Menu
New graduate Raghu Raman has decided to utilize his pre-corporate world time by working in the artistic field and releasing his single ‘Tu Na Hai’. With independent singers and songwriters growing in popularity on social media, the UPenn graduate has taken to TikTok to share his music now under a genre labelled Indian pop.
Indian pop is on the rise as several first-gen Indian Americans are combining Hindi, Indian instruments and pop beats as they create their own songs. Raman felt a void in his life after being a part of Penn Masala during school, and said that “a couple of months ago, I just sat down with my ukulele, and started writing lyrics, and just released my first song.”
Raman describes his music as melodic, Hindi pop music, and his closest inspiration is Anuv Jain. “I love his songs, especially with him being an independent artist, and hopefully I can follow in his footsteps.”
With a few of Raman’s singing videos on TikTok blowing up, he’s found that a lot of comments are from non South Asians who are appreciating the genre of music and his voice. “I looked at all of the comments, and I would say that 40% of them were not Indians, and I would not have expected that because all of my lyrics are in Hindi … and I think as we get more and more people creating Indian style music, whatever language it’s in, I just think it’s better for Desi representation.”
Raman hopes to make music his full time career, and believes that social media apps like TikTok and Instagram help independent artists push their music to an audience. “I think they’re such great tools for people to not have to go the record label route if they don’t want to, and it’s such an equalizing field.”
After the release of ‘Tu Na Hai’, Raman is planning to release more singles as he approaches starting a full-time corporate job, and aims to push his music continuously on social media.
