Americans who have roots in every corner of the globe have taken part in one of the world’s most phenomenally popular reality TV shows—American Idol. And Sri Lanka hasn’t been left out. Twenty-three-year- old Priya Prins, a Sri Lankan-American, had the opportunity of performing at the show last year.
Priya is American, Sri Lankan and Hawaiian, and though with her mix of nationalities she doesn’t look Sri Lankan,
her
songbird genes
definitely hark back to the Indian Ocean as her paternal grandmother is well-known music teacher of yesteryear, Eileen Prins, who was lead violinist of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka for 25 years.
Surprisingly, Priya’s talent remained undiscovered till a few years back when she decided to take up sound engineering at Berklee College of Music. While it helped her discover her singing voice, Priya still wasn’t aware of how good she really was. “I started singing seriously a year and a half ago. Just singing with my best friend, who is one of the best singers I know and the fact that I could keep up with her helped me realise that I could sing quite well,” she says.
Currently living in L.A, Priya works for a well known record company, Interscope Records, while pursuing her passion as a professional background singer. Having been a background singer for just over a year she has already sung back-up for a Chris Brown track as well as performed as live back-up for several other world famous artistes.
Describing the role of a back-up singer she says, “What I do is very specialized. It’s creating the background sound for the main artist. We’re just there for support.”
While she is talented and quite capable of handling different genres from jazz, rap, rock to pop, Priya has a definite musical preference. “I grew up listening to a lot of 90’s rock. My voice is geared for pop and rock. My favourite music is rock from the 90’s. I’ve sung back- up for rap artists but I don’t feel that it’s my thing,” she elaborates.
One of the highlights of 2009 for Priya was being asked to perform back-up vocals for one of the guest performances on American Idol. The Keep Alive Foundation, established for AIDS patients of Africa, was given the stage for one of their patients to sing at the competition and Priya was asked to be one of the eight back-up singers for the little boy.
Describing what American Idol is like she says, “Everything is much smaller than what it seems on TV. The stage seems so big but it isn’t.”
“I was happy to just be a part of the back-up singers that day. Everything is done very quickly at the show. We had one rehearsal and then we had to perform,” she says snapping her fingers.
“I didn’t expect the cameras to pan over to the back-up singers as often as they did. I was hoping to get in a shot so that my parents could see me, but they panned across to the back-up singers so many times a lot of people noticed me. It was actually the Plumeria flower that I wear over my ear that caught their attention. Wearing a Plumeria in your hair is something that’s popular in Hawaii,” Priya explains, adding that she is hardly seen without it, so much so that it’s become part of her identity. “When I wore it for the song I thought they’d ask me to remove it, but they didn’t and most of my friends recognised me because of the flower,” she smiles.
And does she have hopes of become a recording artiste in the future? Priya is diffident. “The only thing I can say is that Sheryl Crow was Michael Jackson’s back-up singer. If I was to become a professional singer I see myself starting out like that, as a back-up singer first. But that being said I prefer being a back-up singer. Artists undergo a lot of scrutiny and I don’t really enjoy all that attention. I’d much rather be their support at a concert.”
Priya is far more passionate about being a Sound Engineer and that’s where she sees herself in the future. But the music industry at this point of time is suffering, she feels. “Unfortunately the music scene is crumbling in L.A. Record companies seem more bent on signing on a lot of people to make money than finding talent, and I think the really talented people aren’t being given the opportunity. Hopefully, this will end soon, so I’ll just have to wait it out,” she says, optimistically. |
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