Vasundhara Das (born 18 August 1977) is an Indian singer, musician and actress. Vasundhara's films include ''

Hey Ram ''Hey Ram'' is a 2000 Indian period crime drama film written, directed and produced by Kamal Haasan, who also stars. It was simultaneously made in Tamil and Hindi languages. Shah Rukh Khan plays a supporting role, making his debut in Tamil ci ...

'' (Tamil/Hindi), ''

Monsoon Wedding ''Monsoon Wedding'' is a 2001 Indian comedy-drama film directed by Mira Nair and written by Sabrina Dhawan. The film stars Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shah and Vasundhara Das. The story depicts romantic entanglements during a tradi ...

'' (English), ''

Citizen Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

'' (Tamil), '' Ravana Prabhu'' (Malayalam), ''

Lankesh Patrike ''Lankesh Patrike'' is an Indian vernacular weekly published in Kannada language from Bangalore, Karnataka. The weekly newspaper was started by P. Lankesh in 1980 on the lines of ''Harijan'', a newspaper published by Mahatma Gandhi. The week ...

'' (Kannada) and several others. She won the

Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer – Tamil The Tamil Filmfare Best Female Playback Award is given by ''Filmfare'' magazine as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Tamil films. The first Tamil award was given in 2006. However, since 1997 till 2005, a common award for playback was availa ...

for the film ''

Mudhalvan ''Mudhalvan'' () is a 1999 Indian Tamil-language political action thriller film produced by R. Madhesh and S. Shankar, written and directed by Shankar. The film stars Arjun, Manisha Koirala and Raghuvaran while Vadivelu and Manivannan appear in ...

Personal life

She was born into a Hebbar Iyengar family on 27 October 1977 in Bangalore, Karnataka to Kishen Das and Nirmala Das. She studied at Cluny Convent High School, Bangalore, Sri Vidya Mandir, Bangalore and

Mount Carmel College, Bangalore Mount Carmel College (MCC) is an autonomous college located in Bangalore, India, affiliated to Bengaluru City University. It is one of the first women’s colleges established in 1944 in Trichur as 'Carmel College' under the Madras University a ...

, graduating in economics, Statistics and Mathematics. She began training in

Hindustani classical music Hindustani classical music is the classical music of northern regions of the Indian subcontinent. It may also be called North Indian classical music or, in Hindustani, ''shastriya sangeet'' (). It is played in instruments like the violin, sita ...

at the age of six under her grandmother Indira Das, who ran a music school on the top of their house. She then joined the

Lalit Kala Academy The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art (LKA) is India's national academy of fine arts. It is an autonomous organisation, established in New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, ...

, and later studied under Pandit Parameshwar Hegde, her Guru. In her college days, she was a lead singer of a girl band and was soprano in the college choir. In an interview, she states that – "I got booed off the first time I sang on stage". She speaks

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

, English,

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

and Spanish. In 2012, Vasundhara married her long-time friend, Roberto Narain, a drummer and percussionist.

Career

Acting

In 1999, Vasundhara debuted as an actor with Kamal Haasan in the film ''

''. She played the lead actress alongside Mohanlal in the Malayalam movie ''

Raavanaprabhu ''Raavanaprabhu'' () is a 2001 Indian Malayalam-language action thriller drama film written and directed by Ranjith in his directorial debut. It is a sequel to the 1993 film ''Devaasuram'' written by Ranjith, directed by I.V. Sasi. The film s ...

'' (2001), with Ajith Kumar in the Tamil movie ''

'' (2001) and with Darshan in the Kannada movie ''Lankesh Patrike''. She also starred in Mira Nair's movie ''

'' (2001).

Music

She worked with playback singing career with

A. R. Rahman Allah Rakha Rahman (; born A. S. Dileep Kumar; 6 January 1967) is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer and songwriter, popular for his works in Indian cinema; predominantly in Tamil and Hindi films, with occasional forays in int ...

's Tamil film ''

'', for which she sang the song "Shakalaka Baby", which won her the

2001. Later she worked with composers such as

Vijaya Bhaskar Vijaya Bhaskar ( kan, ವಿಜಯಭಾಸ್ಕರ್; 1924–2002) was an Indian music director and composer who composed music for several mainstream and experimental feature films in the Kannada film industry. Scoring music for over 600 fe ...

Yuvan Shankar Raja Yuvan Shankar Raja or Abdul Haliq (born 31 August 1979) is an Indian film score and soundtrack composer and singer-songwriter. He mainly scores music for Tamil films. Considered a versatile composer, he is particularly known for his use of Wes ...

and

G. V. Prakash Kumar G. V. Prakash Kumar is an Indian composer, actor, producer and singer known for his work in Tamil films and a few Telugu films as well. His first film was S Pictures' ''Veyil'' (2006) and he became popular in Tamil cinema by the early 2010s. He ...

. Her first film as a music composer was ''

Paranthe Wali Gali ''Paranthe Wali Gali'' () is a 2014 Indian romance comedy film directed and produced by the award-winning playwright and theatre director Sachin Gupta under Chilsag-Civitech Motion Pictures. It is produced by Sachin Gupta and Sushma Gupta and c ...

'' (2014) along with Vikram Khajuria. She was a founding member of ''Arya'', a world music band that performed in Europe and America, and broke up in 2004. She has composed music at her Bangalore-based studio, ''The Active''. She has also been involved in several independent projects such as

Channel V Channel '' ("V" standing for the letter, not the Roman numeral "5") is a Chinese and former Asian pay television musical network originally launched by Star TV Hong Kong (now Fox Networks Group Asia Pacific). It was part of the unit of Disney ...

Jammin',

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

's HIV awareness anthem for India "Har Kadam", Mission Ustaad, Global Rhythms, Nylon Soundz, and ''The Shah Hussain Project'', a collaborative album with

Sufi singer The following is a categorically arranged list of notable singers of Sufi music. Ghazal * Ghulam Ali * Mehdi hassan *Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan *Reshma *Jagjit Singh *Roop Kumar Rathod Kafi *Abida Parveen *Pathanay Khan Qawwali * Jaani Babu *sufi ni ...

Mir Mukhtiyar Ali. She has a French single out in France called "L'ete Indien" in collaboration with Paris-based Agrumes Studio. Vasundhara trained under the founder of drum jam, Arthur Hull in Hawaii. In 2013, she initiated an event, ''Community Drumjam'' at the MG Road metro station, Bangalore. It has since been run monthly by the Rangoli Metro Art Center, and Drumjam, a Western music company she co-founded and is running with her husband. In 2016, she conducted a drum jam session for the

India national cricket team The India men's national cricket team, also known as Team India or the Men in Blue, represents India in men's international cricket. It is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and is a List of International Cricket Cou ...

for their team building exercise initiative.

Filmography

Discography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Das, Vasundhara 1977 births Living people Actresses in Malayalam cinema Indian women playback singers Actresses from Bangalore Actresses in Hindi cinema Actresses in Tamil cinema Actresses in Kannada cinema Indian film actresses Indian women pop singers Indian women songwriters Tamil playback singers Kannada playback singers Indian environmentalists Businesspeople from Bangalore Businesswomen from Karnataka Singers from Bangalore 21st-century Indian singers Indian women environmentalists Activists from Karnataka Filmfare Awards South winners 21st-century Indian women singers Women musicians from Karnataka Mount Carmel College, Bangalore alumni