Indian-origin ‘Rika’ shaking up UK’s Pop Music Scene

Indian origin Chandrika Darbari’s single ‘No Need’ topped the charts in UK, ahead of singing icons like Ed Sheeran and Miley Cyrus. The song became BBC Radio’s number one Song of the Week, and is about her tryst with bullying and racism.

“The song has been influenced by events that have happened in my past. I was constantly bullied when I was younger, because I was skinny and had bad skin and also because of my race. This made it easier for me to make music, the lyrics just came very naturally to me,” the 17 year-old told various publications. The song was written on a night when she couldn’t get it out of her head, and she wrote it in a matter of just 10 minutes. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “I wrote ‘No Need’ back in April and it was because I couldn’t sleep. It was 1 am and I went down to the piano and started playing around with some melodies, and the song actually came very naturally to me”.

‘Rika’, as she is fondly called, was born to an Indian father and Serbian, and grew up in North-West London.  She is proud of the multiculturalism she was born into, and enjoys Serbian music as much as she does Diwali. On Diwali, she performed at London’s Trafalgar Square for a 35,000-strong crowd. She also wrote a song called ‘For Peace in Syria’, last year, when she was all but 16 and the situation in Serbia impacted her songwriting. “The images of starving children kept coming in my head as I thought how undeserving they were of this treatment, I wanted them to have a peaceful life,” she was quoted saying. Within a week, the song garnered 800,000 views.

She also spoke to Rolling Stone about her desire to be a role model for women of colour, given the scarcity of brown women in the global pop music scene. “For the people of color, for women,  I want to represent them and be an inspiration for them. I want people to look and me and think, ‘If she can do it, I can do it’”, Rika says

‘No Need’ is a Western-influenced track, given her love for R & B and Pop. She does, however, plan to introduce Indian elements in the future, creating a fusion of Western-style music with Indian instruments. She is currently in talks with labels in the UK and India as well, and is all set to release her first EP early next year.