For Chennai-born Chandrika Tandon, music has never been about external validation. It has always been a process — of discovery, of offering, of becoming. And in that, her work continues, unhurried and unbound
“Music is what l am. Everything else is what | do — I found myself through music,” asserts Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon in her bio note on Spotify, where she has a modest 1655 monthly listeners. At 71, Tandon’s first Grammy win for her sixth studio album, Triveni, in the Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album category, may seem like a late-career triumph, but it is a formal recognition of a lifelong immersion in music that refuses to be constrained by geography or commercial expectations. When she secured the nomination in the Best Contemporary World Music Album category at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011 for her first album Soul Call, she found a global audience ready to lap up the pot-pourri of Hindustani, Carnatic, and Western traditions.
Soul Call is a meditative exploration of the sacred Om Namo Narayanaya chant, devoted to Lord Vishnu, which is central to Hindu spiritual practice. The repetition of the mantra’s eight phonemes pulls the listener into a space of tranquility and reflection. Her subsequent albums — in similar terrains and textures — deepened the engagement. Soul March (2013) expanded her sonic vocabulary; it weaves jazz and Latin influences into the fabric of Hindustani classical music, while Soul Mantra (2014) explored the incantatory power of Om Namah Shivaya across nine ragas. With Shivoham: The Quest (2017), she moved even further, integrating Sanskrit chants with English verses, broadening the scope of her spiritual inquiry. And career as a vocalist interested in pursuing music-making as a vehicle for stillness and contemplation.
The call of music
Tandon’s win is particularly significant as she has been chosen over formidable competitors like Ricky Kej (nominated for Break of Dawn), a previous winner, and Anoushka Shankar, a renowned sitar virtuoso (and the daughter of the legendary Ravi Shankar) who was in the race with Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn, the second in the trilogy of mini-albums; the first, Chapter I: Forever, For Now, released in October 2023. The other equally talented competitors included Japanese composed Ryuichi Sakamoto (Opus, his posthumous album, features sets performed as a final concert in 2022) and Indian-origin British artist Radhika Vekaria (her second album, Warriors of Light, is ‘born from the crucible of struggle’ — she suffers from chronic speech impairment since childhood — and ‘illuminated by the celestial sound of ancient mantras and chants.’
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The music of Triveni, in a way, does not begin where the album starts; it begins in the corridors of a childhood home in Chennai, where a young Tandon first learned that chants — sacred, celestial, sublime — could be a portal to something larger than herself. Born in 1954 into a conservative Tamil Brahmin family in Chennai, Tandon was exposed to music as a child. Her mother, a Carnatic musician, and her father, a state banker, provided a backdrop in which she absorbed the strains of Carnatic music, and also got trained to balance art and commerce.
Higher education wasn’t easily accessible to young women in her community. She had to go on a hunger strike to convince her mother to let her attend Madras Christian College. Then, her academic journey took a decisive turn. Initially inclined towards law — inspired by her grandfather, a respected judge in Chennai — a mentor’s guidance redirected her to the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), one of India's premier business schools.
One of only eight women in her cohort, she excelled in the competitive environment. By the 1970s, she had moved to the US, making history as the first Indian-American woman to become a partner at McKinsey & Company. It was the kind of feat that made headlines, a story of immigrant grit and glass ceilings shattered. Her tenure at Citibank in Beirut during the tumultuous Lebanese Civil War honed her crisis management skills.
In 1992, leveraging her extensive experience, she founded Tandon Capital Associates, advising financial giants such as Chase Manhattan Corporation and Bank of America, which established her in the financial sector. As she climbed higher in finance and consulting, another melody was taking root in her soul — the call of music. Her intrinsic connection to music remained a constant undercurrent. Trained by maestros in Hindustani, Carnatic, and Western traditions, she viewed music not merely as an art form but as a conduit for spiritual and emotional expression.
Triveni: A confluence
What eventually Soul Call began with an act of love — a simple gesture to honour her father-in-law’s 90th birthday; Chandrika created a studio recording of his favourite chants. However, it turned into something much grander, which sparked the creation of her first full-length studio album. Triveni, her Grammy-winning album, unites her voice with the breath of South African flautist Wouter Kellerman and the deep, resonant strings of Grammy-winning Japanese-American cellist Eru Matsumoto. It is an album that is as much about confluence as it is about contrast — a coming together of the ancient and the contemporary, the Eastern and the Western, the spiritual and the sensual.
The word Triveni refers to the sacred confluence of three rivers in Hindu mythology, a meeting of forces both seen and unseen. And in its very construction, the album echoes this philosophy. Each track flows seamlessly into the next, weaving together Vedic chants with the cinematic lushness of the cello and the haunting, airy whispers of the flute. It is a sonic pilgrimage that takes the listener inward, toward the self, even as it stretches across cultures and continents. The fusion creates a soundscape designed to guide listeners on a journey of introspection and healing. The album’s seven tracks each offer a unique exploration of this theme.
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In the opening track, Pathway to Light, she chants the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra, one of the most powerful and sacred chants in Hinduism. The chant, dedicated to Lord Shiva — the cosmic destroyer and liberator — is about transcendence, of breaking free from the cycles of suffering and mortality. The imagery of a “ripe cucumber detaching effortlessly from its vine” is particularly striking; it beautifully evokes the soul’s graceful release from worldly attachments. The instrumentation builds gently, layering textures that evoke both the solidity of the earth and the expansiveness of the sky. Listening to this and other tracks, just close your eyes, hold your breath, and sink into something beyond sound — something timeless, wordless, eternal: ‘Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.’
In Chant in A, the chanting of ‘Om Namo Narayana’ reverberates throughout the track, invoking a deep sense of devotion and spiritual reverence. The mantra honours Lord Vishnu, the preserver of the universe in Hindu cosmology. Other tracks have other wonders. The Grammys may have just caught up with her brilliance, but the symphony of her life has been playing all along. It is a milestone, but it will not be the destination. Since, for Tandon, music has never been about external validation. It has always been a process — of discovery, of offering, of becoming. And in that, her work continues, unhurried and unbound.