Saturday Conversation: Inside The Magical World Of Raveena

At the halfway point of the year, we have a clear winner for best album title thus far. Raveena’s Where Butterflies Go In The Rain is a stunningly poetic and thought-provoking title. The sentiment becomes even more wonderful and deep when Raveena explains its origin.

As she told Sage Bava and I at an inspiring hour-plus lunch in Pasadena Raveena was on a hike when she heard the voice of her unborn child ask where butterflies go in the rain. When you talk to the magical, mystical Raveena it all makes sense.

There is a luminescent beauty to the way she sees the world. Sit her down with the equally magical Bava and you have a conversation that goes from meditation to Simon & Garfunkel to Plato and duality. One that also touches on meeting MIA in the jungles of Jamaica, Sade, Sinead O’ Connor and more.

This was a profound meeting of the minds, one that covers what it means to be an artist, and, more importantly, a thinking, feeling human in 2024.

Sage Bava: I feel like you’re so poignant on really capturing and creating a world and I’m sure a lot of that came from the space that you were in for these different projects, both inside and outside. So, I’m curious how your space inspired this and the whole process of this album and how it differed from your past and how it has evolved.

Raveena: I started working on the album two years ago, like summer of 2022. I remember the day it kicked off, there was this internal switch. I had just gone on a really hellish tour where $47,000 of equipment was stolen from us. It was insane. Very taxing tour, I got really sick. I was in a place of stewing and feeling bad for myself. I went on this vacation, and I met one of my idols in deep Jamaica, like four or five hours from the airport, I met MIA in the jungle one day. We had a two-hour conversation about music, nobody is at this hotel. There’s like three of us. I walk into the breakfast room and she’s like, “Raveena?” I’m like, “Why do you know who I am?” Then, it was beautiful. It started raining really heavily and I remember the feeling of the whole thing beginning and I remember the feeling of what the music had to feel like because it was just this whole clarifying experience. So, then I went and wrote the first song of the album, which is “Every Color.” Then it kicked off a deep routine towards life. I just became very dedicated to this specific routine that has only gotten more intense over time. I became dedicated to meditation, to daily nature time, to writing songs and practicing music in this constant way so that my whole life is dedicated to flow and spirit. I think that was the change, I was becoming much less attracted to what was happening in the outside world and any chaos happening around. More like, “If I can keep my internal rhythm great, that’s the most important thing.” Now it has turned into hours of meditation a day. This intense vipassana practice every month. Practicing for hours in the morning, just becoming as much of a vessel for spirit as I can.

Steve Baltin: How much of that do you think came from the conversation with MIA?

Raveena: I think I was doing all of this before, but I just remember the turning point of meeting her, where I was like, “Oh, this is so magical and in sync.” Nothing in life is on accident, we’re constantly attracting the experiences we need to have, and dreams we have as children just become alive.

Baltin: It’s so fascinating you say that because one of the coolest people I ever got to interview was Sinéad O’Connor, multiple times. She said something so interesting. She said as a songwriter, you actually have to be very careful because you can literally manifest what you want through words. So, are there lyrics on this album for example you hear that have now come true?

Raveena: Absolutely. I think you always realize that after you let go of a project, and this was something I realized with Asha. There was a whole lore of the second album around this Indian space success. She basically spent years meditating on this other planet, lived for like a thousand years, came down to earth, realized it was chaotic and hellish, and then went back to spirit. So, I think that what happened to me was I was living out that first manifestation of Asha of having this very chaotic and troubling year of 2022. A lot of other things kept happening to me that were just unfortunate and traumatic. It was almost like I wrote a manifestation of that, which is crazy that you say that. I just think it’s so true. I think it’s absolutely true and I was very intentional in being very meditative and making sure that everything I pulled for this album was from source, was the least filtered by human experience as possible. If that makes sense.

Baltin: So, are you enjoying music more now?

Raveena: Yeah, I’ve been starting to get high at night and practice instruments and I’m like, “Oh, this is why they did this in the ’70s.” It hits different and it’s not anything more than weed.

Baltin: What instruments have you been picking up?

Raveena: I’ve been playing a lot of piano, lately, and guitar. Dancing is the best kind of flow. I love feeling a baby at a new craft because after years and years of exploring voice, like almost 20 years, that’s still so endless. But to feel the start of something totally infinite and endless again is beautiful.

Bava: I love how you talk about the inner world, and I don’t hear any other artists talking about that. I’m curious how that evolved with your relationship with your voice. I feel like it’s so fascinating to link those two in an intimate way.

Raveena: I think that children are so clairvoyant and so tapped into other realms. I think that maybe all I’m doing is like a circle. I’m sure that when I started singing the channel was wide open with spirit and you lose it and forget it along the way. Voice reminds you of how to get there. It’s like the direct channel and connection we have.

Bava: I deeply appreciate how you talk about it and how you share that. I feel like it is so necessary for people to hear that along their journeys. The connection between spirit and voice is so deep. I wanted to share a really interesting thing last year I did a semester of this Columbia psychology spirituality because I was so obsessed with this woman named Dr. Lisa Miller, who was basically doing these MRIs of the connection between mental illness and spirituality. And she discovered people that have a deeply true connection to their idea of what they believe that means, like it’s literally a force field around depression and anxiety in that part of the brain. So this feeling of immense peace and Zen that you’re talking about, I think it’s totally to do with that. And it’s now proven via MRIs.

Raveena: Yeah, I think that we all have the ability to heal ourselves from anything. It’s really interesting, sometimes I’ll have a deep pain in my body and I’ll know how to send light to that portion and heal it. Maybe the pain will come back after I’m meditating. But to understand that we can do that with our minds is just insane. It’s beautiful.

Bava: With your album that’s coming was it quite a tumultuous journey to get the whole project out there? Or did you find that it just came?

Raveena: This was my easiest baby. We wrote almost 115 songs for it, but it didn’t feel like 115 songs. It felt like writing with my best friends every day. I had never done it that way. I’ve never gone through so many songs, but it felt right for this process. I think it makes you a better writer and I think you end up with better songs at that. [The songs] must fit the piece and the piece is like a marble sculpture. It reveals itself too over time. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a deep feeling of understanding a record so well. I realize that you need to go through the motions of writing that much in order to understand a project, especially if you’re writing it in only two years. That’s such a short amount of time to spend in art. So then increasing the time I spent with the actual art helped, if that makes sense.

Baltin: Is there a through line for you on this record that you now see?

Raveena: Yeah, and we discovered it more towards the end. A lot of it was a reflection about aging. And about this turning point people have at different points in their lives. It doesn’t really matter what age you are, but this turning point where you’re like, “If I approach my life in a more comfortable and easier way everything is going to be better.” You start to be drawn towards community, rest, taking care of your body and your mind, thinking of settling down roots somewhere and thinking of domestic things. You realize that’s the heart of life. The heart of life is for it to be easy and soft and having a good time. It became less about acquiring the most talent, the most resources or the most fame or something. The priority is merging with the spirit. Even in this conversation, being like, “Oh, there’s a divine observer just watching my body. Being less attached to the body, being less attached to the everyday sensations of the motions that we work with.

Baltin: Do you remember those first records for you that you really took in?

Raveena: When I was really young, like four or five, probably Simon and Garfunkel’s albums because that’s what my dad used to play. I took in a lot of Bollywood soundtracks. Armaan [Malik] is a genius of our time. He’s genuinely one of the best musicians ever. [Amy Winehouse] Back to Black; Sade, Lovers Rock; DeAngelo, any DeAngelo record; Stevie Wonder; Marvin Gaye, Lauryn Hill, that record. Yeah.

Baltin: I am curious because I’m a huge Paul Simon fan. If you could have written any one Paul Simon song, what would it be and why?

Raveena: I think “The Sounds of Silence,” that’s so beautiful to me. Or “The Boxer” is so beautiful. I think why I’d want to write “The Boxer” is because it’s so far from my own experience and my own culture and my own life. I would want to know what that channeling feels like through that body and that experience, if that makes sense, because it’s so different than my own experience.

Bava: The title is so evocative and so visual. When was that born?

Raveena: It was immediate. I was thinking about my future children. I always see my future children with me on a hike. And I hear their voices. One of the voices was asking, “Mom, where do butterflies go in the rain?” I was like, “Oh my god, that’s such a beautiful thought.” I didn’t know, so initially it was meant to be a part of a line of a song. We should move somewhere beautiful. I was writing the lyrics of that song. It ended up being integrated into that. Then it just stuck. I was toying with making it a self-titled record. But when I presented that name to the team, they were just like, “Obviously, that’s the one.”

Baltin: I think you have to be delusional in this world at this point.

Raveena: Yeah. I have been thinking, do you know about non-duality? Yeah. About life being a dream? I actually really believe that

Bava: He mentioned we’re writing this book together. One of the things that I love to go back to is Plato’s two worlds theory. And how it’s all about universe versus man’s construct. Plato says that there are the forms and that humans just call upon the forms. We can only really take these minute strains to be in this three-dimensional plane. People that are able to tap into more palpable strains of that and bring that to here. It’s music and it’s energetically so powerful.

Raveena: Yeah, I think music is a confirmation that those other dimensions exist. The fact that worldwide people can feel the same euphoria or the same sadness from a song and not even speak the same language or be so far away from each other geographically, that’s proof of another dimension.

Baltin: Coming off the last tour where you had that traumatic experience, now that you’re in such a good place, are you feeling rejuvenated to tour?

Raveena: Yeah, I love touring. Even while it was happening it did feel divine in a way because all the money did come back through different channels. It just showed me that even in the darkest moments we are protected. So, I didn’t really identify with the pain of it. The touring plans are starting in the fall and spring and they’re still shaping up. I think I may go on tour with someone else, but I can’t say it.

Baltin: Who would be the dream artist for you to tour with?

Raveena: Honestly, it would be Sade.

Bava: It’s interesting putting together an album because of how you are the architect for that, how you get rid of what you don’t need and how you bring in what you do need to ensure that you have the right pieces. I’m so enthralled by the arrangements of everything that you do. And how that this album is a world on its own.

Raveena: Did you feel a difference from this one versus past ones?

Bava: Certainly.

Raveena: What did you feel?

Bava: It’s still your world. The forms, as Plato would call it, are still the same. Perhaps there are some alterations here or there, but what you’re tapping into and what you give is very you. But the world in which you do that changes a bit. I’m really listening to the arrangements and just as a music nerd, figuring out how the first song, that incredible string arrangement, how it drops down into that beat. It’s calling upon these cool arrangements from the ’90s that I love. And just hearing how you design this album, it’s very different than the last and the one before.

Raveena: Yeah. I’m glad you could see it. Thank you. I’m always curious because I see such little feedback, so I’m so curious what people think and what songs they’re drawn to. It’s such a joy to get to witness that. Thank you.