Sriya Lenka Becomes First Indian K-pop Star

Odisha’s Sriya Lenka has been announced as a new member of South Korean group Blackswan, along with Gabi Dalcin from Brazil. The news comes after the duo spent months training under the group’s label, DR Music. This makes 18-year-old Lenka the first Indian artist to join a K-pop group. 

After the departure of member Hyeme in November 2020, Blackswan held global auditions to find a new member and complete their lineup. Lenka and Dalcin were chosen out of over 4,000 applicants, and moved to Seoul to join the K-pop training system and participate in various challenges (aired on YouTube). Their performances would determine who would make it into the group. After several months of competing, DR Music declared on May 26th that both Lenka and Dalcin will be new members of Blackswan. 

Indian audiences have been rooting for Lenka ever since she was officially announced as a trainee back in 2021. Blackswan comprises a multinational lineup that includes leader Youngheun from Korea, Belgium-based Senegalese rapper Fatou, Korean singer Judy and Brazilian-Japanese singer Leia. The group first debuted as Rania in 2011 and then rebranded to BP Rania in 2016, after a number of changes. The band finally went through one more major rebranding and returned with its current members as Blackswan in 2020 with a full album, Goodbye Rania.

While Lenka is the first K-pop star to come out of India, we have previously seen singers Priyanka Majumder and Siddhant Arora train in South Korea and debut with the international pop acts Z-Girls and Z-Boys, respectively. The groups were part of the now-defunct Z-pop Dream project, which aimed to apply the K-pop training system on international acts and create global groups that featured members from various countries around the world.