Background
Born and brought up in Indore, where her mother"s family was entrenched in the Gwalior gharana of Hindustani classical music, thus she learned music as a child.
Born and brought up in Indore, where her mother"s family was entrenched in the Gwalior gharana of Hindustani classical music, thus she learned music as a child.
She is best known for her score for the film,, and also for Gangs of Wasseypur Participant 1, Participant 2. She had been nominated in Best Music Director category at the 58th Filmfare Awards for Gangs of Wasseypur Participant 1 & Participant 2 (credited as music director of Gangs of Wasseypur). She is only the second woman to gain a nomination in this category 28 years after Usha Khanna.
During her Higher School Certificate vacations, she did an animation course and art direction course.
In 2001, her family moved to Mumbai, with an aim of her joining an engineering college, but instead she started working in animation followed by art direction before deciding on music direction as a career, after rediscovering her childhood passion for music In 2004, she scored the movie The Hope, which competed at the Internationales Filmfest Emden in Germany.
Meanwhile she also did the title track for Ruchi Narain"s film, KAL – Yesterday and Tomorrow (2005), though her big break came when she composed music for the 2007 movie Go, produced by Ram Gopal Varma, and also got to compose a song for Sarkar Raj. for which she travelled through rural North India, especially Haryana, where she visited the Raagini music festival, while researching for films music, eventually she created a hit soundtrack, embellished with Haryanvi musical influences. She was the music director of Anurag Kashyap"s celebrated movie Gangs of Wasseypur (Participant 1 & Participant 2), for which she was nominated in Best Music Director category at the 58th Filmfare Awards.
She was also the host of a popular music-based Music Television mini-series called in which she travels to places like Punjab, Banaras, Yellapur (North Canara, Karnataka), Goa, Leh, et cetera collecting local sounds both ambient and everyday singers to local musicians, and creating a final piece of music that resonates the feel and the sounds from that location.
The show is shot by Babble Fish Productions Episode 1 – Tung Tung - Punjab (Qila Raipur Rural olympics) Episode 2 – Ram Ram - Benaras Episode 3 – Yere Yere - Yellapura (North Kanara, Karnataka) Episode 4 – Susegaado - Goa Episode 5 – Phinger Song - Kanpur Episode 6 – Review of All Episodes Episode 7 – Majuli(Assam) Episode 8 – Scrap Rap - Dharavi (A Slum in Mumbai) Episode 9 – Ghumma - Mumbai Episode 10 – Babu - Kolkata Episode 11 – Ju Ju Leh - Leh.