Sometimes, the only way for an artist to recapture the fire and urgency that originally forged them and their name is to burn it all down and start from scratch, reinventing themselves from the ground up with the freedom to once again be unpredictable or to find something new and unique to explore.
But that’s not a move that you might expect from an artist that’s already one of the most unpredictable and unique in the scene.
When I spoke with Sundeep Sharma in 2024, the Indian-borne, OKC-based singer, rapper, songwriter, and producer was just launching a new solo project after a year-long hiatus that saw him pressing pause on his role in breakout spiritual hip-hop duo Finite Galaxy and more personally refining his own singular sound, incorporating grooving breakbeats, neon-hued romanticism, and lyrics in his native Hindi language.
Since then, Sharma’s deeply personal, candid persona of Sun Deep has seen an acclaimed full-length album, multiple videos, and a rising profile across the Oklahoma scene.
So it was more than a little surprising when he decided to scrap Sun Deep entirely and reinvent himself as the assertive, experimental, and already prolific Sundesi.
But as Sharma explains it, it all came from a need to separate his own art from the artist to better understand himself and to give himself the freedom to say what he needs to say.
Sundeep Sharma (Sundesi): I wanted no bars on who I am as a person, I think Sundesi is just the artist, and it's a very interesting, like, mental growth that I needed from Sun Deep being separate from Sundesi.
I've done certain things with Sun Deep. I've kind of found some sound that is very me, but I was still, again, missing something, and that was separating my personal with my artist.
I don't want to make music from fear or have something hold me back that comes from a personal aspect of my life that has nothing to do with the art.
Brett Fieldcamp: That was a fear, he says, of conflating his personal life with his artistic persona, and of feeling like anything that he created in his music had to reflect him as a person.
And that feeling became even more overwhelming and confusing for Sharma when he began to think more deeply about who he is and how he could express his own life through his music, only to find that his attempts to mine his past were leading to more questions than inspirations.
Sundeep Sharma (Sundesi): I am still trying to figure myself out. I felt like that would relate to my music, but what kept happening is I kept opening the wounds, and they just got deeper and deeper. Because of that, I feel even my presence carried that insecurity with it.
So with Sundesi, it became a clean slate more in terms of how I am related to my own music.
I feel like the more I start getting into the Sundesi character, I feel like that's the way I need to understand my own art and see where it actually takes me.
Brett Fieldcamp: Writing from the perspective of a new character or a new, projectable persona has allowed Sharma to shake off those biographical expectations and instead write more externally, crafting a new sound as Sundesi that embraces more grit and aggression, and one that’s less afraid to reflect or comment on the state of the world around him.
Sundeep Sharma (Sundesi): Now with Sundesi, what I feel is the message is what probably links everything together.
Like everything that I create, even if it's album art for the song, even if it's a sample that I use, has to have some meaning to me personally, and it has to speak something about what's going on in the world.
At least I'm going to make a point of what I could not say on the Sun Deep side of things. Sundesi takes over and becomes my voice.
Brett Fieldcamp: And it’s a voice that’s not afraid to be sharper, more forceful, or more overtly political, even on his many largely instrumental tracks.
Sharma says that Sundesi allows him to better confront the darker and more uncertain times that he sees coming, especially for multi-cultural Americans like himself, and he hopes that Sundesi can project an example of how an artist’s creation can free a person from the challenges of their own identity, rather than getting hung up in them, and how even a person from two worlds can speak with one voice.
Sundeep Sharma (Sundesi): There has to be a voice in music for transitional cultural spaces where, like, there are people that belong to a couple of different cultures, or two different cultures that kind of feel lost about it.
I am slowly understanding, like, where I stand with how the world is and what's going on in the world. And at least at this point, it's not about what other people think of what I say. It's about saying it for myself.
Brett Fieldcamp: You can catch the first live performance of Sundesi this Saturday, February 7th at Mycelium Gallery in OKC, alongside exmaxhina, and you can keep up with his weekly release of new singles by following @sundesithemessenger on Instagram.
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