Suman Sridhar

Suman Sridhar is a prominent Indian poet, singer, and songwriter. She was born and raised up in Mumbai. She attended St. Anthony’s Girls High School in Chembur. Music came from her roots; her father is a self-thought harmonium and table player, while her mother is a trained classical (Carnatic and Hindustani) singer. When she turned 14, she and her family shifted to New Jersey, U.S.A. She took a degree in Western Music and Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill, whose full name is Lauryn Noelle Hill >> Read More... and Busta Rhymes were Suman’s early music influences. She had worked in theatre, films, and performance art. Suman co-founded the eclectic pop-jazz-rock duo, Sridhar/Thayil, in 2008. Jeet Thayil In the poetic province, Jeet Thayil has the notewo >> Read More... is a poet, songwriter, and guitarist from Kerala.

According to the Rolling Stone magazine, the duo redefines the Indie music in India. Their first album, STD, was released in 2012 and the track, Punk Bhajan, was included in Rolling Stone’s 25 Greatest Indian Rock Songs of the Last 25 Years. Jeet later took a hiatus after their album was released and Suman has written and performed solo pieces with the help of just a looper and keyboard at music festivals like NHZ Weekender (2013) and Zero Festival (2014). As a writer-director-performer, her original theatre productions include The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir (2009) and Yoni Ki Baat (2003). Some of her art & sound design works include Transformation 19124 (2012), Tejal Shah’s Between the Waves (2012), The Kochi Intervention (2014), and many more.

She earned both critical and commercial acclaim crossing naturally between genres, languages, cultures, and music. She also earned reputation in the Bollywood industry as a remix specialist and was referred as “Remix Aunty.” She made her interpretations of few classic Hindi films such as OP Bayyar’s Jata Kahan Hai Deewane from Guru Dutt’s 1956 Hindi film, CID, which she recorded and renamed as “Fifi” for the soundtrack of the 2015 period crime-drama film, Bombay Velvet Click to look into! >> Read More... . She also recorded music for films like Aisha (2010), Luv Ka The End (2011), 404 Error Not Found (2011), Shaitan (2011), Talaash (2012), and Jaundya Na Balasaheb (2016). She earned the Google-INK Trailblazer’s Grant 2014 for establishing a multimedia opera and merged it with Tamil folk music. In 2016, she co-produced and debuted in Natasha Mendonca’s documentary-fiction film, Ajeeb Aashiq. This film was screened at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, where she earned a nomination for Bright Future Award.