Vasundhara Das

Vasundhara Das
Born	Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Occupation	Singer, Actor, Composer, Entrepreneur, Speaker, Songwriter
Years active	1998−present

Vasundhara Das is an Indian singer, actress, composer, entrepreneur, speaker, songwriter and environmental activist. Vasundhara’s films include Hey Ram (Tamil / Hindi)), Monsoon Wedding (English), Citizen (Tamil/Telugu), Ravana Prabhu (Malayalam), Lankesh Patrike (Kannada) and several others. Vasundhara has worked with composers such as A.R. Rahman, Vishal-Shekhar and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy to name a few. Vasundhara’s current focus is on music composition at her Bangalore based studio called THE ACTIVE. She has also been involved in several independent projects such as Channel V Jammin’, BBC’s HIV awareness anthem for India 'Har Kadam', Mission Ustaad, Arya, Global Rhythms, Nylon Soundz and most recently, The Shah Hussain Project, a collaborative album with Sufi singer Mir Mukhtiyar Ali.

Personal life

Vasundhara Das was born into a Tamil speaking Hebbar Iyengar Brahmin family^[1] in Bangalore.^[2] She studied at Cluny Convent High School, Bangalore, Sri Vidya Mandir, Bangalore and Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, graduating in Economics, Statistics and Mathematics . She began training in Hindustani classical music under her grandmother Indira Das and later trained under Lalita Kaikini and Pandit Parameshwar Hegde In her college days, she was a lead singer of a girl band and soprano in the college choir. She is multilingual and speaks Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Spanish and English. Vasundhara married her long-time friend, Roberto Narain, a drummer.^[3]

Career

Actress

In 1999, Vasundhara began acting with Kamal Hassan in the film Hey Ram. She played the lead actress alongside Mohanlal in Malayalam movie Raavana prabhu, Ajith Kumar in Tamil movie Citizen and Darshan in the Kannada movie Lankesh Patrike. She also starred in Mira Nair's movie Monsoon Wedding.

Music

She started her playback singing career with A. R. Rahman's Tamil film Mudhalvan, for which she sang the song "Shakalaka Baby", and thereby winning the Filmfare Best Female Playback Singer Award 2001.^{[citation needed]} She has a French single out in France called L'ete Indien in collaboration with Paris based Agrumes Studio. She was a founding member of Arya, a world music band that has performed in Europe and America and broke up in year 2004.

Others

As a speaker, she has given talks at conferences like INK Talks in association with TED, Confederation of Indian Industries’ Conference for Women Entrepreneurs, AIMA's 7th National Brand Summit, TEDx and The Mentor Conclave. She wrote the inaugural blog post for IIT Kanpur's eCell Blog. As an entrepreneur, Vasundhara, along with partner Roberto Narain run DRUMJAM, a company that uses the medium of music and rhythm for corporate training, team building and community building. Her studio with partner Roberto Narain, The Active, has produced The Shah Hussain Project, an album of contemporary Sufi music.

Filmography

Discography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vasundhara Das.

• Ink-Talk-Vasundhara
• Das
• Drumjam
• The Shah Hussain Project
• Talk-Drumjam