Jonita Gandhi : the Amazing multilingual Singer
Jonita Gandhi has been a touring member for Rahman’s band for some time now, and is an incessant teammate with the legend on his many projects that span film soundtrack, independent releases and beyond. Her multilingual vocal ability across regional music industries is well-established now, and by the sound of it, the singer is enjoying every bit of it. “I’m not a formula person.
I don’t know who I am. So, I feel like I’ve experimented with different genres and languages and styles and all of that I feel is now shaping who I am,” says the singer with hits such as “Chennai Express” (Chennai Express, 2012), “The Breakup Song” (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, 2016), “Chellama,” (Doctor, 2020) and more recently, “Arabic Kutthu” from this year’s Tamil action-comedy biggie Beast.Her tune “Deva Deva”with writer Pritam, from the much-discussed Bollywood Brahmastra, has been rounding up a few uncommon numbers across streaming stages as well.
But Jonita Gandhi’s ride to becoming a reliable playback voice didn’t didn’t happen with her playing gigs or releasing music of her own, rather it was via video sharing platform YouTube that she first garnered attention. The singer’s covers of Bollywood hits like “Pani Da Rang,” “Suhaani Raat,” “Tujhko Jo Paaya,” “Yeh Honsla” and “Tum Hi Ho” to name a few went viral and amassed tons of views. It was through YouTube that Gandhi managed to become a legitimate internet turned playback star of this generation whose discoverability happened entirely online.
Jonita Gandhi was born in a Punjabi family from Delhi.Her family emigrated to Brampton, Canada when she was nine months old, where she was raised. Her family later settled in Mississauga.
Gandhi studied in Turner Fenton Secondary School and attended the Ivey Business Schoolof the University of Western Ontario where she completed her degrees in health science and business in 2012. She has had formal training in Western and Hindustani classical singing.
Gandhi grew up around music as both her father and brother were part time musicians. They would often perform cover songs together at live community events. At age 16, she auditioned for Canadian Idol but didn’t get past the audition rounds. She began making YouTube covers from her bedroom, sometimes featuring other local musicians including Akash Gandhi. The videos quickly went viral and led to a myriad of opportunities to perform.
Her jump to playback singing began with an opportunity to perform alongside Sonu Nigam. This tour crossed various countries including Russia, UK, US and the Caribbean. Afterwards, her sights were set on starting a career in the Bollywood music industry. Gandhi started playback singing with Chennai Express. The music for this film was composed by Vishal–Shekhar. She further worked in other Bollywood movies like Highway, singing both Kahaan Hoon Main and Implosive Silence.
Gandhi worked as a playback singer with music directors including A. R. Rahman and Pritam. Rahman featured Gandhi in the concert film One Heart (film). Gandhi performed at the 2016 Jubilee Games in Dubai with Salim–Sulaiman and with Amit Trivedi on MTV Unplugged.
In 2020, Jonita Gandhi was involved in mentoring and judging the Indian kids singing reality show Taare Zameen Par on StarPlus
As of 2021, Gandhi is set to make her film debut with director Vignesh Shivan’s Tamil film Walking/Talking Strawberry Icecream, starring Krishnakumar Balasubramanian.
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