Susheela Raman counts her premiere Prague appearance at the 2005 Respect Festival, where she shared the stage with Kinshasa's Konono No. 1, as being among her more amazing musical experiences.

Raman's return to Prague should be a refreshing taste of subtlety in the noisy world-beat scene. Yet the fact that she will be accompanied only by guitarist Sam Mills, her longtime collaborator, is no reason to dismiss this as an evening of lightweight music. "Their funkiest moments make the Chili Peppers look like the Teletubbies," is how AMG's Alen Kellman described one of Mills' previous projects, Seven Songs with 23 Skidoo.

Raman is no lightweight in interviews, either, with a lot to say about her music, its history, influences and impact.

The Prague Post: How do you see your role in 21st-century Asian culture?

Susheela Raman: I'm just doing my thing. As a second-generation Asian in Europe and Australia ... everything is muddled up, and music is a way of making sense of it all.

TPP: What's different on your new CD?

SR: Well, Music for Crocodiles is more Indian in the sense that we have musicians from India playing on the album and there's an exploration of the Indian repertoire I grew up with. There are also more songs in English, which we wrote ourselves. So I think it's a record that combines Indian and Western music in many different layers. You can't see the dividing line, nor do we think one really exists.

TPP: Has there been any negative reaction to your use of Asian classical or sacred music in your 21st-century reworkings?

SR: You have to remember that Indian music is a very divided arena, especially where innovations are concerned. We played in Madras in 2005, and some old battle-axes wrote letters to the paper saying I was possessed by the devil and so on. There are always die-hards, and may they fester in their own stagnant juices. We work with Indian musicians of the highest caliber, and I can tell you that the chemistry and emotion is very real. In the end, everyone is doing their own kind of fusion thing, like it or not.

TPP: With blues, jazz and a lot of Latin music, you can map popular music's ever-accelerating movement between the continents. Are there transcontinental Asian trends discernible in the earlier part of the 20th century?

SR: Indian cinema music does the eclectic fusion thing, and I think some of the music from the Bollywood studios certainly stands the test of time very well. In some cases, it was very much ahead of the globalization game. Some of it is shrill and boring as hell, but that goes for every kind of music.

In terms of influences, it's a two-way process: Indian music also affects Western music. I think things like the Beatles' Indian stuff, however naive, still serve as a marker in time. I think they were just latecomers to the way that beatniks and folk musicians and guitarists were being affected by Asian music. Miles Davis was also aware of Indian stuff, and modal jazz is certainly very indebted to Indian music. So these things percolate through.

TPP: What connection do you hear between blues and Indian music, and how have you worked with that?

SR: Blues is African-American with whatever else in the pot, based on some things like certain five-note scales and using microtones. All of these occur in Indian classical and folk music, so you do get an overlap at times. And I guess the fact that the kind of rhythms I use in music come as much from an African source as an Indian one. In another sense, blues, funk and so on are depths of character you can find in music from anywhere if it catches you right. The emotional crunch it delivers is what a musician should aim for.

TPP:Any impressions of Prague from your last visit?