Sheila Chandra - A Review

[S. Narasimhan]

I recently heard couple of CDs of hers. Basically, she's a pop singer based
in London. She started off singing in the group Monsoon but soon went solo.
Most of her solo CD's have been co-produced by Steve Coe, a recording and
keyboard artist.

The first CD of hers that I listened to was Zen Kiss. This is almost fully
only vocal music by Sheila Chandra. She mixes various styles including
Persian, Church music and Indian Classical (Both Hindustani and Carnatic).
There are long vocal passages of Kunakol (that she does decently) which
is basically vocalising of tabla and mridangam bols. The lyrics are in
English. Often it sounds like a new age poetry recital. There is hardly any
accompanying instruments. The writeups that come along with the CDs sound
like high-flown artsy stuff (full of artsy buzzwords). In this CD, she has
put in some effort as compared to the next one that I listened to.

The second one was Silk (or something to that effect. It features Sheila
CHandra on the cover decked up as the traditional Indian bride). This CD
is extremely mediocre. The singing is bad (even the kunakol stuff is done
badly)The drum beats are evidently from a drum machine (unchanging forever)
and sounds like those synthesized dance numbers. The lyrics are in English,
mostly but I couldn't make out what she was saying though. In one song, all
she says is Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Nothing wrong with that if there had been
other interesting stuff going on. She goes off key here and there only to
be redeemed by the sound processor that adds in the "echo". THe mixing is
also bad (For instance, in one track she says Satyam Shivam Sundaram and
in the parallel second track she vocalises the kunakol. These two don't
match at all and is very distracting. Meanwhile there is this disco type
drum beat in the back ground).

If you're a music fanatic you might want to buy Zen Kiss. Just because it
is different. But listening to it for more than 10mins is an ordeal.In between
I got this impression that its a bunch of cut and paste of many of her
rehearsal sessions. One might buy it since "she came on National Public
Radio on an interview", though.

Unless you feel like supporting a cause (of encouraging a young Non-Resident
Indian) or want to have a general dance music for parties you might not want
to invest in her other CD - Silk.

BTW, she's the originator of the term:Indipop music.

--Narasimhan