Text by Akhil Sood
Singer and composer Priya Darshini wrote the Grammy-nominated Periphery (Best New Age Album), in less than two weeks and then recorded it live, in one take, in an abandoned Brooklyn church over a single day. In the run-up to the awards, we speak to the Chennai-born artiste about her deep-rooted classical background, that time when she almost charted a career for herself in Bollywood and the process of putting together this introspective, out-of-the-box album
Photographed by Ben Rosser
How did your journey in music begin?
Everybody from my family has studied Carnatic classical music. And they’re just deep lovers of every style of music. My grandmothers on both sides have been musicians. My sister and I were always immersed in music at home – my mum started teaching me singing when I was maybe three or four. Then my grandmother was my teacher. As I got a little older – I must have been eight or nine – I started studying with Bombay Lakshmi Rajagopalan.