Sid Sriram Has Only Scratched the Surface
The Carnatic singer known for his unexpected collaborations — from soul to jazz — shares the formula for his hard-won success.
Sid Sriram is meeting me at a New York café, eating an egg sandwich and drinking coffee, right before his flight to Colorado. Why Colorado? He was visiting his elder sister around the “end of the pandemic,” in late 2021 or early 2022, when he fell in love with the state. “The mountains just put a number on me, where it just really humbled me and that’s what I needed at the time.” He’s speaking about Colorado’s natural landscape, but also its silence.
That he might feel he needs some humbling and silence feels apropos, for even he couldn’t have imagined where his career would go. The Carnatic singer knew music was his calling from an early age. But thanks to a lucky break in college and a hell of a manager (his father), he has performed at Coachella, sung for famed composer A.R. Rahman, and sold out multiple nights at an infamous New York City jazz hall. But lest you think this is an overnight success story, Sriram reminds me that “patience was forced upon” him.