Grammy has renewed my focus on music and what it means to me: Chandrika Tandon

At this year’s 67^th Grammy Awards, Chandrika—who was McKinsey’s first woman partner of South Asian origin and then launched an advisory firm that made enough for her to give away $100 million to New York University—won the Grammy for the Best New Age album.

Called Triveni, the album is a three-way collaboration (hence, Triveni) between Chandrika, South African flautist Wouter Kellerman, and Japanese cellist Eru Matsumoto, and features Vedic chants for healing. In an exclusive interview with News9’s R. Sridharan, Chandrika spoke from New York about the Grammy win and her musical journey.

Excerpts:

Q: How does it feel to have finally won a Grammy Award?

A: Actually, as they were calling out the nominees, there was a lot of cheering going on. The din was quite high. So, I almost missed it when they announced Triveni as the winner. But after that it was just pure joy to go up there and express ourselves.

What has blown me away is just the outpouring of love and support, the joy and pure unadulterated best wishes. What it’s done for me is that it’s just renewed my determination to be good. I’ve been signing everything I say with “love, light, laughter” because I really do believe that music is love, that music ignites our light, and music in our darkest days allows us to have laughter. So you could say that I feel a renewed sense of focus… to intensify the journey I’ve been on.

Q: The Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi, congratulated you in a tweet. Did that surprise you?

A: I was so blown away and touched by the absolutely gracious gesture because apart from the beautiful tweet, there was a release from the Prime Minister’s office. And I just thought to myself, how absolutely wonderful is it that the Prime Minister of the largest democracy and one of the most important countries in the world, will take the time on something so small.

But what is especially touching and blew my mind is that he didn’t just say, oh, congratulations on the award. He commented on my whole life and that we had met in the US previously! If a leader with such a vast responsibility could take the time out for something so small with such precision, then it says a lot about him and it says a lot about the future of India. So, I felt very, very proud and I deeply appreciate the fact that he commended me for taking the ancient traditions and upholding them. He’s a great man.

Q: Your previous album, Ammu’s Treasures—which is a favourite of mine—was also in the running in 2023 for the Grammy. It didn’t win, though. So, what is it about Triveni that struck a chord with the jury?

A: Ammu’s Treasures didn’t win a nomination (and eventually the award) like Triveni did. With Ammu’s I had made a children’s album based on the songs I sang to my grandchildren. But the Grammys in their wisdom decided to move it from a children’s album to a global album, which then made it a completely different category. You know it because you were visiting me the day they made that decision.

With Triveni, there was no such surprise. We submitted it as a new-age album, and all three of us had our own followings and people listening to the album. Thank God because that’s half the battle. I would love to say that I’m the best musician and I won the Grammy. But that’s not what it is. There are extraordinary musicians whose music never gets heard. Who never win even if they’re nominated. So, I think there is a great deal of providence to this whole process.

Q: How did Triveni happen? How did the collaboration between you Wouter and Eru come about?

A: Well, I didn’t know Eru at all, but knew of Wouter and his music and Wouter knew about me. Eru and Wouter had been talking about creating a healing album for a year or two, and nothing came of it. Wouter approached me about a year ago and he said, hey, well, you know, there’s a cellist called Matsumoto, and we are thinking of doing something around sound and healing. She was interested in cancer cells… was working with researchers at universities, she’s on the West Coast.

I said, okay, let’s explore this because I love the idea of wellness and healing as a theme. Then, I invited them both to New York and for a few days, we locked ourselves up both in my home and in the studio. And we worked and we worked and we fought and we created and we just recorded everything we did. We taped it all. We had a couple of producers with us who kind of helped us write down our ideas and, you know, that evolved into a skeleton of 6 or 7 songs that became the crux of the album.

Q: From the time you met to the time the album was finished, how long did it take?

A: That didn’t take long. We met in New York in May and we released the album in August. You know, the most difficult problem in an album creation is the first skeleton. Then filling in the skeleton is very easy.

Q: How did you select the mantras and chants in the album? I am sure it wasn’t easy.

A: What happened is we would create these tunes, these beds, and then I would listen to the tunes and say, oh, this reminds me of Bilashkani Todi. So, let me try to create some riffs in Bilashkani, and then let me then do that Asatoma and Bilashkani. So, like this, the process evolved. Every song was a journey because it was complicated. When I make my own albums, it’s very easy because I’m the sole decision-maker. Here, all three of us had to be happy.

Q: So what’s next for Chandrika Tandon?

A: I am working on two albums at the moment. The one that is going to be released very soon is called Soul Esctasy. It is a more traditional album, but it’s something that I just have to do because it came to me. Soul Ecstasy is the Hare Rama, Hare Krishna mahamantra composed in 8 ragas and Tejendra Majumdar has worked with me on it. To me, the Hare Rama, Hare Krishna mahamantra is ecstasy. The Bhakti movement was built on this mantra, and Swami Srila Prabhupada’s Hare Krishna movement was built on this.

The other one which I’m very, very, very excited about as well, is that I’ve just been appointed the artist-in-residence with the Young People’s Chorus of New York, which is one of the largest choruses of New York City. These are mainstream New York City children from all walks of life, all traditions. They are an award-winning chorus. They’re the number one chorus in the world.

Now, the New York State Commission for the Arts has given us a grant to create a major work of combining Sanskrit healing mantras with multiple traditions and choral harmonies in partnership with the Young People’s Chorus. So, we’ll premiere this work this year. It’s going to take up a lot of my time starting immediately.