My mixtape: Thamarai’s 10 songs that shaped the independent British Tamil music scene

Thamarai is the Tamil word for lotus, a flower that rises above murky waters to bloom spectacularly. It’s also the name of a London-based British Tamil cultural platform which, for more than two and a half decades, has provided a platform for artists to likewise grow and glow.

In July, as part of our South Asian Sounds series, Thamarai presents a double bill of artists currently climbing and blooming. Eelam Tamil-rooted and London-raised vocalist Pritt and British Tamil DJ and producer Prito come together for what’s set to be a fantastic Friday night in our Purcell Room on 3 July.

Ahead of this gig, to not only give you a flavour of what to expect from Pritt and Prito, but also a sense of the artists who paved the way for them, founder of Thamarai Ara Vetha has put together this playlist of artists who’ve shaped independent British Tamil music. As Vetha puts it, ‘these ten tracks tell the journey: the artists and the songs that shaped a diaspora music scene born in London and now heard around the world’.

Listen to the tracks and then take a look at Vetha’s background for their inclusion in this playlist, below.

‘J Town Story’ – Krishan Maheson

We start at the source of our inspiration. In the early 2000s Krishan Maheson recorded what is widely recognised as one of the earliest Tamil rap songs to come out of Sri Lanka; proof that our generation could take hip-hop and make it speak our language. The song followed a young Tamil man fleeing the war zone for Colombo. That same year he performed ‘J Town Story’ in London, one of the first rappers out of Sri Lanka to take a UK stage.

‘Sunshowers’ – M.I.A.

A Tamil refugee raised in Mitcham who took the sound of London and the British Tamil community – defiant, displaced – and put it on the world stage. Her ‘Sunshowers’ video, directed by Rajesh Touchriver (known for directing the 2002 film In the Name of Buddha, 2002), was shot in south India and featured Tamil women in Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)  training attire – the first time the Tamil movement was represented in pop culture on national television here in the UK. M.I.A. kicked the door wide open, and a generation walked through it.

‘Kuruvi’ – Charles Bosco and Dinesh Kanagaratnam

London-based producer Charles Bosco teamed up with Sri Lankan Tamil rapper Dinesh Kanagaratnam (ADK) and singers Jackson Bosco, Benny Dayal, Suvi Suresh and Arjun for a Tamil party anthem, lifted from their collaboration album SL2SG. It became one of the first Tamil songs to go viral, passing a million views on YouTube, all without an official music video.

‘Nenjinile Rebirth’ – MC Sai, Chris G, Sahi Siva

While M.I.A. was conquering the mainstream, MC Sai was connecting the diaspora with his sharp lyrics and flow. The UK’s most successful Tamil rapper, he released his debut at 16 and went on to found Rebel Star Records and then Oru Nation, labels that launched the likes of Teejay, Sahi Siva and Ratty Adhiththan. Scenes don’t happen by accident; earlier generations were there first, nurturing the foundations and building them solid. ‘Nenjinile Rebirth’ has racked up one billion views on TikTok, 67 million on YouTube and 270 million streams.

‘Vaadi’ – Arjun

Before the current wave, there was Arjun Coomaraswamy, the London boy whose R&B rework of ‘Why This Kolaveri Di’ went viral in 2011 and proved a British Asian artist could go global. With billions of views and a worldwide fanbase there’s almost no city on the planet he hasn’t performed in. Arjun bridged South Asian culture globally, fusing his love of soulful English R&B with Tamil, Hindi, Punjabi and more. ‘Vaadi’ is that East-meets-West formula at its sharpest, sampling the classic Tamil track ‘Vaadi Vaadi Nattukattai’.

‘Naan Kudikka Poren’ – Sahi Siva, Ratty Adhiththan, Selojan

One of the first Tamil independent artists to complete a 32-city global tour in a single year, East London’s Sahi Siva has become the sound of the diaspora Tamil. In 2019 he teamed up with French Tamil rapper Ratty Adhiththan for the viral hit ‘Naan Kudikka Poren’, which has amassed over 100 million views on YouTube and a matching number of Spotify streams. Sahi Siva built his audience the grassroots way, from university stages to a global following, while Ratty Adhiththan has been one of the scene’s defining voices since its earliest days.

‘Skyline’ – Maharani, ItsyaboiKay

When Timbaland calls your track ‘ground-breaking for [your] culture’ you have to pause for a moment to take that in. A multilingual singer-songwriter with Indian Tamil roots, Maharani moves between R&B, trap-soul and Indian sonics and her viral Tamixes series, reimagining popular songs in Tamil, set a trend of its own. Her debut EP AnBae, made with producer ItsyaboiKay, earned plays across the BBC and a feature in MTV News. She is building a new lane, and taking the Tamil language with her.

‘Ballad of the Bullet’ – Abi Sampa, Rushil Ranjan, Janan Sathiendran

A daughter of northwest London, Abi Sampa took our community somewhere it had never been. Her Orchestral Qawwali Project sold out the Royal Albert Hall, a place of which she is now an Associate Artist. This April she returned to that stage for AR Rahman’s Royal Albert Hall debut, premiering Rangreza, a new work the maestro co-created with Rushil Ranjan for her voice, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A Carnatic-trained, veena-playing British Tamil woman, Sampa’s ‘Ballad of the Bullet’ places her take on Indian classical music in the spotlight.

‘Unakkul Naane’ – Pritt (with dilushselva)

A cover recorded to celebrate her parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, this track has now streamed close to 100 million times. South London’s Pritt blends Carnatic melisma with R&B honesty, and this track became a homecoming anthem for a whole generation of diaspora Tamils.

‘Thaniye Thananthaniye’ – Prito

Music producer, DJ and architect of the Tamil diaspora underground, Prito flips nostalgic golden-era Kollywood classics into house, UK garage and amapiano, and what started as a sound has become a movement. This track features on his Prito Sounds World Tour album.