She’s young, vivacious, good looking and a fast talker, but when she sings, she is calm and melancholic. That’s Jonita Gandhi for you, the sweet new singing sensation of Bollywood. Within a year of her debut she has sung four songs for the music maestro A.R. Rahman!
“It was a dream come true when Mr Rahman called me to sing for the film Highway. I just couldn’t believe it,” she said and promptly started humming Kahan Hoon Main in a husky voice.
That was soon followed by another, Implosive Silence, from the same film, then Aa Bhi Jaa for the album Raunaq with lyrics by former Indian law minister Kapil Sibal. The 3D animated film Kochadaiiyaan starring Rajanikant had her croon Dilchasbiyaan. The latest is Maloom for Lekar Hum Deewana Dil, starring Armaan Jain, the second grandson of the late Raj Kapoor. All of the songs are composed by the maestro.
Just a year into Bollywood and the young singer is going from strength to strength
If Rahman, a connoisseur of musical voices and a maestro of compositions, makes it a habit of repeating a voice in his works, the singer has to be par excellence and sound distinct from the clutter of voices presently inhabiting the Bollywood space. He did it earlier with Hariharan, Kavita Krishnamurthy and K.S. Chitra who went on to give super hit songs under his baton. Now, it’s Jonita’s turn to shine under the spotlight.
Talent and luck seems to be the armour of this India-born Canadian girl who stepped into Bollywood with the title song for the super-hit Chennai Express. It seems anyone who debuts with Shah Rukh Khan is destined never to fail: directors Aditya Chopra (Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge), Karan Johar (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), Farah Khan (Om Shanti Om) and actors Deepika Padukone (OSO) and Anushka Sharma (Rab Ne Bana Di Jori). Jonita too took her baby steps with SRK.
“It’s still hard for me to believe that I had my first break with Shah Rukh Khan and that too in a duet with S.P. Balsubramanyamsir. I think I am just lucky to be at the right place at the right time,” she gushes in her heavy North American accent. However, her accent vanishes once she starts singing.
If A.R. Rahman makes it a habit of repeating a voice in his works, the singer has to be par excellence and sound distinct from the clutter of voices presently inhabiting the Bollywood space.
“I really work hard to get my Hindi diction right while I sing,” explains Jonita whose parents migrated to Toronto, Canada, when she was barely nine months old.
There was always music in her home. Although he was an engineer by profession, her father Deepak Gandhi is a keyboard artist while brother Mandeep is a percussionist. The four-year-old Jonita started off as a singer in the Gandhi family’s band, Sargam, and has been performing at events ever since.
She was known as Toronto’s Nightingale while in her teens and her father insisted that she complete her academic education before she became a professional singer. Jonita did her Bachelor in Health Sciences and Honour in Business Administration at the Richard Ivey School of Business from the University of Western Ontario. Along with her studies she continued her singing assignments and won competitions such as NATS at York University, Asian Idol at University of Western Ontario, etc.
She says winning Sonu Nigam’s contest for an English language tribute to Michael Jackson and the contest for Kailash Kher’s concert in Toronto eventually led her to the Bollywood music scene. “I also used to sing popular songs of legends like Lata Mangeshkarji and Asha Bhosaleji in Toronto and elsewhere,” she recalls. It led her to record covers of popular songs and upload them on YouTube. Her cover of Paani da Rang from film Vicky Donor got over two million views! This was followed by Yeh Hosala Khone Ko Hai (Dor), Chaudhvin Ka Chand (Chaudhvin Ka Chand), Suhani Raat Dhal Chuki (Dulari) and others. It was the popularity of these cover versions that saw her as the lead female singer in Ash King’s MTV Unplugged shows in India, and she later got featured in Clinton Cerejo’s episode of Coke Studio Season 3.
“I had given myself a window period of two years after I moved to India to pursue my dream of making it in Bollywood as a playback singer. If I didn’t make it, I would have gone back to my health science and business administration job,” says Jonita.
That is now highly unlikely to happen for she is on a roll. In April she performed under her own name in Dubai and in May in her hometown Brampton with her home band, Sargam. Now Jonita Gandhi is on a road show with Sonu Nigam and the crew of the Klose To My Soul Concert series. What more could someone who’s just finished her first year in the Bollywood music industry ask for?
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 17th, 2014