OUTER VOICE:
THE GENESIS
[JAM] We like to say it was a combination of a lifelong passion and a unique opportunity. I think you often see that combination, right? You can want to do something but not have the means or the door to walk through. But for us, it starts with us being artists ourselves. We started in classical piano, then picked up guitar, vocals, and started writing music. I think maybe when I was around 14. Philly was around eleven, and we just started to get good at it. He would produce, I'd write the lyrics, and we'd do the melodies together. It was something we really, really loved and I don't think we were thinking about it professionally. Fast forward to that unique opportunity. In the fall of 2019, I was part of this viral video that landed in front of the chief marketing officer of Converse. He saw something in me, then in us. Eighteen months later, in June of 2021, they were helping us launch a South Asian American record label to the world. I think that validation from a mainstream player like that, from people outside of our community hearing our mission around representation and wanting to build more of an infrastructure in music for the artists of today, meant so much. [Philly] Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago was a great upbringing, but it was a very Caucasian suburb, so we often felt like outsiders in our own community; we wouldn't have too much of a home. Then we'd come back home after school, and we'd turn on the TV. We didn't even see anyone that looked like us, so it felt like everywhere, every outlet we had, everywhere we looked, there wasn't really anyone that looked like us. I think back to my high school days, middle school, my favorite thing in the world was playing music, writing songs, singing, and just being at the piano. But honestly, I never gave it thought that this was something that I could actually do. I think a big reason for that is not seeing any example in front of us. So, it truly meant so much when we went to Converse and had the meeting that we point to as kind of the ignition, the start of what became Outer Voice Records. The main piece of advice that they gave us was, “Your culture is unique. Lean into it,” when we spent a lot of our lives shying away from it, trying to blend in with American culture.
116 | THE INDIAN STANDARD
