It has been just two years that Sanjeeta Bhattacharya has been on the music scene in India. But she has already created a niche for herself. That is something that many artistes only dream of. Sanjeeta’s unique voice and style have a lot to do with this success.
She describes the past two years as quite a ride. After finishing her music degree at Berklee College of Music, she came back to Delhi. She got in touch with her friends from school who were already performing on stage. That helped her get gigs initially. However, soon it was the venues that started reaching out to her.
‘I was playing 15–16 gigs a month. That helped me get to know a lot of people. But I started getting saturated very soon. I was not working on my own music,’ she says. Finally, she decided to take a step back from playing as many gigs. She has released quite a few singles since then.
Now, she works on her own music and also plays with a set group of her friends. She hopes that eventually they can call themselves a band.
Sanjeeta’s music is inspired from many sources. She trained as a Hindustani classical vocalist for 8–9 years before she went to Berklee. ‘I was exposed to different kinds of music at Berklee. And I learnt that so many music traditions in the world have similar roots. People say that gypsies from India travelled to Europe. So you would find similarities between, say, Flamenco and Indian music.’
Part of the challenge of being in the industry comes with being a woman. Sanjeeta shares an experience that she once had with a well-established musician. ‘He called me over to work together. But I eventually realised that he wanted nothing professional from me. Nothing to do with music. He probably had the audacity to do that because he is already a big name. Maybe he thought I would just go along with it because it might help my career.’ Sanjeeta advises all young artistes to not let such things come in the way of their music.
She also advises indie artistes to streamline their genre, find the right audience and the right people to play with. ‘That’s the most important thing,’ she says.
To know more about Sanjeet’s music and her journey, watch the entire episode here.
Amazing. She has got so nice voice.