It took me a while to track Roy down. Roy Venkataraman was a name I heard often when I was growing up in India in the 80’ and 90’s. I knew of him as the Indian guitar player for Bob Marley’s legendary band the Wailers. He is widely considered reggae royalty, at least here in India. Roy started his career in Bombay, playing with some of the most popular bands in the country and then moved to the U.S where he garnered a wealth of experience playing and recording with artists including Atlantis and Keith Benson. He also played with groundbreaking indo-jazz band Divya at some of the biggest jazz festivals internationally including the Jazz Yatra in India. Roy also did concerts and worked with legendary pianist Louis Banks as his main sessions guitarist for a few years. His own album Lifelines features world renowned musicians Clive Stevens, Randy Brecker, Adam Holzman and Rachel Z amongst many others.
Roy was invited to join Bob Marley’s Wailers band and toured the world with them for years. He has scored music for well known film-maker Govind Nihalani and toured with Jeremy Spencer, co-founder of Fleetwood Mac and has also recorded with various well known artists worldwide.
Roy now lives in Sydney, Australia. He has shared stages with Simply Red, Third World, Xzibit, Maxi Priest, Sly and Robbie, UB40, Lauryn Hill, Julian Marley, Steel Pulse and countless others and is guitarist with widely popular New Zealand reggae band House of Shem. I had the privilege of listening to some of his new music that’s an eclectic mix of jazz, sufi and electronica. The music you hear in the intro to this podcast is from Roy’s album Horizontal Life. I caught up with Roy and we traced his multi decade career from Mumbai to Sydney.
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