A Conversation with Renaiszance’s Ravé and Radha Mehta – HuffPost 2.5.13

Mik Ragogna: Greetings, Ravé and Radha.

Ravé: Hey there, Mike!

Radha: Hi Mike!

MR: So Renaiszance is a brother-sister duo, but you’re a relatively new act. Tell us a little something about yourselves, like where you grew up, all that.

Radha: Well, Ravé and I were both born in Illinois near Chicago, but grew up, for the most part, in Orlando, Florida. Our parents immigrated to the US from Mumbai, India, back in 1969, so we are both first generation Indian-Americans. When we were kids, Ravé and I lived in India for a couple of years…wow, was that an experience. Music and entertainment in India is so deeply rooted in our culture that it definitely had a huge impact on us while growing up.

MR: How did you both get into music?

Radha: I’ve been singing since I was five. I started by trying to mimic my mom since she was always singing around the house. While growing up, I was in school choirs and eventually, in an all-female a cappella group in college. Our groups won various local, state, and national competitions, so that inspired a lot of confidence in me over the years. In college, I got my degrees in computer science, so after I graduated, I got a job in New York City working for UBS Investment Bank and was later transferred to work in Zurich, Switzerland. In Zurich, some of my co-workers told me about a popular local band that was auditioning for a lead singer, so I tried out and got selected. When we started performing around Zurich, it didn’t take me long to realize that singing and performing was way more fun than my job at the bank. I later moved back to the US and submitted a recording to a Clear Channel radio contest. They called me and said I won, and the prize was to sing the National Anthem as the opening act for Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac and Gin Blossoms in front of 15,000 people. Wow, talk about being intimidated! I was super-nervous that first time, but all went well and that led me to many more opportunities.

Ravé: For me it was a slightly different path. My father played the sitar when he was younger so I grew up with this big dusty sitar in my room. Staring at this sitar every day as a kid made me curious, but I had no idea what to do with it; it looked so complicated so I focused on being an athlete. It wasn’t until my first year at college that I picked up a guitar. I remember thinking, “Wow, only six strings, that’s way easier to handle.” Since then, I taught myself to play the guitar, piano, bass, percussive instruments, and recently, I started learning the violin. Since I never had any formal training, I would spend most of my time composing, playing and producing my own music to keep myself entertained.

MR: So what made you guys decide to create music together?

Ravé: I think watching Radha perform in Switzerland was the turning point for both of us. I saw Radha perform songs she’d written for her band in Zurich and realized how talented she was. When she moved back to New York City, we tried working with a couple of producers but we could never get them to understand or appreciate our ideas or direction. So one night, I remember Radha calling me in tears saying that she didn’t know what to do. I told her not to worry, we’ll just do it ourselves. The next day, I bought a Mac, a bunch of recording equipment and music software and started teaching myself to record, engineer and produce. That was about ten years ago.

MR: So Renaiszance…tell me about the name.

Radha: We originally were going by our names “Ravé and Radha” when we released our first EP Here and Now. We then wrote the Orlando theme song, “The City Beautiful,” and later released our single “Grace & Glory” that we wrote for NASA’s final space shuttle launch. I happened to see a sign somewhere that said “Renaissance,” and I was like, “That’s it!” The French word Renaissance actually means “rebirth,” and the Renaissance era produced some of the most inspirational artists who were also logicians, philosophers, inventors and engineers. Considering Ravé and I are both engineers as well as artists and we’re constantly reinventing ourselves, I thought this would be such a fitting name for us. So I pitched it to Ravé and he immediately loved it but said it was still a bit generic. It wasn’t until Ravé designed the logo and flipped the second ‘S’ into a ‘Z’ that gave it the edge we wanted to make it unique.

MR: How long did it take to complete the album?

Ravé: We started working on this album in October 2011, and I finally finished producing it in November 2012. The toughest part was figuring out what sound we were going for. We went through so many iterations and pivoted a few times during production, but once we nailed our sound, it was pretty much smooth sailing from that point on, especially since I had a great team working on it with me. I’m really excited about where we ended up, it’s a very different sound than our first EP.

MR: What’s your process for writing songs?

Radha: We both co-write all our songs together. Sometimes, one of us is inspired by a personal experience and takes the lead. Like our song, “My Way,” Ravé originally wrote it as a poem and when I read it, I thought the prose and message were so cool that a vocal melody naturally came to mind. I sang it for him, and he said, “That’s it,” and ran to his studio and started to build the track around it. Another example is “Friend In Me,” which was a song I originally wrote to sing for my friend at her wedding. Ravé overheard me practicing it on the piano and walked in saying that it sounded really good, but there was something missing in the chorus. So he listened a bit longer and then took a notepad and re-wrote the chorus on the spot. We tried it out and it sounded perfect to us.

Ravé: We definitely make a great writing team and it’s really a different experience for each song. A lot of times, I’m jamming on the piano or guitar and will come up with a melody, when Radha appears out of nowhere singing a beautiful aria or vocal melody with no words. At that point, I’m usually scrambling around for my iPhone voice recorder to capture it all before we lose our flow. Once I think we have something, I’ll go to my studio and start laying down the track and give it some structure. Once the structure is in place, Radha and I will start writing to it and then I’ll finish building out the rest of the track. Sometimes we’re melody-driven and other times we’re lyric-driven, but in the end, both the melody and lyrics have to come together and make the hair on our arms stand otherwise we’ll keep working on it.

MR: Ravé, you mentioned this album was inspired by your graphic novel The Inventor, which is based on the true story of Nikola Tesla. I know I interviewed you about it a while back, but can you tell us about the connection?

Ravé: Nikola Tesla is one of my heroes so I wrote The Inventor mainly to tell his story but in a much more interesting and visual way since I was always into comic books. The Inventor was published last year at the 2012 San Diego ComicCon, and funny enough, Gene Simmons and I were the top two sellers for our comic publisher, Arcana. Gene was actually giving me some great advice on how to make my Tesla cover pop more. Gene told me, “Keep it simple but use maximum contrast,” and he started outlining my title with a silver marker. Great advice, so I used his approach when designing our Renaiszance album cover. In regards to the music, we wrote a lot of the songs on this album over the past few years from our various experiences, but I picked the songs that played on the various themes from the AC/DC battle between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison as they both fought the Current Wars to invent the 20th Century. So the songs in this album reflect the 3 main themes from Tesla’s story – “Love”, both lost and found, “Hope”, both scathed and reignited, and “Freedom”, both stolen and reclaimed.

MR: In a way, isn’t Tesla, basically, the great granddaddy of electronic music?

Ravé: Ha, yes. Since Tesla was the father of modern electricity, he invented oscillators and other cool devices that laid the foundation for electronic music, so we gave this album some really cool electronic dubstep textures including some tesla coil sounds in his honor. Actually, we wrote the song “I Will Rise” as a tribute to Tesla’s story saying that, although Edison won the battle while they both were alive, Tesla’s ideas and vision will rise again and inspire us to finish what he started. We’re seeing that happen now as more people are aware of Tesla and his vision for a more connected and evolved society based on free communication, energy, education and being more aligned with nature.

MR: Radha, what’s it like to work with your brother?

Radha: Ha, that’s a loaded question. Ravé, cover your ears! [laughs] Just kidding. My brother is an incredibly talented songwriter, producer, designer and all around creative mind. He’s been the creative vision behind us and so many other things. It’s fun to watch him in action; once he locks down on a vision, he doesn’t stop until he gets it done. He’s also really good at taking my feedback and input, which is why it’s so easy and fun to work with him. Most importantly, though, he’s my biggest fan. He’s always been there to support me throughout my life so I’m really grateful to have him by my side. He never stops believing in me and always pushes me to the edge so I’m constantly learning about myself, so it’s pretty awesome working with him.

Ravé: Wow, thanks, I’ll have to remind you that you said all that. [laughs]. From songwriting to recording to performing, Radha is one of the most talented and creative people I know. She’s also really driven, which makes my job much easier. But I think as hard as we work, we have a lot of fun creating and just goofing off. Whenever we feel stressed, we remind each other about that scene in the movie Peaceful Warrior where Nick Nolte says to the kid, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.”

MR: What genre would you say this falls into?

Ravé: That’s a tough question, because we were trying to figure out for the longest time what our sound should be. I think finding one’s identity is the hardest part for any artist, and it’s an ongoing process. We both love EDM as well as classical music, but we also like folk and country because the songs tell a story, so our music is a blend of all those genres. When I was playing this for some other producer friends, I think it was C.J. Vanston that said that Radha’s voice gave this album an Evanescence feel but against cool electronic dance textures.

MR: What are the next steps for this album?

Radha: Well, this album is set to release in early April 2013, so we have a lot of work to do! Our first single is “Friend In Me,” which we’ve been getting some great feedback on. I’m really excited but also really nervous to see what happens once we set this free into the world.

MR: What’s the best advice you’ve received and what advice would you give to aspiring artists?

Radha: Hmm, so although we’ve been at this for years and years, I feel we’re just now starting. I guess the best advice I can give from personal experience is to never give up on your dreams. Every artists owes it to themselves to try their best so later in life they don’t regret not trying at all.

Ravé: Some of the best advice I received is when I was at a dinner with Deepak Chopra and he told me, “It’s not the ghost that’s in the machine, it’s the machine that’s in the ghost.” If anyone wants to know what that means exactly, just ask me later. [laughs] Also, my dad Vipin Mehta is my greatest mentor and wrote the Global Healing book series, and his mantra was, “Change the mindset, change the world,” essentially saying that all our problems only exist in the mind, therefore, that’s where we’ll find our solutions. As far as my advice to other aspiring artists, I would say just follow the 3 P’s–patience, persistence and perseverance.

MR: Nice. Well thank you both for all your time. All the best with the album, you apparently are a renaissance man and woman.

Radha: Thanks Mike, this was fun!

Ravé: Yes, thanks for the interview and your support.

Transcribed by Nikola Tesla’s Ghost