It is a rare feat to see artists who follows their roots and keep the rich tradition alive through music and consistent performance at this age of heavy modern influences. With the amazing fervor and vigor of keeping her family traditions alive, Shashwati Mandal has become a wonderful Hindustani classical performer and inherited the talent from her grandfather Pt.Balabhau Umdekar who was part of the royal court in Gwalior. Shashwati also had the training from her mother in music and follows the Gwalior gharana tradition with respect to her renditions. She is also an accomplished music teacher and worked at Mumbai university of music as well earlier. Currently, she has an own set of students whom she is teaching independently.
Speaking of her favourite raagas and her preferences in singing, she feels it to be quite difficult to pick one. “There are so many brilliant ragas which Indian Classical Music has and it would be overwhelming to just pick a few. However, I love to perform intense ragas like Malkauns, Todi, Bhairav, Bageshree and Poorvi any day on stage.”
Shashwati finds ArtHub to be quite a brilliant initiative and finds it to have a great potential for networking artists. She also expressed her will to spread the word to other artists and make it a massive artist repository. The vibrant artist finds ArtHub to be having a fantastic potential in bringing artists and organizers to one place. Shashwati has performed in several countries with recent performance at the Temple of Fine Arts on April 14th 2018.
Coming to her influences, Shashwati finds Kumar Gandharv to be her greatest influences in singing and finds it coming to her unknowingly. She also listens to Jaipur gharana which is an edge away from her foundation of Gwalior gharana. Shashwati is an exponent of Tappa, a difficult form of vocal music and also loves to sing the semi classical forms such as ghazals and devotional numbers.
ArtHub finds it great to have a gifted artist like Shashwati Mandal as a member and wishes her the best in her musical pursuits.