My father was a wrestler and though everyone liked music in the family, it was a taboo to even think of a musical career. I used to wrestle to keep him happy. When I was about nine years old, I started learning vocal music from Pandit Rajaram, secretly! At the age of fifteen, I heard the flute for the first time on Allahabad radio. It was as if I was being transported to heaven. The flautist was Pt. Bholanath and that was the major turning point in my life. Soon after, while I was still in my teens I got an offer to work as a staff artist on Cuttack radio in Odisha/ and I accepted. It was then that my father found out that I was a musician. It was a major shock for him.

Dad is a man of few words. He rarely discusses my compositions. But I hear him humming my numbers to my nephew. The recent one is a hit from the Telugu flick “Oy”. A musical genius in the family is both a huge advantage and a disadvantage. I’ve absorbed so much from my father. But, at the same time, fans keep writing to me saying they expect more from me — because of my lineage!

My whole family is really musical. My brother and my mom both write songs and my dad has always played the piano and ukulele. When we were little, my dad would make us mix tapes with songs by artists like the Beatles and Avril Lavigne, so we learned a lot from those. Even though I never really thought of being a singer, I’ve always loved it. I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was about 8, which has helped my technique so much. It’s showed me all of the different types of classic music there are and how beautiful they can be. When I was 11 or 12, I started writing songs because it’s a good way to express your feelings. My brother is a really good songwriter so we’d give each other notes and write stuff together.

Karthik Raja is immensely talented. It’s unfortunate he hasn’t got the right break. Be it technology, manuscript or knowledge of genres, he is thorough. I’m sure he will make it ASAP.

I was brought up on Music, and being near Tiruvaiyaru for sometime during childhood , I got several opportunities to listen to great Music.

I was lucky enough to be born into a musical family. Both my grandparents were musical, so seeing them sort of encouraged me to want to do something in this space. My grandfather was a musical director of an orchestra and my grandmother sang in the church choir, so it’s safe to say music has been a part of my life for a while.

I come from a talented family of singers and musicians, and I never thought being talented in music was a gift. I thought everyone could sing. I found out later that it was a gift and decided to pursue music as a career.

My background in music came from me playing drums and piano as a young child. My grandmother was a pianist and I was influenced by her and my parents were playing rock records which influenced my drumming. I was a fan of film scores, rock, classical, jazz, and hip-hop in my early years and tried to learn as much about each of those genres as possible. I began writing music in a serious way in my teen years while I was playing in various bands and orchestras.

Growing up, I had never imagined a music career. It had never crossed my mind until I started getting inspired by life around me--the things I see, the people I meet, the situations they are in and what I could do to change their circumstances.

How did childhood influencce my career according to my family, I have always been a very Interesting child who was always open to express herself and I think my creativity or sense of creativity started as a child where I will open books and started doing image reading. I will look at a particular imagine and read and make a whole scenario around it.

My father was a piano teacher, while my mother played the piano: it goes without saying that the passion in me was born very early and that my parents have always supported me, advising me to play the classical piano while I was singing. I lived my life with everyone singing around me – whatever passion I had, my family always supported me. If this doesn't happen, you unfortunately start with one point less.

I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of, since none of my relatives could sing or play an instrument. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me — like food or water.

“Yeah. You know I was always drawn to the music. When I got into secondary school, which was my first opportunity to be able to make my own choices, I joined the choir at Queens College, and it was such a wonderful experience. I just carried on from there; it was a step after the other: taking solos, enjoying the whole scenario, and by the time I got to university, I was fortunate to be a part of a wonderful girl-(musical) group that enjoyed so much success on the Nigerian scene, Kush, and that was an amazing experience. And…you know…it just kept going from there until it got to a point where there was no turning back”.

“I didn’t realise I could sing, my mom did. She was the one that was very forward with my career when I wasn’t passionate about it.