Emerge: Get to Know Antara Nandy

Assamese singer Antara Nandy is one of the six artists who are part of Rolling Stone India and TuneCore India’s editorial campaign ‘Emerge.’

‘Emerge’ profiles and chronicles the lives of six breakout artists from across India: Nandy, Odiya rapper Big Deal, Hindi/Gujarati artist Priya Saraiya, Bengali artist Rupam Islam, Punjabi musician Gurnazar and Haryanvi artist Vishvajeet Choudhary. Discover more about each artist’s process of making music and why they chose TuneCore to put their music out into the world.

Although she’s been making music since she was seven, Nandy first rose to fame in 2009 as one of the finalists at the popular singing reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L’il Champs. While she didn’t win, the competition opened the doors to the Indian music industry and the singer began a career in playback, lending her voice to tracks from Assamese films like Khel–The Game and the soundtracks of several popular Bengali TV shows. Over time she began to develop a voice of her own, participating in projects that focused on female empowerment and fighting violence against women and children. She dropped her first self-composed track “Ya Devi: Celebrating Womanhood” in 2015 and followed it up with the single “Dohai.” Over time, Nandy worked on various self-composed original tracks and covers with her younger sister Ankita and rose to viral fame on YouTube, amassing a powerful following and using her platform to hero blends of Bengali folk, Hindustani classical and indie pop. “I am very inclined to classical music or folk music per se, but my generation doesn’t listen to these forms and when I think about this I just feel really bad,” Nandy explains about her goal of celebrating these traditional sounds. “Now I am trying to crack how to make my generation listen to and enjoy classical and folk music of India.”

Choosing TuneCore as the digital distributor for her music is an important step in ensuring more people see the beauty of Indian classical. “What does an independent artist like me want ? That our music must reach our audience,” she shares. “TuneCore is a global platform that is helping Independent musicians like us to get our music to reach our audience. Basically I am able to make my song reach people, while retaining 100% of the sales revenue and retaining the rights of the song. I am sure there are many musicians like me across the globe who want their music to reach more people and TuneCore is helping us do that.” She adds the that working with Rolling Stone India on this project is similarly special to who she is an artist. “Rolling Stone is a magazine that I have pretty much grown up reading,” she reveals. “All the artists who’ve been featured here are people I have tried to learn from tried to learn from their music and have gotten inspired by and if this legendary magazine talks about me today… I can’t put into words how huge a deal it’d be for me — it’s a huge boost to my journey, to my career as a whole.” 

When it comes to sharing what inspires her to keep going and making the music she believes in as an independent artists, Nandy says, “Trust your craft, believe your music and most importantly, keep learning because at the end of the day, we need to keep learning in order to keep growing and in order to keep creating. People will say a lot of things, but as long as you know that you’re doing your absolute best, don’t stop no matter what.”