Sandhya Sanjana

Sandhya Sanjana
Origin	Mumbai, India
Genres	Jazz Fusion, Jazz, Indian Classical
Years active	1980–present
Website	www.sandhyasanjana.com, MySpace

Sandhya Sanjana (Hindi: संध्या) is a singer born in Mumbai, India. She is one of the first Indian singers to have experimented with fusing Indian classical vocals with various other western contemporary styles. Her career began at a young age and she has appeared on over 30 albums, covering various genres.

Sandhya was born in Mumbai as Sandhya Golikeri to Shaila and Ramdas Golikeri in a Saraswat Brahmin family. She is the eldest of four daughters. She learnt her first songs from her mother (née Sunanda Nadkarni) who was a singer and had performed on Radio Dharwad. As her mother worked, at the age of five, she moved to New Delhi and was raised by her uncle and aunt. Her uncle got her performing on stage singing pop songs and Indian devotional songs. At about seven years of age, she started learning Indian classical singing from an elderly relative, Maitrayini Mundkur. Ms. Mundkur would compose the texts of great saint poets with Indian classical ragas. Each piece was based on a single raga and taught the essence of a raga in a nutshell. Sandhya sang a devotional song for a children’s programme on Radio Ceylon. She won many singing competitions as a young girl in the Saraswat colony – Talmaki Wadi. At the age of ten, she started studying Hindustani classical singing from Sita Hirebet, an exponent of the Kirana gharana and a student of Gangubai Hangal. Then she moved back to Mumbai and graduated from Elphinstone College in English Literature and Psychology. She also simultaneously studied at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, under Dinkar and Shashikala Kaikini of the Agra gharana. Later she studied with Pt. Govind Prasad Jaipurwale until he died in 1987.

...
Wikipedia