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Neha Kirpal
Tanvi shah’s big moment came way back in 2010 when she became the first Indian woman to win a Grammy, world’s biggest award for music, for ‘Jai Ho’ from Slumdog Millionaire. She raised the bar for herself then and there and, for the last eight years, has been trying to reinvent herself — across languages, genres and cultures.
“It was an amazing experience and I feel blessed to have heard my name being called out on an international stage,” says Tanvi, recalling the day they won the award for Best Song Written for Motion Picture or other Visual Media. She shared it with lyricist Gulzar and music director AR Rahman. “It was a dream come true to represent my country. I am still living it and loving every bit of it.”
Tanvi says that as the world discovered her, she too started discovering herself. She went on a journey inwards and realised how music can change lives. Sometime back, a random recording of a lullaby by her was shared with a few people. It reached a little boy who was autistic and had anxiety issues. Once he heard the song, he could sleep easily. This led her to collaborate with neonatal wards at some hospitals that are using lullabies to soothe newborns. “If my voice can soothe someone’s nerves or bring a smile on someone’s face, I think I have played my part of being an artiste and, more importantly, a human,” she says.
Career-wise, while ‘Jai Ho’ has been her biggest hit ever, ‘Fanaa’ from Yuva first brought her the recognition. Rahman’s song had a trance-like effect and Tanvi’s voice was noticed. That was followed by Delhi 6’s ‘Rehna Tu’ where her lilting vocals complemented the intensity of Rahman’s voice.
A multilingual singer, she has sung in 15 languages, including Tamil, Hindi and Telugu as well as Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and others. Interestingly, she doesn’t understand most of them. Not many people know that she wrote the Spanish lyrics for ‘Jai Ho’. “I truly believe music is universal, there is no barrier at all. I may not understand the lyrics, but I do get their import,” says the artiste, who recently won the award for Best Performer at Young Achiever Awards from the Young FICCI Ladies Organisation.
While she does a lot of world music along with her band, Tansha, she has done collaborative work with international music producers such as Gio Ortega, Jeremy Hawkins, Che Pop and David Batteau from the US and DJ Salah from Germany. One of her major projects has been collaboration with Snoop Dogg for the song Snoop Dogg Millionaire. “Snoop Dogg was totally on the other side of the scale because he is a big star and despite that he is so humble,” she says about her experience of working with him. She also had the chance to sing alongside Lebohang Morake, the lead singer of ‘Circle of Life’ (The Lion King).
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