In our previous coverage of the wonderous voice of Ganavya, we said that the definition of “mesmerising” needs amending, to read: “See Ganavya”. With the release of her latest tracks [two] on 12th July, we see no reason to dispute that earlier statement.
The acclaimed South-Asian multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ganavya collaborates with German pianist Nils Frahm on the beautiful, “draw something beautiful” and the accompanying track “ami pana so’dras”, both recorded in Berlin.
Ganvya, the New York-born, Tamil Nadu-raised singer and musician has won hearts and minds with solo and collaborative projects showcasing her remarkable vocals and a singular style as likely to draw on spiritual jazz as the South Asian of her youth.
She’s worked with Quincy Jones (who wrote her Harvard recommendation letter), opera/theatre director Peter Sellars, Esperanza Spalding, and Shabaka Hutchings, and was seen last December beguiling crowds at SAULT’S debut in London,
She made a breathtaking appearance on BBC TV’s “Later…with Jools Holland” in June 2024, and has just finished a four-night residency at Love Supreme Projects in London’s Notting Hill.
The sold out shows came off the back of her sold-out run at St Pancras Old Church in March, and follow the release of critically acclaimed album “like the sky I’ve been too quiet” [stylised lower case] released this March.
“draw something beautiful” [lower case] isn’t a new song. Instead, the template for these strikingly tranquil four minutes, in which her voice floats delicately amid Frahm’s gratifyingly minimalist, spacious arrangement, was one of the first Ganavya composed.
“I wrote it as a child to say, ‘If I die, could you take the life force in me and redistribute it among the remaining humans to make them happier?’ I genuinely believed this was possible because of the stories and mythology I grew up with.”
‘draw something beautiful’ was the first music Frahm and Ganavya ever recorded, and her vocals were captured so quickly that she, Frahm, and Felix Grimm – Frahm’s long-time manager and the Leiter record label’s co-founder – decided to keep going.
She recalls being unsure what to sing next, but she sang an old Kashmiri song she would hum to herself all the time when alone: “ami pana so’dras”.
Raised in India’s southernmost state, GANAVYA was withdrawn from school at a young age to study music with her family. Much of her childhood was spent dancing, singing, and on the pilgrimage trail, learning the storytelling art of harikathā and singing poetry.
After breaking her knee, she had to abandon dance, until then her main focus. She headed to the US where she studied psychology, “then worked jobs no nineteen-year-old should, including as a counsellor in a correctional institution teaching poetry to people on Death Row.”
Before long, she was recruited by Berklee College of Music to join their Contemporary Performance graduate program, and this was followed by a graduate degree in Ethnomusicology at UCLA, then a doctorate in music at Harvard.
“like the sky i’ve been too quiet”, her most recent album, features contributions from, among others, Floating Points, Tom Herbert, Carlos Niño and Leafcutter John, and was recorded with Shabaka Hutchings, who released it earlier this year on his label, Native Rebel.
