Women music artists took their rightful due on their own: Shilpa Rao
One of India’s top singers, Shilpa Rao looks back at her musical journey and discusses her favourites, making music during the pandemic, women’s representation in the Indian music industry and much more at HerStory’s Women on a Mission Summit 2022.
“There is nothing like overnight success. If you make a song and it connects with people, it stays forever and I believe in those kinds of songs,” said award-winning singer Shilpa Rao at HerStory’s Women on a MIssion Summit 2022. Shilpa has been the soulful voice behind several Bollywood hit songs like Javeda Zindagi from the movie Anwar, Woh Ajnabee from The Train, Khuda Jaane from Bachna Ae Haseeno and Manmarziyan title track among many others.
She was speaking at HerStory's Women on a Mission 2022.
Shilpa is known for her stupendous mastery over Indian classical ragas and has collaborated with many top musicians from Agni to Nuri and Anushka Shankar. Being around and making music for over a decade-and-a-half, Shilpa looks back at Tose Naina as the song closest to her heart.
“I think it's one of those very beautiful songs that has stood the test of time,” she added.
While the pandemic ravaged the entire world, forms of entertainment like music, which stands right at the top, have been a savior for people going through different emotions and turmoils in their lives. Shilpa believes this is because music is so “malleable” and that it should only be defined by its lyrics and audio and not the visuals.
“Music by itself is so powerful and charismatic. Since music is a solo process, even a pandemic cannot stop people from making music. So, we made a lot of music through the pandemic and leveraged the internet to exchange audio files and lyrics. What the pandemic has taught us is that clean food, air, water, food and art makes you happy have no substitute,” recalled Shilpa.
The only Indian musician to feature on Coke Studio, Pakistan, Shilpa is extremely vocal about women’s representation in the Indian music industry. She believes that women artists took their due by changing themselves instead of waiting for others to give them their due.
“There was a phase where female vocals were reduced to just maybe two lines in a song or the little second antra (para). But in 2021, there have been massive female-led songs, albums and credit for this goes to the female artists as they never gave up. We were not getting songs so we made them and created a niche. We created our own albums and videos and we kept the female voice literally and metaphorically going on,” she said.
Shilpa collaborated with Anushka Shankar for her Album Love Letter in which she sang the song Those Words. The album was nominated for Grammy Awards 2021. Talking about Indian music getting deserving recognition at a global level, she noted that when one thinks about Indian music, they don’t think about Hindustani classical music or Carnatic music, which should be the case.
“The true identity of the subcontinent is this. This has been the biggest driving force of art and culture across the world. Stalwarts like Ustad Bismillah Khan, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Mehdi Hassan went around the world with this music, and this is the music that truly defines us,” Shilpa said.
She added, “This is something, which I want the youth to own with pride because there's still a little hesitancy when I ask them, what is true Indian music? It's not Bollywood. It is our Indian classical music, folk music, Carnatic and there is so much more to the list. I don't think any country has such diverse music, which is so, so strong.”
A shout out to the sponsors of Women on Mission Summit 2022, an Initiative by HerStory, by YourStory -BYJU'S, the presenting partner, and other sponsors - Kyndryl, Sequoia Spark, Zilingo, Atlassian, Akamai, Freshworks for Startups, and Netapp Excellerator.
Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan