Sheila Chandra
// vocalistSHEILA CHANDRA is a vocalist from London, England. Monsoon’s “Third Eye” (1983) was available from Polygram/Universal Records, Sheila Chandra’s solo releases “Out On My Own” (1984), “Quiet” (1984), “Nada Brahma” (1985), “The Struggle” (1985), and “Roots And Wings” (1990) were available from Narada Records, “Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices” (1992), “The Zen Kiss” (1994), “ABoneCroneDrone” (1996), and “Moonsung: A Real World Retrospective” (1999) are available from Real World Records, “This Sentence Is True (The Previous Sentence Is False)” (2001), and “The Indipop Retrospective” (2003) were both available from Narada Records, the song “Breath Of Life”, with film composer Howard Shore, features on the soundtrack to “The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) is available from Reprise/WMG Soundtracks, and the songs “Ouses, ‘Ouses, ‘Ouses” and “Welcome Sailor” feature on The Imagined Village’s “The Imagined Village (Self-Titled)” (2007/2008) available from Real World/Rykodisc Records.
Website: www.sheilachandra.com
Photo: Aditya Bhattacherya / SheilaChandra.com
Interview:
Music has an immense power to transport anyone around it, out of the mundane. It works very concretely on the emotions and the pleasure centres of the body and forces us to go beyond merely seeing the ordinary, or experiencing our selves as pale and ordinary. Music can magnify emotion, so that we are properly grounded in it and thereby stimulate us to see the significance in things. In words, in sounds, in the landscape, or in a frozen moment of human experience. It stimulates those parts of the brain designed to see the meaning in everything. This capacity to see the meaning in things and to value them for their significance is the principal means by which humans are spiritual beings.
We look beyond the surface to find pattern, structure, order, and purpose. We can do this for practical purposes to understand our world better, or we can do it in order to explain the inescapable feeling that most of us have, that the universe exists, in all it’s beauty and wonder, for some purpose quite removed and much higher than our own everyday cares and desires. It does not exist merely for us, but we have been given the incredible gift of being allowed to be immersed in it. Music can remind us of this. Not in any dry or intellectual way, but by beguiling us and moving us. Music can make us feel part of something larger and of a larger “whole”. Even when it is sad or wistful, it can make us feel that we belong, or at least that another has felt what we feel, and has expressed it more exquisitely than we ever could.
The poetically perfect thing about the way in which music does this, is that this conviction, this experience of “meaning” and being connected to something perfect and higher than ourselves, is an integral part of the experience of the musician as well as the audience. The musician is paid for their dedication to their craft by the huge and tangible pleasure of feeling that something moves through them. This happens to good musicians making either sacred or profane music. It is inherent in the act of making music itself. The magic of this force is given freely to all who play well and all who listen well. For me, there is no quicker or more direct route to experiencing for myself, that which is greater than myself. There is no quicker route to the divine.
“Music can magnify emotion, so that we are properly grounded in it and thereby stimulate us to see the significance in things.”
– Sheila Chandra, vocalist
