Exclusive! BTS has a 50-50 chance to win a Grammy, says voting member Somesh Mathur

Indian singer-producer Somesh Mathur has recently been inducted by the Recording Academy to be a mentor for American artists. In an exclusive chat Mathur tells what this means for India, how he wants to propogate Bhartiya sanskriti and whether BTS will win a Grammy

Indian singer-producer Somesh Mathur has been inducted by the Recording Academy, best known for its property Grammy Awards, as a mentor for American artistes. This makes Mathur the first Indian to be inducted as a mentor by the Academy. The induction mail came in the first week of February, and Mathur recalls being “aghast” by it. “I think for a minute or two, I was gaping at the emails in amazement and wonderment. I was pretty aghast, amazed, and it’s slowly settling in,” Mathur mentions.

Exclusive! BTS has a 50-50 chance to win a Grammy, says voting member Somesh Mathur

His first mentee is an American girl studying at the Thornton School of Music, aiming to be a classical pianist. And Mathur says that mentoring is not something new to him. “I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. I’ve auditioned almost more than 1,000 artistes to date. And some of today’s established musicians have come out of our cradle,” Mathur boasts.

However, with the new added responsibility, the artiste has other plans. “Several eminent Indian pundits, stars, gurus, and geniuses have made a name for themselves in the West, in some way or the other. But sadly for our country, they did everything for themselves on a personal level. What I am trying to do, in a very humble way, is rather than propagate myself, I want to propagate Bhartiya sanskriti, the scriptures and our 7,000-year-old legacy of music,” shares Mathur.

In addition, the composer is a Grammy Award voting member and reveals that he voted for the first time in the upcoming 64th edition. Ask him if he has any predictions, and he says, “Album of the Year might go to Ye (Kanye West) and Song of the Year may go to Billie Eilish.”

Probe him whether K-pop band BTS will take a Grammy this year and he predicts, “It’s a 50-50 chance. I wouldn’t be very bullish about it. If you ask me the pulse of the whole voting fraternity it’s not that good. However, I would like them to win because they are the only Asians to have made it so big in the US and everywhere else. And that is a matter of great pride for Asians. I would love BTS to win a Grammy.”