The first sound you hear on Lettre à l’Univers, the 2024 debut album by French musician Nilusi, is her rapping out a staccato pattern in a smoky, red-hot whisper. “Tereketena,” she purrs—the song’s onomatopoeic title—before a tabla joins the fray, pounding out a beat that’s a cross between folk percussion and glitch-hop. A piano taps out a delicate jig over it all as Nilusi’s voice shifts to a smooth R&B falsetto shaded with hints of Carnatic ragas.
‘Tereketena’, like the rest of the album, is a lesson in fusion—contemporary French pop, R&B, traditional Sri Lankan music and experimental electronic flourishes harmonising like childhood friends. But for all its technical beauty, the song also thrums with the tension of a raw nerve, never quite able to sit still and just be. In that sense, it perfectly reflects the album’s central themes—of navigating a hyphenated identity and the bliss that comes when you find yourself on the other side. “It’s a song about being born in a different country from your parents or family, and the struggle it can be to communicate with them in a pure manner,” explains the 25-year-old musician, actor, filmmaker and label boss. “The only way I can do that, to explore and share my emotions with them, is through my music on the stage.”