- Speaker #0
Was there something you loved as a kid that has continued to tug at your heart, but you've never really found a way to pursue it? Do you ever wonder if it's too late to reinvent yourself and fully follow your heart and your childhood dream? Well, prepare to be inspired because today's guest is living proof that it's never too late to achieve your dreams and make a profound impact on the world. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm an award-winning podcast host and producer, singer-songwriter, public speaker, and multi-passionate creative. And this show is meant to give you tools to love, trust, and know yourself enough to claim your right to creativity and pursue whatever it is that's on your heart. Before we get into it, I want to say thanks to those of you creative cuties who joined my classes this week. We did a great creativity class on Friday, and on Saturday, I taught an awesome workshop on podcasting. Good news if you missed it. I have another one coming up on September 29th at 2 p.m. Eastern. It's called Finding Balance as a Multipassionate Creative. It is totally free to attend. It is via this wonderful website and app for creatives called Daisy. You can check it out in the show notes. I would love to have you. Okay, now to the guest. Her name is Chandrika Tandon. She is a globally recognized business leader, Grammy-nominated music artist, and humanitarian. She recently released her new album, Amu's Treasures, which features a variety of classic songs and soothing chants for all ages. She's also been profiled on print, radio, and on television, including CNBC's The Brave One series. I wanted to have Chandrika on the show because of her remarkable journey into the world of music, a path she embarked on later in life, proving that it is always the right time to pursue your passion, and what's meant for you will never miss you. Remember, creativity doesn't have an age limit. And guess what? If you pursue it from a pure place, you can have great success no matter what age you are when you start. So from today's chat, you'll learn the power of music to help you find yourself and connect with the divine, how to move from being a perfectionist into being yourself, how to create from a pure place, and how to go after your dreams at any age. Okay, now here she is, Chandrika Tandon.
- Speaker #1
I'm just so honored to be speaking with you right now. I've been crying and just like feeling so emotional about your story and what an inspiration you are in the world. And you're just the perfect person to come on my show. It's wonderful.
- Speaker #2
I mean, this kind of energy and the radiance with so much that you're doing is fantastic.
- Speaker #1
Well, thank you so much. I mean, I was so touched by something you said. And it's the same way I feel about myself. You say music is what I am. Everything else is what I do.
- Speaker #2
And that's how you feel too.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #2
When we are musicians, when music is so part of us, it's in every cell of our bodies, you know. Sometimes when I hear an air conditioner and I don't know, you're smiling because this is...
- Speaker #1
You harmonize with it?
- Speaker #2
Harmonize with it. I do that too. And that becomes my drone. See, I use drones for singing. So when there's an air conditioner going on or a fan going on... I'm working off that as my tonic scale and I'm figuring out is that high or low and I'm sort of singing. So I'm always listening to music. I'm always listening to sounds. That's why the first thing I heard was the way you spoke. And I said, oh, she's got such a beautiful way of such a cadence in the way she pitches a voice. She probably sings. That was my first reaction. You didn't have to tell me that.
- Speaker #1
I love that. I just so felt that. And I want to get into every facet of your story because. It's just inspiring from start to where you are now. And I'm sure it's going to be a million more inspiring steps along the way. But before we get into the music and how you found your way to the music, there's so much that came before that. And I want to start with your grandfather, because I know he sowed the seeds of creativity and dreaming into your heart. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
- Speaker #2
I grew up in a very small town called Madras. It used to be called Madras in India. It was like a village, almost a very traditional town. I was in a very simple family. We lived in my grandfather's house. My father was always traveling and my mother was in the house taking care of my grandfather. So he was our everything. It was his home and he was my everything. We didn't have the internet. We didn't have access and we were very protected. I wasn't allowed to really go out from the house other than going to school and back. But every night I had a one and a half hour routine with my grandfather, every single night where we would read. We would read the 37 plays of Shakespeare by the age of 13 I had read 37. I mean Cymbeline plays like I don't even remember now, but I'd read them when I was little. You know, Thackeray, I'd read, you know, Sheridan, you name it, I had read it. And I also memorized about 200 poems. And, you know, Lauren, this is not a four-line poem. We're talking of Elegy in a Country Churchyard, which had Psalm of Life, which had 10 verses or 15 verses. That's what I did. So the wonderful thing about that, with this breadth of reading and poetry, is that my world even though I was sitting in little madras, my world was vast. I was in a world of, whether it was Ben Dennis, whether I was in Cornwall, I was in England, I was in Avon, I was in Stratford, I mean, God knows, I was in every part of the world because of the windows and doors he opened for me through the world of books and poetry. So that was my first exposure to a world outside. So that kind of gave me this vision that. Even though there was no internet, there was nothing, there was something beyond my two, the three or four streets that I lived in and the four walls of my house, which was my entire world at that time for many years.
- Speaker #1
And I'm guessing your grandfather has passed since then.
- Speaker #2
Yes, he died when I was 18. So, but the first years of my life, he was my everything. You know, he was the person I spent every day with. I don't think I've been without him.
- Speaker #1
I was going to ask. I wanted to know how he keeps guiding you in your creativity and your journey.
- Speaker #2
Yes. And I think what he also did is that he taught me what is intergenerational love, because he died when he was 92. So he was already in his 70s when I came into his life. And so he basically followed me. So when I got interested in chess or Scrabble, he would go and figure out Scrabble. And so the next thing we would have endless Scrabble games or endless chess games or whatever games we were playing at that time. He shared whatever it is. And he was a judge. So he would share the law with me. So I topped my entire law classes because I didn't need to study law. I kind of knew law because of the stories he told me. So he did such a wonderful job of sharing what he knew in an unconditional, loving way with me that. And unconsciously, I think I'm doing that now, generations later, with my grandchildren, not even thinking about it. But this is the only way I knew how. And I'm very lucky I had that experience. And I'm very lucky I'm able to experience a family and a situation that I can share that experience with my grandchildren and others.
- Speaker #1
Yes. And you're doing that now and we're going to get into it. But I know at the same time I watched the CNBC interview you did, which was excellent. I recommend anyone go check it out. And you talked about how because of the way women were viewed in India at the time, you were, the quote was, born a burden as the oldest daughter to your parents. And I'm wondering, how do you think that view of your existence impacted how you existed in the world and what you thought you could be in life?
- Speaker #2
My earliest memory as a child was my mother buying my trousseau. Because when you have a daughter, particularly the first child is born a daughter. And if you're a very simple family, which we were, you've got to gather things for her. So you can get her married off with the dowry and all of that, which was the tradition there. And so earliest memories are my mother buying two of, and she had two daughters, not just me. And we had a sister, so she was buying two of everything, two tumblers, you know, two glasses, two cups, two this. So she was gathering all of these in silver and in stainless steel. The expectation always was that I would be married off at 18. 18 was a marriageable age, legal age. I would be married off at 18. In fact, my mother would invite my school classmates to my wedding with an unknown guy at another time at an unknown date. But it was going to be when I was 18. So this was the paradigm that I was born into that, yeah, I could study, do things, but I would be married. But I had another vision for myself because. I knew there was a world out there which I didn't, I hadn't experienced. So I fought. I went on hunger strikes. I went on two hunger strikes. One to go to college, to a boys' college and study business. And then to a second hunger strike to go to business school, which to leave home, which was unheard of because my mother wouldn't have us leaving home to go away and be away from the supervision of the traditional family. When I went to college, I went to a Catholic convent school my whole life. And I had a nun, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. And there was a nun and a habit. And Lauren, I've never seen her outside my convent. Until she came to my house to beg my mother to let me go to school. She said, you know, you have to let her go because I was on a hunger strike. And of course, all my friends knew I was on a hunger strike. So they went and spoke to my headmistress and she came home. For the first time in my 12 years of school, I saw her outside my convent school.
- Speaker #1
How did you get the idea to go on a hunger strike? How did you know that would be effective?
- Speaker #2
I didn't. That was my only tool, though. What else am I going to do? I cried. We weren't into throwing tantrums. This was my way of crying. And fortunately, it worked. But then by the second time, I was a pro. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
You're like, this is old news. I mean, you're just a natural born rebel, which is so clear from your story in so many ways. And it's continued throughout your whole life and journey and career. But there's a lot of people listening right now that when they got the impetus, they took it and they were conditioned by what their family, what... the world around them, the country they were born in, told them they could do. If they're hearing this and they're like, wait, I wanted more for myself too. How can they get some of that natural rebellious spirit that you have? Like, what can they do to incite that in themselves and shed the good girl conditioning?
- Speaker #2
You know, it's an important question because I would say that the two things that went hand in hand was one, I was a rebel. I was trying to break boundaries. But on the other hand, I had a way to break the boundary. I wasn't trying to run away from home. You know, I was breaking a boundary to study more. I wanted to get a master's degree in the top business school. So I was rebelling for a cause. And it wasn't something where I was asking my parents to support me. I didn't want that money. I didn't want anything. I was only going to get my own world. But I wanted the chance to pursue the passion. So I would say... To myself, even to my younger self, in wisdom, as I look back on what it was, it was the clarity of what I wanted to do at that time. That was a greater driving force than the fact that I was trying to break the rules. So I wasn't coming from, I want to break a boundary. It didn't matter. It just happened that what I wanted to do meant breaking a boundary. I've had this perspective, Lauren, over the years. I always think to myself, and I advise younger people as well, don't think about what you want to leave behind. Think about what you want to go towards. And once you're really passionate about what you want to go towards, you take the time to create clarity around that. And then somehow the universal synchronicity happens. The forces come together to make it happen. Oh,
- Speaker #1
so beautiful. Do you think you have to focus on one thing at a time as somebody who you've done so many different things and continue to? Do you feel like you've had most success when you've been really focused?
- Speaker #2
It's a question I... thought about a lot because when you as a woman you played many roles in your life as a professional as a mother as a family as a sister as a daughter now as a grandmother as a wife as a friend because as a community support we all have consciously or unconsciously many roles and we also as women have a great desire to be perfectionist we wear this badge of perfectionism with honor we are always not found being good enough. The perspective that I have now, and in fact, from a few years ago, is that there's this beautiful song, which we both know, do everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time for every purpose. And there really is a time for every purpose. And I think you can't have it all. You can have all some of the time. You can have some all of the time, but you can't have it all all of the time. It just doesn't work. When I was intensely involved in my professional life, I made trade-offs with my family. I made trade-offs about my own personal life. I didn't see daylight for years because I was working so hard. I was determined to be the best business person I could be and deliver the greatest impact for my clients. That was a choice. Now, I sleepwalked through some of those choices at different points of my life. About 20, 23 years ago, I started to get much more intentional about the choices. But the two things that happen is one is getting more intentional and the other is forgiving myself. So I don't wear this badge of I'm a perfectionist. I don't even think of myself as a perfectionist. I say I am perfection. I am perfection today because I am doing the best that I can. And I am good enough because I am perfection. And that. perspective, that affirmation that I give myself has completely stopped me from having a complete second conversation with myself, chattering away about coulda, shoulda, woulda, etc.
- Speaker #1
How did you get to that self-forgiveness?
- Speaker #2
It was a huge epiphany for me because this was 1999, when at the height of my professional career, when I was doing deal after deal, I was going from just doing the typical Taipei. Success meant more money, more fame, more all of that. I was lucky. I literally had to make a very big call. I almost had a crisis of spirit is the best way to describe what I went through. And I had to sign a very big deal, Lauren, and I flew back in from Europe. I couldn't just automatically sign the deal, which is what I was meant to do, which is what I would have normally done. Some external force was looking out for me. And I stopped, I paused, and I cried for probably two days for no particular reason. And I asked myself a lot of these big questions as to what makes me happy? What am I doing this for? I mean, if I died today, is this it? Is this one more deal? And that's what kind of restarted a whole investigation about life, myself, music, reconnecting with music in a very big, deep way.
- Speaker #1
So let's get to that. I mean, you alluded to the fact that you were a business superhero, basically. You did something that no other woman of color at the time had done. And you worked at this place called McKenzie, which is one of the most prestigious. Tell me, I don't even 100 percent know what it is, but it's like an investment firm in New York.
- Speaker #2
It was the premier global consulting firm. They worked with the top companies in the world. And it was a very, very prestigious, very small firm at that time when I joined it in 1979.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And you were a superstar there and blew everyone out of the water. And we're just climbing the business ranks. Like your daughter, I listened in the CNBC interview, said you were in Forbes and you were in all these incredible business magazines. and she'd take them into school and be like... It's because she's my mom.
- Speaker #2
That is true. You know, she had cachet, kindergarten cachet, as she calls it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it was a great show and tell.
- Speaker #0
Well, first,
- Speaker #1
you started studying music even back then, right?
- Speaker #2
Way back when I was very little. And I don't know if as a musician, you would understand this. You know, the earliest experiences of my life, whether it was somebody I was in love with or breakup or the chores I did. I have songs for all those memories. I don't really remember the details of. anything else that happened. But I can tell you that I was sitting there and singing Killing Me Softly, or I was singing First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. I could tell you in detail what piano lick came in there, because the songs defined my existence. And I heard music all the time. Whenever I was down, whenever I was up, when I was sideways, I would always hear music. I learned music for two or three years when I was very little. But then there just wasn't enough time because I was very seriously. In the academic world, I did well in school. I did well in college. And so for me, I worked hard. I worked hard and I had other jobs. I mean, I was working at home. We didn't have help. So I was cleaning floors and cooking and doing all those jobs at home. I didn't have time to do intensive music. Neither did I have the resources. But music stayed in my life in peripheral ways. The first thing I bought when I came to New York with my money was a Martin guitar. I had a $5,000 bonus. $24 and $5,000 of a bonus, which was meant to pay my security deposit, my rent for a month, my every moving expense. So this is, they give you sort of a loan. I straight away went and bought a Martin guitar for, but it's like almost $2,000, which is a ridiculous sum of money. And it's a fantastic guitar. And the second thing I bought was a stereo system for the other $2,000 some dollars and I had like three or four hundred dollars left to eat for the whole month and live, pay my security deposit. So that was what I had. So I had the most fabulous stereo system, the records I brought from India, and my Martin guitar, two pillows and a suitcase. That's how I lived for the first two months of my life in New York City. So music was with me all the time.
- Speaker #0
Yeah,
- Speaker #1
it was kind of even in the first position, before you put it in the first position, it was more necessary to your survival than the basics, because it was the basic for you.
- Speaker #2
Right. But. we started out which you said music is what I am and you respond to that that's exactly what I was it was what made me and the food yeah I could live without food yeah it's okay I can have a bowl of rice twice it's not a big deal but I couldn't live without music and so even over the years when I was in McKinsey when I had my own firm and I still have my own firm I travel all over the world I'd live in Brazil so you'd love the story so Brazil I'd be working intensively we'd finish our meetings at 10 o'clock at night. So I'd ask my clients, is there a piano? Is there any music nearby? They'd say, oh, Caetano Veloso is playing over in Sao Paulo, right in the bar down in the piano bar. Off I'd go. I'd be the only one sitting in this piano bar, listening to Caetano Veloso, playing amazing music from like 10.30 until 1 in the morning. I mean, I heard Gal Corsta, who recently died. I heard her sing O Balance Balance, and I was hooked. So I went and bought every Gal Corsta piece of music that I could find. So I learned a lot of Portuguese through music. I learned French through music. So I had music in peripheral ways. When Astro Gilberto was playing in New York. for a concert and I would fly back in from wherever I was. And then she was performing three nights in a row. I had tickets for all three nights in the first row and I would just hear her again and again and again. And so this is how I use whatever money I made, I used on concert tickets.
- Speaker #1
And there's this story about when your daughter was two, she would sleep until 11 on Saturdays and you would drive into the city and you would take classes with one of the greats. Tell me about this time and then how that ended up going from there to you recording this album for your father-in-law.
- Speaker #2
Goodness, you know everything. I wanted to learn music from really wonderful masters because, you know, my musical sense is good when I hear something. So I didn't want to learn from anybody sort of junior. So at Wesleyan University, which is a couple of hours away in Connecticut from, I live in the city of Manhattan. At Wesleyan, there was this incredible musicologist who... really didn't have many students. So he heard me sing somewhere. And then he said, oh, you have a wonderful voice or something like that. So I then started to beg him to please teach me. But the problem was that I worked all week and I was always in some town or the other and my baby was very little. So I begged him to teach me at 6 a.m. in the morning. So his classes were every Saturday from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. He literally, I think he got so fed up of me begging him, he agreed to teach me. But his rules were very strict that I had to practice to go there. He wouldn't teach me. He said, if you're working, I don't really care. I don't really take on students. But if you're going to do this, you have to practice. So I would fly with big boxes of cassettes. Everything I would carry, my carry-on bags would be cassettes and my Walkman. I had two different Walkman in case one Walkman failed. On planes, this is what I would carry. And I would just listen to music. And I would drive at 4 a.m. in the morning. I would scrape the ice off the car at 3.45. and drive to Wesleyan. So two hour drive with a muffin stop on the way back. Two hour drive, six to eight, and eight, I would drive back with a muffin stop. So I would be home by about 10, 20 in the morning. And my daughter would wake up at 11. And I was the perfect mother by then because I'd be there to wake her up. Thank God she woke up at 11. Oh,
- Speaker #1
thank God.
- Speaker #2
She's wonderful. So I got to do my classes and then I would be practicing. I'd be singing around the house the whole day.
- Speaker #0
So how long?
- Speaker #1
did you take those classes for?
- Speaker #2
I did it for two years and then it became unsustainable because then she got older and that was the only time I could spend with her and the weekends were the only time. So I just couldn't do it. So all of that dropped off my radar until 1999 when I didn't have a choice. I mean, my soul would have died. Something would have happened to me if I hadn't gone back to music.
- Speaker #1
So let's talk about this because this is the moment where you unleash, right? You know, it's been bubbling up all these years. always had music running through your veins. It's always been a part of you. It's been a necessity in your life, but it's bubbling up to the surface and it's finally ready to come out. What were the signs that you were reaching that point where if you did not unleash, your soul would break?
- Speaker #2
This was this big deal. I flew back in from Europe. I was working very long hours, but I would always define myself as being stressed out. And I'd say to myself, why am I so stressed out? Because I, in a sense, we have like if you look in terms of mass was hierarchy you have the basics you have a roof you have food you know what else do you really you have a family you're healthy but I was so yearning for something and I didn't know what I was yearning for and so badly and then I had to sign this deal I flew back in and I cried the whole way on the plane and I came back and I couldn't sign the deal and I had to let them know and I stopped answering phones thank goodness this was before cell phones so I was locked up, not taking any phone calls on the landline and just thinking and saying, why am I so unhappy? Why do I have everything and I feel like I have nothing? And then I said, let me just stop and think of what are the happiest moments of my life. When do I have felt truly complete? And every moment of my joy connected with music, which was a big revelation to me. It took me a while to figure it out because I'd unconsciously been doing it, but hadn't internalized. and clarified to myself how important it was my life. So at that time, I said, I have to sing. I don't care. I don't want to go anywhere. I wasn't trying to become a singer or anything. I just said, I feel so happy when I can sing. And, you know, Lauren, there's this saying with Rumi, this great poet who says, when you take a step towards a cause, towards something, the universe works to take 10 steps towards you. And that's just what I saw at that happening in my life at that time. So suddenly I'm thinking about music in an intensive way and I'm thinking I need to work with someone. I need somebody to teach me. But I didn't know what it was. And I have lots of records, lots of CDs, but. I went to a concert of a very, very famous Indian singer, Pandit Jastrat. And again, I had never heard him. Weirdly enough, I had actually met him at the airport. And I was thinking to myself, who's this guy? You know, I wasn't that interested in his music. But I happened to be sitting in the first row of this concert. And he sang for three hours. And I must have started crying in the first 10 minutes of his concert. And for the next three hours, I just cried. Because what happened in that music, it was... Indian classical Hindustani music, which I had never really heard very much of until that moment. The precision of the note, the precision of how he really was seeking the divine in the way he sang, the music was way beyond him. He was not there. It was all about the music. There was something that happened at that moment that made me then say to myself, I want to learn from him. I don't know him. I don't know. If he'll even talk to me, but I want to learn from him. Then the universe started to do its magic. Weirdly enough, three days later, somebody calls me and says, oh, you know, I'm supposed to host him for host Pandit Jasraj for dinner in my house. But I just found out he's vegetarian and I can't cook. I don't know anything. Do you think you could host him in your house instead? This all sounds bizarre, but it's all a true story. And I said, yes, I can. I would love to. I've been dreaming about this moment. And so my teacher came to me. And I learned from him and then his disciples and then the rest is history. So what I would do is clear my schedule periodically. I would go to India for 10 days when my daughter was in camp. And I would just sing for 12 hours every day with the teacher, morning, afternoon, evening, night. I still have tapes, cassettes. I have hundreds of cassettes. I would tape every session and then I'd practice. And I got better and better. I was just singing for myself at that time.
- Speaker #1
Okay, so tell me about this piece, because I think up until this year, my problem has been, I've been singing for other people. I want to sing for myself, and I want to sing for God. Tell me why that was important, because you've had the success. I mean, you're a Grammy-nominated artist, but I really believe that you're a Grammy-nominated artist because you sang for your soul, and you sang for the divine.
- Speaker #2
And I think this was my... fundamental learning and you took the words right out of my mouth because the music helped me find myself helped me connect with the divine in fact very early on when i started to work with a different and i worked with pandit jasraj and other teachers also came my way they would all say to me sit with me in the concert and start singing with me because you know you can sing with us you're very good you can do that but i would say to them i don't want to learn i just want to learn devotional chants. I just want to call out her name and I don't know. who I'm calling out to. I'm agnostic. I would be equally singing The Shepherd is My Lord and verses from De Profundis as much as I would be putting together the Indian music. I just wanted to call out to some greater power. And that kind of got me into meditation. In Indian music, we have the tonic scale. We call it the sa, which is whatever tonic scale is that you're singing in. When you are a singer of a certain standard, you cannot... Hold the tonic scale with great precision unless your mind is quiet. Because it's very long notes. You can't keep wobbling around the edges. As you get better and better, you know where you're not. Even though the whole world thinks you're singing okay, you know you're not on point. And to be on point requires a great, you know, sharpening of the mind. So what happened for me is the music and my mind and whatever the higher power is, whatever we call it, the light, God, divinity, everything was merged together. So for me, my whole quest was to find myself through music, was to find my deepest self. That's the journey that I've been on. And by the way, one of my teachers, he said to me, oh, you come on and sing with me in the concert. And I said, oh, I'm not good enough. You know, you're such a master, I can't. And, you know, I'll never be as good as you. I had all these. Taipei conversations going on and I expressed them to him and he said something so beautiful to me. He said, if every bird in the forest is a nightingale, it will be the most boring forest. He said every bird is perfection in itself.
- Speaker #0
And you have to know what bird you are and feel that perfection and just contribute to the harmony. Don't think of where you're going. Be in the space. And the other thing I learned from another teacher was when I am there, the divine is missing. When I leave, the divine takes over and the music takes over. So a lot of my exercise over the last 20 years has been to get out of the way.
- Speaker #1
How do you leave?
- Speaker #0
And the more you meditate. the more you really are focused on the higher purpose of what the music is and what you're doing. You know, otherwise we have so much chatter, 30, 40% of it is, Oh God, I messed up that note. Oh goodness. My voice doesn't feel so good today. Oh, I don't feel right. Will I remember the words? Will I do this? Will I do that? Don't you have this?
- Speaker #1
Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's why I'm asking, how can I leave? I would love to leave.
- Speaker #0
The whole journey is as much about your own personal journey of quieting your mind, getting the chatter down so that the big fountain of what is in you, and there's so much in you. By the way, most of my compositions have happened in my deepest meditation. I did a 10-day meditation where you couldn't speak from four in the morning until 10 at night. We'd be meditating. That's when I composed a lot of Shivoham at that time. And my whole soul call, which was Grammy nominated, and it's going to sound bizarre and out there, But it's true. very organized, logical person. I'm not given to flights of fancy, but this is a true story. At three in the morning one day, I woke up and it was almost like my head was pounding with these ideas for this chant. And I was creating and composing these things. And I called my teacher in India and I said, I'm getting all these ideas of these notes and tunes. And I don't think I've even learned these ragas. And I sang him some of the lines because I was busy recording it in my little voice recorder. And he says, these are beautiful interpretations. I haven't taught you some of these, but. go with it. So I think when you quiet down, things happen that are magical and beyond yourself. That's my experience. And my full struggle every day is to keep getting out of the way, is to figure out whenever I get in the way now, I'm more aware that I'm in the way, which I wouldn't be before, before I sleepwalked through all of that.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so beautiful. I definitely relate because I found out I was a songwriter because I started writing songs in my sleep. So, you know, the little stage where you're in between awake and asleep and you kick your leg and you wake up. That's when I started writing music and I was like, OK, I guess this is what's happening.
- Speaker #0
You weren't trying to be anything. I think that's part of the whole thing. We aren't trying to be anything and just leave and let it come out on its own. And the intention also. From the very beginning, I wasn't trying to get anywhere. I mean, I wasn't trying to get on world stages to sing. I wasn't trying to make money from music. It's a not-for-profit. Everything I do is 100% not-for-profit. I want to give it away. If it's useful, it's wonderful. You like it, great. If you don't like it, great.
- Speaker #1
I mean, I do want to ask a question about that because I want to get into how you went from the album for your father-in-law to being Grammy nominated. But we'll get to that in a second. You're a highly driven person. I mean, the success you've had in the business world is undeniable. You're still driven with music, but you're driven for something different. How did you alter that drive?
- Speaker #0
When I went through this pivot in 1999, when I started to think about what made me happy, I really made a promise to myself. And this, again, the world was not my audience. My audience was me. I made a promise to myself that I would serve, that my life would have impact, and that I would share what I had. in whatever way I can, whether it was time, whether it was talent, whether it was treasure, I would share. So in parallel, because I have a very deep business experience, I went to NYU. And this was what my connection with NYU is. I didn't go to NYU. I didn't even go to school in America. So I went to NYU, met the dean of the business school, and we got talking and I volunteered my services. I said, look, I would just like to just help if there's anything I can do. And then he kind of invited me to be. their distinguished executive in residence. And the next thing I know, I was supposed to spend two hours a week there. And I was there for three days a week, just teaching. I was in the classes, I was teaching the students, I was working with faculty, I was working with the dean. And my whole engagement with NYU started that way. So it was entirely focused on giving back. Nobody even knew I was doing that, because I just was doing it. It wasn't for money, I wasn't getting paid. This was just, I wanted to do it. And then I contributed, and I started to give money. to the university, to the students for scholarships, and then we endowed the engineering school. So I've just continued on this path of wanting to share and so a lot of my purpose in life is let me try to share you know everyone if you've given whatever gifts they are some are more some are less sometimes they're more sometimes they're less whatever they are they're not for us we can't take it with us there we don't know the address of where we're going to next there's a limited runway to finite time let's just share and make others happy while we're doing this if
- Speaker #1
you can so beautiful So let's talk about this album you made for your father-in-law. Tell me about that and how you went from there to getting nominated for a Grammy with your second album.
- Speaker #0
Kind of crazy, actually, because my father-in-law, you know, what do you give a person who's 90 years old? He was turning 90 and he liked music sort of, but his capacity for a complex music was fairly limited. So I said, what do I give him? Let me find a chant he would like. Om Namah Shivaya, the five chant. five syllable chant so I just recorded that was it just came to me I recorded that and then I somebody said oh you should work with this guy let's record it in the studio we did it was a beautiful album at least it was very short it was like a week we recorded the whole thing and I gave it to him he was very happy but then a record label in London the executive friend of mine played it for him and he happened to like it and so he just then started to distribute it but it developed like a cult following And of course, unknown to me completely, but so many people were really happy with it. And I didn't pay much attention to it. It was done, was for my father-in-law. But then maybe a few years later, I literally woke up with this pounding in my head with this other chant. I wasn't intending to make another album. I mean, I was still doing my business work. I was still singing. But then this album came to me and I didn't have a choice. I had to record it. And I did that. And one of my teachers, actually a teacher who just passed away, said, Bye. this album is so beautiful, you should submit it for the Grammys, you know. And I'm like, what, you know, because I didn't even know Indian music could be submitted for the Grammys at that time. It wasn't my space. It wasn't what I knew. And I sure enough, I submitted it. Facebook was just beginning. I had like a few hundred people that I'd just opened my Facebook page. But the craziest things started to happen. People would suddenly share. And overnight, I developed 3,000 new followers on Facebook because some random person would share the album. So this became an organic growth thing. And then finally, when the nominations for the Grammy came out, there was no one more shocked than I was because the four people on my list was Sergio Mendes. Oh, my goodness. I worship Sergio Mendes. Brazil 66 was my go-to album when I was growing up. I literally worship the guy. It was Bebel Gilberto, who was, you know, I'd spent so much time in Brazil with all of that. And then there was Bela Fleck, who won the Grammy. So it was just a roster. I mean, of course, Bela won the Grammy, his 29th Grammy or something. But he was phenomenal. And I was just thrilled, beyond thrilled to be in that company. And it was all a great adventure. And I was so grateful and lucky. And the thing I did, though, just even... calling yourself Grammy nominated gave you a better platform to let people listen to the music more.
- Speaker #1
Oh, yeah, it gets the visibility on you and brings more ears and eyes to what you're doing. I wonder, you know, there's a lot of people who have a lot of again, conditioning around age, and what they can do at a certain age, and whether they can reinvent themselves at a certain age. And you're a brilliant example of the fact that you can just always start something if you're doing it truly for you. and to share your gift. What would be your advice to somebody though, who's feeling like, you know, they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, they can't start something new? What would you say to them?
- Speaker #0
It really is what we started out with. You have to get out of the way and let your capacity, whatever that is, your talent, your capacity, let that shine through because we are our own worst enemies. I see this in the business world. I see this with music. I mean, goodness gracious, when I was nominated, I went to the reception for the Grammys. I was the oldest person among a very young music industry. I mean, the others who were my age group had been there since they were born in the music industry. Whereas I just didn't know anything about the music industry. I just walked in there. And if I had started to get intimidated, I would never have gotten started. I wouldn't have even submitted my album. And I think this is true even as a woman going into a boardroom. I don't walk into situations thinking, I'm a woman or I'm this or I'm that. I'm just a professional who happened to have done a lot of work and I'm walking in to this boardroom as a professional. I'm not walking in as a woman of color. I'm not walking in as a brown woman. I'm not walking in as a woman, nothing. Similarly, As a musician, I don't think of myself, oh, I'm a 50-year-old going in, I'm a 60-year-old going in. We can find a hundred barriers because we are very good at finding them. We all are so self-critical. I think it's really time to step out of the way and say, we are wonderful. We are perfection. We are incredible. And we are here to share whatever we have. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, great. And because I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it because I want to express the joy and love I have. That's the reason for my doing it.
- Speaker #1
So let's talk about your most recent joy, your album. Is it pronounced Amu?
- Speaker #0
Amu. Amu.
- Speaker #1
Tell me about this, how your grandchild inspired it. I love it. I've been listening to it all day. So beautiful.
- Speaker #0
Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. So I have three grandchildren, but when I started on this journey, I literally had one, the first one, five years ago. He's five. And you know, as a grandmother, was my first grandchild, and especially because of my daughter, who I also spent a lot of time singing to, there I had less wisdom and less time. But here I just created more time. It was a joyous thing. And I started to sing to this boy. And I would sing every chance I got, and I'd always find he'd respond incredibly well to the music. So I would start singing. And then the longer I sang, you know, as he started to get older, he would say, Amu, and they call me Amu. He'd say, Amu. Can you sing this again? Can you sing this again? And sometimes he'd make me sing the same song. I'm telling you, Ashgrove was nine times one night. Children of the Stars, which he likes very much, you know, say he's once a 12 times. Sometimes he'll say, Amu, I think I want a new song today. And I had to reach into my repertoire. So I actually, on my notes section of my phone, I would write down and say, oh, tonight for Kavi, I shall sing. I should remember now's the time for planting seeds. Oh, I remember. So I just remember songs from my childhood. That's how this whole process started. And then I started these Vedic chants because I said, I ought to teach them a little bit of the Sanskrit chants, which meant a lot to me. And I would start doing that. And I would have this discussion with him. And he'd say, some of these chants were long chants, nine verses. So I'd say to him, Kavi, it's kind of getting late. So shall I do just one verse? Or do you want nine verses? He'll say, no, I want nine verses. So this little boy would be solemnly sitting in his crib. listening two hours and my daughter would be flipping out because she'd say, well, he's way past his bedtime, but I'd just be singing. And then he also, he's very musical. So he then got to say, Amu, you're singing that too high. You should sing it low. And he didn't know really what it was, but he knew I was taking pitches in the wrong place. So this went on and my little grand guy got into it as well, the second guy. So at one point I said, you know what, who knows how long I'm going to be around. Let me just go into the studio for a couple of days. get a friend of mine who can just give me a little piano support, a guitar, drums, the three musicians and me. We went into the studio to Mass Mocha. I booked it for a couple of days and we said, let's just do this. And I give it to them. And then this way, she can play it at home. They don't have to be with me. This was the whole genesis. I have the entire recording of what happened at Mass Mocha. We had three magical days, but then as we started to do it, every one of the musicians said, well, wouldn't it be incredible if we could get a cello on this? Or Bobby Keys, who was playing the guitar, would say, I think this is great, but then we can try a different idea. I've got another idea. Or Jamie Haddad, who's a drums guy, would say, I don't think we should do doggy and threes, doggy in the window. Let's try an Indian tihai and a four beat on the doggy. So these ideas and he says, let's get other musicians involved. That group of musicians, Jamie and John Keelan brought other musicians in and they all said, this is a project you have to be involved in. That's how this project mushroomed from a two and a half day event in Mass MoCA, of which I have an entire full end to end recording of just a piano and a guitar. It evolved from there into this bigger album with 17 maestros and 35 songs. It always had 35 songs, but 35 songs, 21 chants. It became a much bigger album and different people joined this journey.
- Speaker #1
I just love that so much of your music has just been like. I want to share with someone I love, whether that person was your own soul or your father-in-law or your grandchildren. It just comes from that genuine place and then it takes off.
- Speaker #0
When you put it that way, that's a very interesting way to look at it. I hadn't thought of it that way, but that's the way I think about the music. The music is for sharing. That's the purpose. There's no other destination.
- Speaker #1
It's such a great lesson for all of us because so many of us are sharing things trying to seek outward validation from the world rather than just sharing our love and our heart and my biggest takeaway from you today is that I just need to sing because I am music. As you said, you are music. And you've re-inspired me because I've been feeling a little like, well, I haven't had the success I want to have in music. And I don't know, maybe it's not meant for me. But to your point, like I sang before I could talk too. Talking to you today and learning your story has freed me to know that just singing for my own soul and to connect with God is enough.
- Speaker #0
That is success. So what is success? Five people saying Lauren has a great voice. Who cares? You are amazing. And that's exactly how I think about myself. And in fact, maybe I don't even hold a tune sometimes. I don't know.
- Speaker #1
Oh, you hold a tune.
- Speaker #0
No, but you know what I'm saying?
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #0
I love music. And I know I remember all these songs. I've sung them a billion times. And I know it makes a group of children very happy. And I know we can spread the joy. That's the purpose of Amu's Treasures. I call it a hug. for the world. And you know, I always tell my grandchildren, you know, Amu's door is always open. Amu always has a hug for you. Amu always has a song for you. That's my message to Kavi and to Janu. It's my message to every child, you know, that I just did a concert in Prague.
- Speaker #1
Yes, I watched it with the Ukrainian children, right? Beautiful.
- Speaker #0
And it was that entire experience was a hug for those children. One kid, my most beautiful story, and I've got a picture I'm going to show it to you one of the children he couldn't join his brother was in the concert but he couldn't join he came crying and he said because he'd also drawn a picture of Amu all the children had drawn a picture of Amu they'd worked on this coloring page for a whole like weeks when I turned around to the audience singing Kesar Asara with the whole audience all these children held up their picture of Amu for me I just cried and cried and cried it was like when you give a hug, you get 1000 hugs back in return. What greater value is there? And what greater purpose could there be for the music?
- Speaker #1
So there's a little book that goes along with the album. And I love that in the book, you wrote to both children and adults. And I want to ask you about that. Why was that important to you?
- Speaker #0
These songs that I've got in Ammu's Treasures are not children's songs in the way we traditionally think of them. They are songs I sang when I was little. And I don't know what it was like when you were growing up, Lauren, but I just listened to whatever music was around me. So it wasn't Ashgrove. Ashgrove is a song that talks about loves, you know, down yonder green valley where stream lets meander, where twilight is fading, I pensively rove, you know. And then my two-year-old grandson would be singing, my daughter would say to me, you're singing the most mournful songs to this little boy, you know. Like he was saying, With sorrow, deep sorrow, my bosom is laden. All day I go mourning in search of my love. In his own little words, that's what he would sing. So a lot of these songs aren't baby songs. They sing Baby Shark and The Floor is Lava and all of those songs. But these are simple songs with lyrical melodies and very sweet words. So to me, it was the beauty and the simplicity of the lyrics and the melodies that drew me into singing this for the children. Sway, you know the song Sway. It's a very popular American song. Dean Martin's sung it. So many others have sung it. But you know, one could imagine Sway as just a calypso or a marimba. But in fact, I imagined this as my grandchild and I dancing together. And it was just as beautiful and just as meaningful to me. So it's an adult song, but it's a children's song. Emotions are children's emotions, but they're human emotions. All of this is for the whole family. And the musicianship, I will tell you that the maestros that have played with me on this album are incredible musicians. The world deserves to hear them. The world deserves to hear Kenny Warner, who played just such an incredible, masterful version of Listen to the Falling Rain or even a song like Edelweiss.
- Speaker #1
Oh, the Edelweiss that you did was just breathtaking. That one and is it called Children of the Stars?
- Speaker #0
Children of the Stars, yeah.
- Speaker #1
Those two are my favorites.
- Speaker #0
I'm so happy to hear that because Children of the Stars is my grandson's number one favorite because there's a section which comes in there, the Greek section, mille semo. So my view is, you know, this is beautiful musicianship and I take no credit for it because the maestros played on it. I did a lot of work putting it together, but this deserves to be heard by everyone. I want parents to be happy. I'll tell you the reaction I had, Lauren, you'll enjoy this. I played it to a woman. a very senior woman in the academic field, an artist. No, I hadn't shared this album with anyone, but I played her two of the songs, I'll Bring You Flowers and one other song. She just wept through the whole song. And I just said to her, what's going through your mind? What were you feeling? She said, this is what I wish my mother had sung to me. Because she had a very toxic relationship with her mother. And she said, this is what I wish my mother had sung to me when I was little. So when I talk of a hug for the world, babies are not the only ones that need a hug. I need a hug. You need a hug. We all need a hug. And look, I can't go around hugging each and every person in the world with hands and arms, but I can certainly do it through my music. If it gives you a moment of joy, a moment of connecting with some part of yourself, my purpose is met. What?
- Speaker #1
What parts of your younger self did you rediscover or heal through making this album?
- Speaker #0
My entire journey for many years, and I think this quest to be more all the time, was always conditioned by this conversation that I would have inside, which said I wasn't good enough. And that I was always trying to be more. I was always trying to be other directed. I was very focused on the outside world. I cared a lot about... pleasing. I was a true pleaser. I really worked to make other people satisfied and happy. And I just changed the whole equation. It's no longer about other people. It is a quest. And that was what Shivoham the Quest was. It was my journey.
- Speaker #1
I also love to bookend our beautiful conversation that you're passing the torch to your little sweet grandchildren the same way your grandfather did to you and you're passing that creativity and that love. and that passion for life and imagination and curiosity to them. And I can't wait to see what they'll do with your love and your belief in them. And I just thank you for being who you are in the world and for sharing your love and your talent and your courage. You're an amazing human being, and I'm grateful for you.
- Speaker #0
What a beautiful way to end this. And thank you, Lauren. Thank you for that. And my prayer and my hope and my dream in all of this is that I'm able to share it. with many more children that everybody has the experience because everybody deserves a hug and everyone needs to have an Amu in their life whose door is always open, who always has a hug for them, who always has a song for them, and who always has time for them. We all deserve it, whatever our ages are. And that's my little contribution to that journey.
- Speaker #1
Thanks for listening and thanks to my guest Chandrika Tandon. For more info on Chandrika, follow her at Chandrika Tandon. That's at C-H-A-N-D-R-I-K-A-T-A-N-D-O-N. And visit her website, ChandrikaTandon.com, to find her new album, Amu's Treasures. And you can also get it wherever you find good music. Thanks to Rachel Fulton for helping edit and associate produce this episode. Follow her at Rachel M. Fulton. Thank you to Liz Full for the show's theme music. Follow her at Liz Full. And again, thank you. If you like what you heard today, remember to rate, review. and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share the show with a friend and post about it on social media. Tag me at Lauren LaGrasso and at Unleash Your Inner Creative, and I will repost to share my gratitude. Also tag the guests at Chandrika Tandon so they can share as well. My wish for you this week is that you find a pure place to create from and start pursuing your passion. No matter where you are at life, it's always the right time. Miracles are possible when you create and unleash from the heart. I love you and I believe in you. Talk with you next week.
