Tags: New Music, Sri Lanka, Tamil
“We’ve been waiting for a song like this.”
This is what Rolex Rasathy says she hears from so many Tamil women, in response to her latest music video, Raavanan. In the video, which dropped first on Valentine’s Day, New York-based singer Rolex Rasathy and Toronto-based rapper Navz-47 team up to confront a man who has wronged their friend. The lyrics, all sung and rapped in Tamil, speak to not requiring romantic love for validation, not putting up with disrespect in relationships, not being afraid to stand up for themselves and their friends.
“Your S-I-T-A isn’t me,” Rolex sings in the chorus, “These dreams of love are not for me/If you’re Rama, I’m Raavanan.”
Rolex, who directed the video, was looking to bring together Tamil women creatives of all types to make something at once empowering and fun.
“I wanted us all to come together, to fight that fight together,” Rolex told Kajal.
The result is truly an anthem — one that almost requires you to dance along, one that lingers in your head for hours. The response, both within the Sri Lankan Tamil community and outside, has been enormous. With hundreds of thousands of views and streams, Rolex says she’s seen the good and the bad of this kind of attention.
“I get salty Tamil dudes writing comments on it,” she says. But she also sees young people getting excited about two women coming together on a song unlike any they’ve ever heard, she said.
“Two women collaborating in this way—that hasn’t been done in this industry,” Rolex said. But now the wait is over.