Sheila Chandra

小简介
Sheila Chandra 是80、90年代尝试着把东方文化和西方流行音乐融合在一起最出色和成功的歌手，Chandra17岁就录制了她的第一张专辑《Monsoon》。虽然拥有印度血统，但Chandra是在英国出生和长大的，她加入了当地Monsoon乐团，担任乐团的主唱，发行的单曲"Ever So Lonely,"出人意料地进入了Billboad Top 10，在80年代早期，Chandra为了有更多的创作自由，发展她的独唱事业，不想受到厂牌商业制作的压力的束缚，离开了乐团，签到了一个小的独立厂牌“Indipop”。在80年代中期，Chandra非常高产，在两到三年的时间里发行了5张专辑，这个时候她已经从早期亚洲舞蹈流行曲风Monsoon转变为更为个人化的世界音乐融合。 Chandra还开始写歌，并与她的丈夫和制作人Steve Coe合作，他们合作的专辑里通常都会使用印度的乐器，同时还有一些电子节拍来配合那些带点舞曲和流行摇滚风格的曲子。 但以后的的专辑里无歌词的哼唱和以印度Raga曲风为主的歌曲则占了越来越多的篇幅。
90年代Chandra的风格日趋成熟，她的90年代的专辑都是由Peter Gabriel组建的Real World厂牌发行，这个时期Chandra的作品达到了真正的世界融合，专辑里融入了印度Raga，英国民谣的元素，中东圣歌，复杂的多轨录音和更多的人声，打击乐的编曲，以及一些实验的音乐元素。
Chandra和Coe现在独立完成Chandra的音乐制作，创造了一种近似Drone的音乐效果来配合Chandra无歌词的吟唱。她的专辑里不再有流行和摇滚的元素， Chandra对极尽表现声音的极限更感兴趣， 无论是用印度语、西班牙语还是回族语言，或者是在June Tabor 或 Laurie Anderson的作品里发现到的素材等各种方式来表现她的音乐。这些近期的作品已经奠定了Chandra作为现代世界音乐融合的先驱地位之一，而她的声音则在岁月的流逝中更加纯粹和达到一种灵魂深处的优雅。
by Richie Unterberger
One of the most unusual and successful singers of the 80s and 90s that has attempted to fuse the music of non-Western cultures with Western pop, Sheila Chandra began recording as a teenager in Monsoon. Of Indian ancestry, but born and raised in Britain, Chandra took lead vocals in the band, which pursued a sort of new wave-tinged raga-rock along the lines of George Harrisons explorations on Beatles tracks like Love You To. The combination yielded an album and an unexpected British hit single, Ever So Lonely, in the early 80s. Chandra, however, felt limited by the labels pressures for more commercial product, and signed to a small indie label, Indipop, which she felt would offer more freedom for her explorations as a solo artist.
In the mid-80s, Chandra was astonishingly prolific, releasing five solo albums over a period of about two or three years that drifted away from the Asian dance-pop of Monsoon into a more personal sort of world fusion. Chandra also began to write much of her own material, usually in collaboration with producer and husband Steve Coe; Coe had also helped produce, write, and perform the music in Monsoon with Martin Smith, who also assisted on Chandras early solo records. Indian instruments were still usually employed, and electronic rhythm tracks still sometimes used to guarantee some measure of danceability and pop-rock appeal. But with increasing frequency, Chandra was pushing herself beyond the parameters of pop-rock with wordless pieces of both melismatic singing and percussive mouth noises, ambitious song cycles, interwoven overdubbed vocal tracks, and a 27-minute track based around a raga. (Her mid-80s Indipop albums have been reissued in the U.S. by Caroline.)
Chandra truly matured as an artist, however, with her 90s albums for Peter Gabriels Real World label (distributed in the U.S., again, by Caroline). As proof that adulthood doesnt have to mean tamer and more mainstream product, these found Chandra achieving a true world fusion that drew from Indian ragas, elements of British folk, Middle Eastern chants, sophisticated studio overdubs, and more vocal percussion compositions, the last of which bordered on the downright experimental.
Chandra and Coe were now almost solely responsible for the music (Martin Smith no longer being an active participant), constructing drone-like instrumental textures to suitably complement Chandras oft-wordless singing. Pop and rock were hardly factors anymore; Chandra was primarily interested in extending the limits of vocal expression, whether applied to Indian, Spanish, or Islamic forms, or the kind of material that could find a suitable home in the repertoire of June Tabor or Laurie Anderson. These recent works have firmly established Chandra as one of the principal boundary jumpers of contemporary music, but shes not a dilettante, and she imbues her music with a haunting, spiritual grace.