Jonita Gandhi - THE INDO-CANADIAN SINGER'S WILD RIDE TO SUCCESS IN BOLLYWOOD

The artist fills us in on how she juggles performing in multiple languages, working with A.R. Rahman, her early influences and the one piece of advice she still follows till this day

- DAVID BRITTO

WHEN WE SAT DOWN TO CHAT with Indo-Canadian singer Jonita Gandhi, she’d just wrapped up a nearly seven-hour cover shoot at a suburban studio in Mumbai. Her mood is supremely upbeat and she’s showing absolutely no signs of jet lag despite a trans-Atlantic long-haul flight. Her North America concert tour with the Oscar and Grammy-winning composer A.R. Rahman had culminated only a couple of days ago. “The last show was in Toronto, my hometown. It was amazing,” she gushes.

Gandhi has been a touring member for Rahman’s band for a while now, and is a frequent collaborator with the legend on his many projects that span film soundtrack, independent releases and beyond. Her multilingual vocal prowess across regional music industries is well-established now, and by the sound of it, the singer is enjoying every bit of it. “I'm not a formula person. I don't know who I am. So, I feel like I've experimented with different genres and languages and styles and all of that I feel is now shaping who I am,” says the singer with hits such as “Chennai Express” (Chennai Express, 2012), “The Breakup Song” (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, 2016), “Chellama,” (Doctor, 2020) and more recently, “Arabic Kutthu” from this year’s Tamil action-comedy biggie Beast. Her song “Deva Deva” with composer Pritam, from the much-talked about Bollywood Brahmastra, has been raking in some unprecedented numbers across streaming platforms too.