Premiere: Ganavya’s ‘Ami Pana So’dras’ Gets an Equally Ethereal Video

Indo-American artist Ganavya presents her latest song “Ami Pana So’dras” with a slowly unfolding visual treat, filmed in the salt plains of Rajasthan with contemporary artist Shilo Shiv Suleman.

Ganavya’s breathy, sublime vocal phrasing interprets a vakh by 13th-century Sufi mystic poet Lalla (also known as Lalleshwari and Lal Dad). “I made this poem into a song a few years ago when practicing in the mountains during the pandemic— a dancer, Barkha Patel, had sent it to me and asked if I wanted to make it into a song so she could dance to it,” Ganavya says over an email interview.

The surreal sonic bed for the eight-and-a-half-minute track comes via sessions with German composer Nils Frahm, who also co-founded the label Leiter with Felix Grimm that releases this record. Along with “Ami Pana So’dras” comes “Draw Something Beautiful,” which Ganavya was previously working on with producer Aaron Liao.

Ganavya recounts that Frahm and she quickly finalized “Draw Something Beautiful” (“It was astonishingly easy, but easy as in my body was full of ease,” the artist says) and found themselves with more studio time and decided to keep going. Frahm setup his glass harmonica and Ganavya instinctively began singing “Ami Pana So’dras” and it was recorded in a single take.

Watch the video for “Ami Pana So’dras”

The artist describes the translation of the song as saying, “I feel like a broken cup / it doesn’t matter how much love you put into me, / it feels like it’s just spilling out of the cracks.” She draws parallels between how a glass harmonica was almost fitting – not just because it’s been historically played only by women but also reminded her of the jaltarang that her grandmother played, plus sparked ideas of fragility.

The video, directed and filmed by Manoj Rai, came from Ganavya’s admiration for Suleman, who has steadily become a world-known and acclaimed Indian voice in contemporary art. From ornate jewelry to striking colors, Suleman also serves as art director for this visual. “Shilo is… a gift to this world. She is magic, she makes magic, and I will continue to find ways to be by her side,” Ganavya says. There are two other music videos they’ve made in the past that are yet to come out, so that made “Ami Pana So’dras” their first work together to be out.

Ganavya’s latest two-track release comes just as she also sang on “O Raaya,” composed by A.R. Rahman for the Tamil action film Raayan. The master composer connected with Ganavya directly and now looks upon their connection as “a gentle friendship.”

The opportunity came just as Ganavya was in India to film the video for “Ami Pana So’dras” in Rajasthan and also record “Draw Something Beautiful.” She says it’s a “complete fluke” that all these releases are happening around the same time, although they were born or completed in the span of less than a week. Ganavya says, “I didn’t sleep for three days, which I used to be able to do much more easily when I was young, but I’ve been sober for a while and don’t really pull all-nighters like this anymore. The days felt like a ritual more than anything else, I still have no idea how I recorded the song, save for Rahman’s focused guidance.”

Up next, there’s an album coming up, called Daughter of a Temple which releases on the label Leiter in October. Ganavya adds, “I recently have been speaking and learning from Peter Gabriel, there’s a possibility of something there, I hope […] There’s the 2024 U.S. and Europe tour, there’s a few releases… a lot of quiet practice, I hope.”