Priya Ragu | Swiss, Tamil and a global star

A childhood between two worlds

Priya Ragu has already overcome a succession of barriers that render her success all the more impressive. She is female, she is the daughter of refugee parents, she has brown skin, she grew up in a very conservative world and she made her breakthrough at a late age. “I only see the barriers I’ve broken through when I look behind me,” comments the singer from her flat in London. This is the story of a girl born into a family of refugees from Jaffna. They fled the civil war that shook Sri Lanka from 1983 and which ended with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009. Ragupathylingam, her father, was an accountant. He was also a musician. “He was a well-known singer. But working as a Tamil musician in his country ended up being dangerous,” his daughter tells us. Priya’s mother, Chandrika, taught typing. After a passage through Germany, the family settled in St. Gallen, with their young son, named Roshaan.

“It’s a sort of miracle for refugees to be able to start their lives again in a country where they are not necessarily welcome.”

Priya Ragu

The young Priya was to grow up in a stable, but very strict environment. Her father worked for the post office. Her mother was an assistant in a pharmacy. “It’s a sort of miracle for refugees to be able to start their lives again in a country where they are not necessarily welcome,” remarks Priya, who has Swiss citizenship. At school, she was one of only two girls with brown skin. She experienced some rejection. But for the most part, her integration went well. “I spent so much time crossing between two worlds, I sometimes forgot the colour of my skin.”

Priya returned to Switzerland, where she was rehired by Swiss. Her salary was now used to fund recordings and produce music videos. Ragu music mixing R&B, soul, rap, pop and chants from the Indian subcontinent had arrived in Oerlikon. In 2018, “Leaf High”, for which the video would be filmed in Paris, was posted online. “Lighthouse” followed, with a video shot in Mumbai. Priya heard her music on the public radio SRF3, where the two musicians had sent their track. The fourth song to appear online was “Good Love 2.0”. The track was pushed in 2020 by Irish DJ Annie Mac, a star of the BBC. The sounds of the St. Gallen singer were heard by “New Musical Express” and “Good Love 2.0” was used to accompany players of the video game FIFA 21. In August 2020, the singer signed with Warner UK. She was interviewed by “The Guardian” and quoted in “The New York Times”. A fact worth noting: the ten tracks of “Damnshestamil” were almost all recorded in Oerlikon. Ragu’s style has something familial and artisan about it.

The dream of this Tamil-Swiss citizen, as she sometimes presents herself to preempt questions, is to organise a big music festival in Jaffna one day, with Tamil artists from all over the world.