Tanvi Shah, (born 1 December 1985) is an Indian

singer Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define singi ...

and

songwriter A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. ...

from Tamil Nadu, India. She sings in

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of South India ** Telugu literature, is the body of works written in the Telugu language. * Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Tel ...

. In addition, she sings in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, Portuguese and other

romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

, as well as

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

. Tanvi Shah is the first Indian woman to win a

Grammy The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious a ...

. Her first song was "Yakkai Thiri" for the movie ''

Aayutha Ezhuthu ''Aayutha Ezhuthu'' () is a 2004 Indian Tamil-language political action film directed by Mani Ratnam. The film, loosely based on the life of George Reddy, a scholar from Osmania University of Hyderabad, stars Suriya, R. Madhavan, Siddharth, ...

''.

Career

She has worked alongside

A.R. Rahman Allah Rakha Rahman (; born A. S. Dileep Kumar; 6 January 1967), also known by the initialism ARR, is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and philanthropist known for his works in Indian cinema ...

and has sung a number of songs for him, including songs from '' Sillunu Oru Kadhal'', ''

Slumdog Millionaire ''Slumdog Millionaire'' is a 2008 British drama film that is a loose adaptation of the novel '' Q & A'' (2005) by Indian author Vikas Swarup. It narrates the story of 18-year-old Jamal Malik from the Juhu slums of Mumbai. Starring Dev Patel ...

'' and recently ''

Delhi-6 ''Delhi-6'' is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Rakesh Omprakash Mehra. The film stars Abhishek Bachchan as an NRI who arrives in India with his ailing grandmother (played by Waheeda Rehman) and begins discovering his roots ...

''. She wrote the Spanish lyrics for " Jai Ho". Her success with A.R. Rahman got her invitations from leading music directors and she has sung for

Yuvan Shankar Raja Yuvan Shankar Raja (born 31 August 1979), is an Indian composer and playback singer. He mainly scores music for Tamil films along with few Telugu, Kannada, and Hindi films. Considered a versatile composer, he is particularly known for his use o ...

, Amit Trivedi and other music directors. She shared the

Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media The Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media (including its previous names) is the Grammy Awards awarded to songs written for films, television, video games or other visual media. Alan Menken has won five awards (out of nine nominati ...

with

and

Gulzar Gulzar (born Sampooran Singh Kalra; 18 August 1934) is an Indian Urdu poetry, Urdu poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, and film director known for his works in Hindi cinema. He is regarded as one of greatest Urdu poets of this era. He starte ...

in the

52nd Grammy Awards The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards took place on January 31, 2010, at Staples Center in Los Angeles honoring the best in music for the recording year beginning October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009. Neil Young was honored as the 2010 MusiCares P ...

for the song Jai Ho, for writing the Spanish lyrics for the song. With the success of ''Slumdog Millionaire'', Shah has been featured in

Snoop Dogg Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. ( ; born October 20, 1971), better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg), is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. Rooted in West Coast hip-hop, he is widely regarded as one of t ...

's song "Snoop Dogg Millionaire". Apart from the Grammy, she also received the BMI Award in 2009 in London for the same and also shares the World Soundtrack Award (2009) with Rahman and Gulzar. She performed for the Yuvan - Live in Concert in January 2011 in Chennai and in Malaysia at the KLIMF in 2012. She also performed at Coke Studio concert at IIM Bangalore on 22 November 2013, featuring

Amit Trivedi Amit Trivedi (born 8 April 1979) is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer, songwriter, musician who works primarily for Indian cinema. After working as a theatre and jingle composer and composing for non-film albums, he debuted as ...

. She was invited to speak at the TEDxSF conference on Global Health in Nov '12. Tanvi sings in Spanish, Portuguese, Afro-Cuban, Arabic besides Hindi, Tamil and Telugu and experiments with a wide range of music with her band. Her adaptability has been proven in her collaborative work with international music producers such as Gio Ortega (USA), Jeremy Hawkins (USA), Che Pope (USA), David Batteau (USA), and DJ Salah of Germany. Tanvi has walked the green carpet at the Latin Grammy in 2011 and recently shared the stage with Lebohang Morake, South African singer and composer, famous for arranging and performing the music for The Lion King movies and stage productions. She firmly believes that we all need to give back to society. She is actively involved with the Cancer Institute and with the “End Polio” campaign of Rotary International along with Amitabh Bachchan, A. R. Rahman and Anil Kapoor. She has donated her song, “Zindagi”, produced by JHawk, to the End Polio campaign album that features international artistes such as Itzhak Perlman, David Sanborn, Ziggy Marley, Donovan and members of the Congolese band, Staff Benda Bilili.

Awards

;

Grammy Awards The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious a ...

* Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media – ' Jai Ho' – ''

'' (2010) ;BMI Award * BMI Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media – ' Jai Ho' –

(2010)

Discography

Film scores

Non-film scores

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shah, Tanvi Living people Indian women playback singers Indian women singer-songwriters Indian singer-songwriters Grammy Award winners Tamil playback singers Bollywood playback singers Singers from Chennai 1982 births 21st-century Indian singers 21st-century Indian women singers Women musicians from Tamil Nadu