Anoushka Shankar is returning to LEITER for the release of a new single, In Her Name, featuring the renowned British-Indian poet, writer, playwright and illustrator Nikita Gill. The track – which is accompanied by an instrumental version – will arrive via all DSPs on December 16, 2022, commemorating ten years since the terrible incident which initially inspired it, the 2012 gang rape in Delhi of Jyoti Singh, who died from her injuries thirteen days later. “One of the reasons I’ve come back to this song,” Anoushka says, “is because of this endless wave of horrifying story after horrifying story, and each time there’s this wave of pain and grief: ‘When is it going to stop? When is enough enough?’ What happened to Jyoti should have been the last time anything like that ever happened. The song was about her, but now it’s also about everyonelse like her.”
The release coincides with Anoushka’s first tour of India since the pandemic, when she will unveil the new song live for the first time, and follows her recent Best Global Album Grammy nomination for Between Us....“It’s a live recording of myself and Manu Delago, with the Metropol Orchestra, which is a Netherlands-based orchestra, with conductor, Jules Buckley. So, it’s music from across my albums, but in this new kind of orchestral space — very cinematic, very emotional. Between Us is coming out digitally first leading with the single Land of Gold, which is probably my favourite adaptation into an orchestra space.
There’s one new song on there, called Jannah, which I had written maybe when I was twenty-five or twenty-six and I’ve performed it across many different shows, but I’ve never found a home for it in an album. I think I worked on it most extensively on Traces of You. We did an arrangement of it that fit the sound of that album. But at the end, I didn’t feel like the music fit. It’s always been more of a live piece. It’s very dynamic, fast and busy. It feels kind of this happy, like butterfly garden, joy, optimism kind. So, I called it Jannah because it just always makes me think of a garden. When I play it, I just think of flowers, blooming and butterflies, and maybe it’s too happy. A lot of my albums aren’t purely happy. A lot of my studio albums kind of sit in a different moody space, whereas this is a live album. So, with the joy of it, the performance of it, it fits. I’m really happy finally to get this song out.”
She was also nominated for a Best Global Performance Grammy for her collaboration with Arooj Aftab, Udhero Na, taken from the Deluxe Edition of the Pakistani singer and composer’s Vulture Prince. The chemistry and energy one exchanges via collaboration, if done right, is electrifying and all of Anoushka’s collaborations have been so euphonious. “It’s creative, it’s sexual, it’s intimate. It happens in so many areas of life that something grows more when there’s two people involved. There’s just something about that energy that feeds me. Of course, I do write on my own. But I truly enjoy and feel like I come alive when I’m with another person. And, maybe that’s because I came to music so much more from a live space. A lot of people start in a studio or start in their room. And then they grow towards performing live. Whereas for me, I spent years performing live even before I’d even written a note. So that relational energy of being on stage with my father, with other musicians, you know that feeling of electricity, of being led, is magic.”
She continues, “So I’ve learned from and grown up in that process of how my mind can be led and influenced by someone else and how you’re open to those ideas. I just love collaboration for that. I’m also quite an indecisive person and I can doubt myself a lot. So, there’s also something about working with someone else where it gives meconfidence. Where it’s less scary or less lonely. So, there is something encouraging about being two people. There’s also a feeding. Like I have one idea that might make them respond with a chord, but then that chord makes me feelnsomething that I respond to.”
The first time Anoushka performed on stage was when she was thirteen. Over the years, her musicality has evolved and has given her confidence to share and express from deep within, without feeling bare. “I look at some artists who are twenty and they’re just so vulnerable and that’s amazing! I couldn’t have done that. For me, it’s been over time. My first experience of writing was when I was twenty-five, it was Rise. It was more abstract. I was listening to some of my music yesterday, which I don’t do very often. There were some songs from Traveller, for example and the song with Buika came on, which is called Casi Uno. And I was trying to remember the exact translation of some of the lyrics. And that made me laugh, because actually it was a love song I wrote about my ex-boyfriend in English and I translated it into Spanish with someone because of the context of the album. And also, because that would’ve been too naked for me.
By the time we moved into Love Letters, I felt very confident being in my own first language and being very direct, you know. So, there’s been a process of vulnerability, a step at a time, and the feeling that feels safe, that I feel seen and heard, that I feel okay. Then one more layer, one more layer. I think for me, it’s been a process of realising that there’s this beautiful trusting relationship with an audience that doesn’t break me, instead it is a connection process. And so, I have built confidence in that through experience.”
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Text Shruti Kapur Malhotra
Photography Vikram Kushwah