![]() Her mashups have garnered attention from the likes of Diplo, Major Lazer, Shah Rukh Khan, and Hrithik Roshan. Vidya released her first mashup cover on her YouTube channel "VidyaVox" in April 2015 and has gained over 30 million views since then. She first started performing on YouTube with her sister on Shankar Tucker's YouTube channel. She learnt Carnatic Classical music from D.K. Often sporting fabrics with Indian prints on it and metal, Bohemian jewellery, her clothes go in tandem with the songs she chooses to combine.Vidya Iyer is an Indian-born American singer who was born in Chennai and raised in Virginia. ![]() It really depends on the style of the song – if it's English, the melodies are simpler and if it’s Indian style, they are based on classical music,” says VidyaĪ trademark of Vidya’s videos are her trendy and colourful costumes. He loves Indian music so much and his passion to share it with people who don't understand (it) in the US is really inspiring. He went to school for a degree in clarinet classical performance, but all of the production is self-taught. I haven't seen anyone else with such amazing sense of composition and production infusing Indian elements into Western arrangements. Since both of them are inclined towards Indian music, composing songs involves a lot of going back and forth to make the tune simpler to accommodate English words. Speaking about her collaboration with Shankar, she says that all her original songs are co-composed by him. In fact, one of her first ever videos - ‘Aasai Mugam Marandhu Poche’ on YouTube was released by Shankar’s channel seven years ago. Shankar Tucker, a clarinetist, music composer and producer, is a part of Vidya’s YouTube journey since a long time. This also helped Shankar (Tucker) and we were able to write the original English song, so we could keep in theme of the meaning of the folk song,” she adds. “My grandma also speaks fluent Malayalam, so between the both of them, they helped with the pronunciation and the meaning. Speaking about 'Pallivaalu Bhadravattakam', Vidya says that the idea to take this part of ancient Malayalam folklore came from her friend Jomy, who grew up listening to it. It celebrates the victory of a goddess over a demon. This original Malayalam song is performed in temple dance rituals and is known as ‘Mudiyettu’. ![]() With 89 million views, the song is based on a relic from Malayalam folklore. Her mashup of the Malayalam song ‘Pallivaalu Bhadravattakam’ and an original composition, ‘Be Free’, which was released a year ago is still the most viewed video in her channel. Now I just use the best of both worlds vocally and stylistically to give my songs a new flavour,” Vidya says. However, English vocals is something I really had to work on, unlearning some of the Indian training I’ve had. Indian songs come naturally to me, because I’ve trained in Carnatic music. ![]() Of course, the styles of singing English songs compared with Indian songs are vastly different. “I have been listening to both styles of music for as long as I can remember. Her exposure to both kinds of music from a very young age helped her, she says. Since then, she has experimented with songs across languages - Hindi, Malayalam and Punjabi for instance - blending it with similar and complementary tones in Western music. Although her earlier projects involved singing classics like 'Aasai Mugam Marandhu Poche' (a poem written by Mahakavi Bharathiyar), it was her 2015 mashup combining ‘Hosanna’ from the movie Vinnai Thandi Varuvaaya and ‘Love me like you do’ by Ellie Goulding for the movie Fifty shades of Grey that went viral.
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