The Namesake Listening Post 288. Mother Nature showers humanity with gifts but she gave Ila Paliwal a little more—her name. “Ila” is Sanskrit for “Earth” and on her second album Paliwal, a classically trained Indian vocalist, songwriter and producer, celebrates her...
Transcendental Orchestration Listening Post 263. Aditya Prakash describes his Los Angeles childhood as “socially American and culturally Indian” and observes that growing up the two aspects of his life were largely separate. He began studying Carnatic music—the...
Sonic Cornucopia Listening Post 193. Avatar, shampoo, pyjama, bungalow, veranda, nirvana—all words from India adopted into an array of western languages. Sharing works both ways: Kolkata-born singer Anandi Bhattacharya observes, “I do not believe I was meant to imbibe...
Subcontinental Jazz Listening Post 165. Wall Street, Broadway, Bollywood… Legions of aspirants would give anything to work in just one of the places Subhi Khanna passed through on her winding road—from India to America, through finance, journalism and music—pursuing...
True Colors Listening Post 77. No one leaves a Holi Festival gathering looking the way they did on arrival. The highlight of the spring rite celebrating the triumph of good over evil is friends, family and strangers throwing colored powder and water on one another....
A Star On Screen and Off Listening Post 48. Hollywood playback singers are traditionally heard but not seen. In Bollywood, however, the performers whose voices appear on film soundtracks are often as renowned as the actors who appear on screen. Arijit Singh’s 30-track...
Entwined Affinities Listening Post 24. Gwyneth Glyn sings and writes Welsh folk music. Tauseef Akhtar is a singer-composer from Mumbai and master of Indian ghazal, a traditional form of love poetry. Neither is the sort to compromise cultural integrity; nonetheless,...
