Viji Subramaniam

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Viji Subramaniam, also known as Viji Shankar, was an Indian singer, born in 1952 as Vijayashree Shankar in Madras and raised in Bombay. She was the daughter of the singer Lakshmi Shankar and Rajendra Shankar, the older brother of the sitar player Ravi Shankar. Like her mother and uncle, she was trained in both Hindustani and South Indian classical music. From a young age she accompanied her mother at concerts, often on tambura as well. In 1972 she won the President of India medal from All India Radio. Ravi Shankar described her voice in his autobiography Raga Mala as sweet and lovely.

Music and breakthrough

In 1974 she joined, together with her aunt Kamala Chakravarty and her mother, Shankar's Music Festival from India, a revue sponsored by George Harrison. She sang on the studio album Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India (1976), produced by Harrison at his estate Friar Park, and went on the North American tour in late 1974. During that festival she met the violinist L. Subramaniam, whom she married in 1976. Together they devised Global Music, an idea to reduce the dominance of Western music, written for an orchestra of a hundred musicians.

Influence

For the director Mira Nair she composed and sang music for Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Mississippi Masala (1991). In 1992 she started the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival with her husband. She died of cancer in 1995.

Listening