Voices Lost And Found with Sheila Chandra
T.L. Mazumdar talks to pioneer British-Asian singer Sheila Chandra.
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Amazon Music Hailed by Billboard as 'one of the most innovative, provocative singers in any genre', Sheila Chandra's journey is as heart-wrenching as it is heart-warming. As terrifying as it is inspiring. But most importantly as relevant in 2020 as it was in the early 1980s, when a 16 yr old Chandra hit the UK top 10 as the first British Asian artist, even while navigating the murky waters of an era designed to have her torn between representing a minority all too happy to project their hopes and baggage onto a first-time event, and an ancestral country who still tended to respond with their knee-jerk snobbishness towards a culture they could only categorize as semi-something at best.
An innovator who might easily be described as one of the founding artists of the genre 'World Music' before it actually went on to become a mainstream label, the abrupt end with which her prolific writing and musical career met and the transition shortly after into a career as celebrated author and coach for the likes of artists like Stik, while still carrying a strain of brilliance as a common factor, leaves the romantic with an imaginative plethora of speculations of how she might have sounded today, and the cynic with the silver lining of how her artistry remains timelessly untouched by the generic nature of a genre going by a name that comes ever-increasingly in focus for reasons a lot of us would find questionable.
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Editorial update (July 2026): This episode was originally recorded and published in 2021.
Since then, Sheila Chandra has announced a new live album, 'Echo' — likely her final release, out 25 September 2026.
The link below has been updated to reflect this. The interview itself remains unchanged.
Pre-order and hear more here.
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This episode is brought to you by www.everynowheremusic.com
Recorded on a Zoom L8 Mixer kindly sponsored by https://www.sound-service.eu
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Connect with Sheila :
- Website : www.sheilachandra.com
- Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thesheilachandra/
- Facebook : Sheila On Facebook
- Twitter : twitter.com/sheila_chandra
- Youtube : Sheila on YT
Connect with T.L. / EveryNowHere
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Musician/Author/Artist Coach
Sheila Chandra’s original Real World trilogy set a new standard in the treatment of voice
in the studio in the 90s. Band Aid sound engineer (and now long-time producer) Stuart
Bruce, with whom Chandra first worked while putting down the vocals for the Monsoon
album at Sarm East in 1982, and who mix-engineered her Real World trilogy at Real
World studios in the 90s, has masterfully cleaned up and enhanced these recordings for
release under Chandra’s direction, with fitting technical and poetic continuity.
Though a studio perfectionist, Chandra was keen to preserve the integrity of the live recordings.
“My performances were co-created, by my audience and myself,” says Chandra. “It’s a
performer’s presence and heart that an audience come to hear, not technical perfection.
Concerts are one of the few places where another person gives us their undivided,
undistracted and ‘in the moment’ presence, and we, as audience, ‘borrow’ their stilled
mind. It’s one of the vanishingly few spaces in our society where that still happens.
The performances embodied on this album, reflect that truth. They are not perfect. And
sustaining 100% focused concentration when you’re carrying an entire show alone is
impossible. In some cases, I had access to performances of the same song with greater
technical perfection, but less ‘soul’. In every case, I have chosen feeling over precision –
even, in some cases, chosen ‘soul’ over the best available recording quality.
That said, listening to an album is not the same as being at a… Read More
Musician/Educator, Founder: Holistic Musician Academy
Indian-German Producer/Singer-Songwriter T.L. Mazumdar grew up on 3 continents and 4 countries.
Mentored by a series of iconic musicians like Kenny Werner, Kai Eckhardt, Dr John Matthias, and the late Gary Barone, his artistic journey has aptly been described by Rolling Stone magazine as one that ‘...personifies multiculturalism’.
Time Out Mumbai has referred to him as ‘’...amongst a handful of Indian (origin) musicians who don't have to play sitars or tablas''
He has been nominated for German Music awards
Bremer Jazzpreis and Future Sounds Jazz Award, and been called ''...a major talent'' by Jack Douglas (Producer: John Lennon, Miles Davis, etc.). .
