So, it doesn’t feel like there’s a bridge, it does feel like a continuum.”

Sriram’s self-analysis explains why he is a streaming-era sensation. Sriram’s output reflects the fluidity of disparate genres being shuffled and bleeding into each other on automated playlists.

Some of these idiosyncrasies sneaked into his only soundtrack composition. His album for the Mani Ratnam-produced Vaanam Kottattum (2020) is a close cousin of his solo work. Like Arijit Singh’s only film score, Pagglait (2021), this album features the singular vision of a musician whose bread-and-butter doesn’t depend on films.

“I think people who make their own original music have the experience of building sonic universes that are specifically based on their own visions,” Sriram explained.

These parallel lanes of mainstream success and forging a transnational popstar identity led to Sriram becoming the first South Indian to perform at the Coachella music festival in 2024. Punjab’s Diljit Dosanjh opened India’s accounts at Coachella in 2023.

Sriram’s signature R&B-Carnatic set drew attention. Mostly featuring tunes from Sidharth, Sriram’s set ended with a Thiruppugazh hymn – a 14th-century Tamil religious song dedicated to Shiva’s son Murugan.

“The best shows have an effortless dynamic arc to them, they feel like sonic journeys,” Sriram said about his setlists. “I break my shows up into sections, with each section feeling like a movement that all come together to form an overall arc.”

What’s next for Sriram is good news for listeners seeking more of him in his music. “I think I will compose for films again in the future,” Sriram promised before adding, “But not right now. I’m immersed in making my next couple albums.”

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