Indian-American singer-songwriter couple Falguni and Gaurav Shah have taken Narendra Modi, millets and music to the Grammys this year. Almost overnight, their little-known song, The Abundance in Millets featuring PM Modi, has become a hit after it was nominated for this year’s awards in best global music performance category.
Modi doesn’t rap or break into song and dance, but his speech on millets features prominently in this single, which aims to promote food security.
It incorporates a portion of his speech at the ‘Global Millets (Shree Anna) Conference’ in Delhi. He had said that with the efforts of the farmers and citizens, ‘Shree Anna’ will add a “new dimension to the prosperity of India and the world”. The YouTube video of the song, uploaded four months ago, has about one lakh views so far.
Mumbai-born Falguni, or Falu, is not a pop icon like Diljit Dosanjh or Daler Mehndi, and her husband Gaurav barely has a digital footprint. But the couple who lives in New York are firmly entrenched in the international music scene having worked with A. R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire, and cellist Yo Yo Ma, where she lent her voice for his Silk Road Project.
Falu has performed at the 2022 Grammy Awards, as well as the White House, Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center, among other significant avenues and occasions. She has also collaborated with Ricky Martin and Wyclef Jean. Her debut album also called Falu featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s Beyond Bollywood exhibit as representative of Indian American trendsetting artists.
In India, her fan following grew after her album, A Colorful World won a Grammy last year for Best Children’s Album, which she released in 2021. She was the only South Asian woman to be nominated in that year’s category.
But Shah is no stranger to the Grammys. She happens to be the only Indian-origin woman to be nominated in the Best Children’s Music Album category at the Grammys twice. Before A Colorful World, she had been nominated in the same category for her album Falu’s Bazaar in 2018.
This year’s nomination, however, has come as a surprise for the Shahs.
“We are deeply honoured and humbled by the Grammy nomination,” wrote Falguni on Instagram, and thanked PM Modi for ‘spearheading and creating’ the song with them. The couple rubs shoulders not just with top international musicians but also with India’s political leadership. Falguni and Gaurav had met the PM in the US on 21 June this year, where Modi praised their work. The couple had even performed for Manmohan Singh at the White House
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On a steady diet of folk music, ghazals
An avid fan of RD Burman’s music and The Beatles, it was a bike accident at the age of six that prompted Shah to seek solace in singing. Growing up in Juhu, she trained in Gujarati folk music and ghazals, and then Hindustani Classical music.
In an interview with The Rolling Stones, Shah outlined her vision for children. “I want to sow the seeds of equality, diversity, tolerance, and I want to teach kids to embrace each other‘s differences,” she said.
The idea behind the album came from a difficult but hard-hitting question about racism and white privilege from her nine-year-old son. As a parent, Shah did not know how to explain that the world is a challenging place to be in — not without painting a grim picture.
“The story was simple – the crayons are all of the different colors but they live in one box together peacefully. I wanted to show him that being brown is alright. And music gets through kids in a much easier way,” she said.
After moving to the US when she married Gaurav, she became the lead vocalist for the Boston-based Indo-American band Karyshma in 2000.
Her work was noticed by A R Rahman’s team, and she got a chance to work with him in the US. They sang together at the White House for President Barack Obama’s first State dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Falguni’s feat comes after a spate of Grammy wins in the last few years. Indian music composer and producer Ricky Kej has won three Grammys so far, with his first win being in 2015. He is the country’s youngest awardee. In 2015, he won for the first time for his album Winds of Samsara in the Best New Age Album category. He repeated his feat in the same category in 2022 for his collaborative album with Stewart Copeland. Divine Tides also won the Best Immersive Audio album in February this year.\
The global music performance category this year also features other nominations like Pashto, by Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer & Zakir Hussain featuring Rakesh Chaurasia and Shadow Forces – Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily.
India’s most celebrated win in the Grammys has been A R Rahman’s double honours with best compilation soundtrack for a motion picture category and best motion picture song category, for Slumdog Millionaire in 2010. Indian origin sitar player Anoushka Shankar, daughter of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, has been nominated multiple times for the Grammys. She is yet to win one. Ravi Shankar was awarded the best world music album award posthumously in 2017.
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Modi, mashups and memes
Netizens, as always, have a lot to say about PM Modi’s Grammy nomination. One X user pointed out how US rapper Nicki Minaj and PM Modi have both won their first Grammy nomination this year.
Another compared former Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s bid for a Nobel Prize to PM Modi’s Grammy nomination.
Mashups and memes are also doing the rounds, with montages of PM Modi in various moments of his global travels.
But most of all, it is seen as a moment of pride that the PM has now become a part of musical history with the nomination, while also promoting India’s indigenous crop.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)