“My songs come from a place of both darkness and hope”

Vocalist Shilpa Ananth, who is releasing her next album later this month, talks about her musical journey

Shilpa Ananth’s 2022 music video, The Search, starts dramatically. The singer, swathed in an impossibly long red robe stands in the middle of a bleak, arid landscape, gazing into the distance, the folds of her mantle undulating across tawny sand. Then she begins to sing, the lyrics of her song as raw as the landscape in which it unfurls, infused with the existential angst and identity crisis that Shilpa was herself going through when she wrote the song. “It was such a weird turn of events that became my life,” recalls the UAE-based vocalist, songwriter and performing artist, who recently performed in Bengaluru.

Currently working on her next album, Reproduction, slotted to release later this month, Shilpa talks about the events that led to the creation of the song. In January 2020, she had just released her song Align, a ruminative, introspective number that ponders on the dissonance between an artist’s performative and authentic self. She was also touring India, around then, and was on an artist’s high, recalls the 33-year-old. “I thought 2020 was going to be my year, that it was all coming together,” she recalls, with a laugh.

On her way back from her Indian tour, she visited her parents, who live in Dubai. Then COVID-19 happened, and it all changed. “I had booked a flight out to Brooklyn, but I never got on that flight,” says Shilpa, recalling how by March 15th the world started going into lockdown, and she found herself stuck inside her childhood home, unable to return to New York. “My friends went to my place in New York and emptied my apartment. I had to say goodbye to my home of five years from the other side of the world.”

It was a difficult transition, but it helped her create more music. “I was questioning my self-worth, my life’s purpose,” she says, recalling that she often felt suffocated and alone during that time.  But it also gave her the time to introspect — something that the New York hustle culture had not permitted — and she started writing more songs, many of which will be part of her new album.

“Music was the only way I could stay sane,” says Shilpa, who initially recorded using The Search on iPhone voice memos. “I had no access to recording studios, and all my professional mics and home studio setup were back in the US, so I decided to risk it and experiment,” she says of the song that captures her battle with grief triggered by isolation, loss and unprecedented changes during this period. “There’s no question that creating The Search literally saved my life.”

Always a singer

Music has always been a part of Shilpa’s daily fabric, says the singer, who started formally studying it at the tender age of three. “My parents heard me standing in the corner and singing this very complicated Tamil song,” she remembers. So, they decided to send her for Carnatic music lessons immediately. “That was my first introduction to music,” says the vocalist, who grew up in Dubai.