Welcome to this week’s post all about pursuing music as a South Asian! This week we got the wonderful opportunity to interview Srikar Nanduri, the guitarist from Weston Estate. He shared his story and gave advice to young South Asian artists. Keep reading to find out more!
Tell us about yourself!
My name is Srikar Nanduri and I am currently a rising senior at North Carolina State University! My hometown is Cary, NC and I am the guitarist for Weston Estate!
What instruments can you play?
Obviously guitar is my main instrument, but when I was in elementary/middle school, I played the violin for a long time (like a lot of desi kids). I actually used to play the cello but my mom was like, “What the hell is a cello? You’re switching to violin!” But ever since then, I’ve played the violin for maybe eight or nine years. Honestly a lot of the music theory I use for Weston comes from my violin days. I took private violin lessons, but I started getting bored of it because practicing felt like a chore, so I eventually dropped it.
I technically started playing the guitar when I was eight or nine years old and took lessons for a few months and then the same thing happened; I didn’t feel like taking lessons because it again started feeling like a chore to be held accountable. And then one day, several years later, I found the old guitar I used to have. I knew I didn’t want to take lessons again, but I thought, “Okay, let’s see what I can learn.” I went on YouTube and taught myself whatever I could. So I’ve been playing since that day, which was around 8th grade and now I’m 21 years old.
I know some piano only because of music theory, but I can’t play anything crazy. So it’s mostly guitar, bass guitar, and violin.
How did you guys make the band and what was the inspiration behind the name?
I’ve known Manas my entire life; our parents are actually family friends. We basically grew up together and we were babies together. I met Abhi on the bus in 6th grade and I actually didn’t know he existed until I was 11 because he never came outside to hangout, even though he lives a few houses down from me. Eventually, we became really good friends! I also met Tanmay around that time through English class in 6th grade. So all of us became pretty close in middle school. Later on, Abhi and I went to a different high school and that’s where we met Marco.
But, the way that it started was in 10th grade. Abhi had gotten FL Studio as a Christmas gift, which is a music production software. He would make beats and show them to us for fun. We had always talked about making a song out of one of his beats someday, just for fun.
Over the summer, Abhi’s parents had left to go to India. They told him that absolutely under no circumstances was he allowed to have anyone over while they were gone. His parents left and he immediately called Tanmay and I over and told us to come over to make music. However, the issue was that he has security cameras around the entire house and a German Shepherd that will bark at you if you aren’t supposed to be there. So Abhi gave us this super elaborate plan to sneak around the side of the house and climb a window to get inside. We managed to get inside and he showed us a beat he was working on.
We made another beat by sampling Tum Se Hi from Jab We Met, and we were super excited about it. All of us wanted to make a full song out of it, but it was getting late and I was getting calls to come home. I asked if all of us could come back to my place and work on the beat more, but the issue was that all of our parents knew each other, meaning that they knew Abhi’s parents weren’t home. I had to beg my mom to tell Abhi’s parents that he was scared of sleeping in the dark alone so that he could come to my place (even though he had security cameras and a huge, scary dog). We finished the song, but it was a very sloppy process. We literally used an office headset to record everything! The living room we recorded in was very echoey, so we made a box of pillows around the head of whoever was recording so it wouldn’t echo. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing.
We put the song on SoundCloud, and it slowly got passed around school. People started coming up to us and saying, “Hey, your song is really good!” Thinking back, the song was god awful, but that day was the spark where we realized we could actually try doing something with music and maybe make a band. But this was Abhi, Tanmay, and I; Manas joined later after he heard more about us and he was interested. He was a part of the choir in middle school and we knew he could sing, so we told him we’d love to have him. Marco actually joined as our photographer at first; he used to make cover art for us. One day, I was waiting for my parents to pick me up from Chick-Fil-A and Marco texted me:
That audio file was him singing Hopeless by Khalid in the shower. Until that moment, I had never heard this dude sing, but I learned that day that he could sing really, really well. We told him that he should do a verse on one of our songs. From there, the rest is history.
The name is named after a neighborhood directly across Tanmay’s where we all used to hangout. We just thought the name sounded really cool and regal so it ended up sticking.
In the end, if it weren’t for us not listening to our parents, none of this would’ve happened.
What was your experience like being a predominantly South Asian band to release music? Did you face any challenges along the way?
In terms of my own experience, I think relatively unique because the music I grew up on was not Western at all. Up until I was maybe eight, 100% of the music I listened to was Telugu and Bollywood music. I feel like subconsciously we developed a lot of our influences from that kind of music. That in and of itself sets our music-making process apart in my opinion.
For challenges, I wouldn’t say we had many as predominantly South Asian members because the barriers to entry into music are much lower than they used to be. I’d say our biggest challenge was people tending to box us in and narrow our identities down to just our ethnicities. People would say that we are only a South Asian boy band, and first of all, Marco is Cuban-American.
Secondly, we want the music to speak for itself, outside of us just being South Asian-American.
Obviously, representation is really important, and without it, people would find it hard to believe that getting into the music industry as a South Asian is even possible. But I think people forgetting that we're multifaceted and ignoring other parts of our individual identities has been the biggest challenge that we’ve had to overcome. I think this will get better with time, persistence, and making better music. It’s not only because of our ethnicity that we are doing well, we have other qualities that make us stand out.
There are always small things that happen, but some of them are kind of funny. My other friends who are Indian will go out to the bars and they are 100% not in the band. But people will come up to them and say, “Oh my god, are you Weston Estate?” And to play along, my friends will be like, “Yeah, I am!” And these people will take pictures with them!
I think being referred to as “The Brown Boy Band” has definitely gotten better, and we have been actively putting in a lot of time and effort to get over it that hump. There’s still a lot of work to be done, of course, but I hope there will be more South Asian artists coming out and doing well in the industry. It definitely needs that diversity of perspectives.
Overall, though, being a South Asian in the music industry has been very rewarding and I love meeting other South Asian artists and working with my childhood friends. The community feels really tight knit in that sense.
How has the underrepresentation of South Asian artists in mainstream media affected you?
It definitely is discouraging in some regard. It always feels good to see people who look like you and were raised like you being successful in an industry that they usually aren’t in, like music. Having those role models is important is really important in facilitating the creative process, and without them, it's def. At the same time, even though it can be discouraging, but it motivates us to think:
“We could be those people for the kids who are younger than us that want to pursue music, but are discouraged due to the lack of diversity.”
I feel like that is one of the reasons why it’s so exciting to be making music during this time because we could be the pioneers of that movement and to bring more South Asians into more creative fields in general because it’s usually looked down upon as being unstable.
What motivates you to continue to make music especially since arts aren’t typically encouraged as a career path by South Asian parents?
As I said before, there aren’t many artists right now that we can look up to, so being that role model for other South Asians artists is amazing. We have been fortunate enough to have our parents to be pretty supportive of everything. They’ve never tried to deter us from anything! One of the biggest motivators is the creative outlet we get from Weston. Especially when you have to go to school for 7 hours, study for the MCAT, and do all these extracurricular activities, it’s hard to find time and energy to do something creative when you want to. So having it be a thing where it’s like a second job makes it easier, and it’s fun because it’s a way I can spend time with my friends.
Who is a South Asian musician that you look up to or has influenced your career?
One person I listen to a lot is Sid Sriram; he is SO good! He also makes Western Music and it’s really amazing, so that’s one person I really respect and admire; I would love to meet him someday. He is definitely a big inspiration! He also incorporates a lot of Indian influence and Carnatic runs to his Western Music, which is something we really want to do! Prateek Kuhad is also really good! I love Cold/Mess and he also sings for Bollywood, but makes Western Music that is absolutely sick. Then obviously there’s the bigger ones like Jai Paul, and MIA. I don’t really listen to Nav that much anymore, but I used to when I was younger.
Have you experienced any racial discrimination in the music industry? If not, how do you think other South Asian artists should go about dealing with this?
I can only speak for myself but I’ve been lucky enough to not have faced any discrimination in the industry. Maybe there’s been small things that I haven't picked up on, but none that I've actively noticed. I can’t speak for the rest of the guys either necessarily because they might’ve experienced something else that I wasn’t aware of. In terms of dealing with it, bringing it up with people is a difficult conversation to have. But if you can do it delicately in a way that makes them understand that you feel discriminated against and you feel hurt by whatever they said, that's important. I think we're starting to slowly move towards people being more receptive to criticism like that Also just understanding that there are a lot of people who are in the same boat as you who are going through the same things is important.
Being in solidarity with them and understanding that this is something that we all go through at some point in some way, shape or form, even though they shouldn’t have to because it’s ridiculous, will help.
Those are probably the two best things you could do.
What was your most rewarding or memorable moment in your Weston Estate career thus far?
There are a few that I could define as the most rewarding but one of them is when the Pears Acoustic Music Video started doing well on TikTok. We started realizing that people were actually liking us and listening to the music that we were putting out. We gained a lot of traction from that one video so that was really cool. The most rewarding moment would probably have to be the first concert we ever headlined. Before that point, we knew that we had people listening to our music but we didn’t know how passionately they were listening to it or how many people were listening to it. Our first show ever was in high school. We played at this annual event at Manas’ high school called Space Jam which, that year, was a fundraiser for autism awareness. We played there and it was way smaller, maybe like 100 people, and it was all of our friends. It was our first show and we had little to no rehearsal time and we were super nervous before going on. But as soon as we got on, people were really excited and they were singing all of the songs back to us. That moment was surreal. Then, in November 2021, we did our first proper tour. We played in Chapel Hill, New York and then Atlanta. We ended up selling out all of those shows and that was the first time we were like:
“Oh my god. People actually listen to us and want to see us live, that's crazy.”
Going out on stage in front of 750 people and hearing all of them cheer for you and sing the words of the songs that you wrote in your bedroom with your best friends, back to you is one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had in my entire life. It’s almost like a high. Being on stage and seeing everyone in front of you and seeing all of your hard work actually paying off really is a high, it's crazy and I’ve never experienced anything like it. And even after that, meeting all of the fans and going out into the line before a show or going onto the ground after a show is a crazy experience. Meeting people and signing autographs and stuff like that is nothing that I ever would’ve dreamed that I would be doing at this age, or at any age for that matter, but it's a very surreal experience and it’s one of the best feelings ever for me to see people responding to our music in that way.
What is your favorite song that you’ve made? What was the most challenging one?
I think my favorite one that we have out right now would have to be a tie between So Good and Silence. I really like Silence because I’m really proud of the production that Abhi and I did on it. I also like the writing on it a lot. So Good was just really fun to make. I don’t know if you guys know the band Fiji Blue but they make dance/funk music. Our manager also manages them, so we made that song with them and they helped with production. They added the funky layers and all that stuff. They knew what they were doing in regards to making dance music, which we didn’t really know much about except for Stoked. I think those two are my favorite and then the most challenging song would either be Sixty or Daisies. We had Daisies fully written and mostly produced by summer of 2020 and it didn’t come out until February 2022, because we had so many little issues with it that we were constantly tweaking. So every week we’d be like, “Should we put this out?” And then we’d say, “No there’s this one thing I don’t like about it.” And then we'd decide to change it. Then the same thing would happen over and over and over again for almost a year and a half.
That’s the other thing, because there’s five of us, we’re very particular about making sure that before we put out a song all five of us have to be in love with it.
It definitely makes making the music a lot harder because all five of us have to love it for us to put it out. So that’s why it takes so long for us to put music out. But when we do, we’re all really proud of it. So there’s pros and cons to it. With Sixty we had it fully done, and then the same thing happened and we realized that we actually hated it. So we scrapped literally everything except for the writing and redid the whole beat and it ended up turning out good. So those two would be the most challenging.
What’s next for you and Weston Estate?
We’re planning to drop a song in the beginning of September. We’re still working on it, but it’s very close to being done. So that is definitely something to look forward to. The four of us that are still in school decided to take a semester off. Marco used to go to Duke but he dropped out to do music full time and he’s living in L.A. now. But we’re planning to take this coming semester off because, with all the festivals that we’re playing at and all the things we need to do, we're literally not going to be able to go to class. We also have a plan to rent an Airbnb in October and November in L.A. just to lock in and focus on music. It’s a very exciting time for Weston and there are a lot of things to look forward to!
What advice do you have for any young South Asian artists or any artists who want to pursue music?
The best piece of advice that I could give, I mean it’s kind of cliché, is just keep at it.
There are going to be times that you feel unmotivated and discouraged. “Oh this isn’t getting enough streams. I’m not getting enough numbers. People aren’t liking this song enough.” That all, rightfully so, is very discouraging and it feels like nothing is getting done and you’re not doing anything right or progressing as an artist. But in reality just putting the work in and just waking up and being there every day and saying “Ok I’m going to try and make a song today and if it doesn’t work out that’s fine, but if it does, then great.” Putting in the effort and actually doing the work in and of itself is enough to make you progress over time. That’s the biggest piece of advice I can give. And know that there’s other people out there like you that are trying to do this. Know that everyone who's ever made music in their lives has felt this way before.
We feel that way on a very regular basis.
It might take some willpower but pushing through it and understanding that being there every day and working on it even if you don’t feel like you're making progress, you are. That’s the biggest piece of advice I can give.
What is one issue that is really important to you right now that you would like to share with our followers?
The biggest and most pressing thing that’s been in the news a lot recently is abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights being taken away from a lot of different people. It's really messed up, especially in this day and age that something like that is happening. The message that I would put out is donate to abortion organizations and LGBTQ+ rights organizations. Go out in November and vote for legislators who support sexual and reproductive health rights. Do all that you can because a lot of people’s rights are at stake.
Here are a couple donation links that Srikar shared with us!
What is your favorite part of being South Asian?
There’s so much. The food is god tier, it's incredible. The weddings are so fun. The music is incredible. The culture is incredible. Honestly I love everything about it.
Do you have any favorite Telugu/Hyderabadi Dishes?
My childhood favorite dish that my mom used to make for me a lot is alugadda vepudu, which is fried potato curry. That’s one of the few dishes that I actually know how to make myself. When I was living by myself and would get sick of other stuff, I would just make some potato kura (curry) and annam (rice) and eat a home cooked meal. And obviously Hyderabadi biryani is amazing.
Do you have any favorite Telugu movies?
I have so many, I have to think about that one. I really like Happy Days, it's a classic. When I was a kid I used to be obsessed with Mahesh Babu and all of those movies are super fire!
The Pasupu loved interviewing Srikar and we hoped you learned more about Weston Estate and what pursuing music as a South Asian can be like! Attached below are Srikar and Weston Estate’s social medias! Come back next week for our next post on how the overturning of Roe v. Wade affects women of color.
