A Conversation With: Singer Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon

NEW YORK CITY — On her newest album, the singer Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon has reimagined “Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram,” a devotional bhajan, or hymn, in different musical traditions including Brazilian bossa nova and Chinese rhythms. Some of the tunes are fast-paced, others more meditative, but the lead voice is always unmistakably Ms. Tandon’s.

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Ms. Tandon, 58, traveled an unlikely path to become an internationally-recognized Indian singer: She graduated from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and moved to the United States from Mumbai to work at McKinsey and Company, where she became the first Indian woman to become a partner. After 11 years she left to start her own consulting firm, which specializes in restructuring companies.

More than two decades ago she also reconnected with a childhood pursuit, singing. She kept the consulting business and became a trustee at New York University, but she also made two CDs, “Soul Mantra” and “Soul Call,” which, like her latest release, feature ancient chants with a modern interpretation. In 2011, “Soul Call” was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album. Though Ms. Tandon didn’t win, the part-time singer was suddenly in the same category as world music heavyweights including Angélique Kidjo and Béla Fleck, the winner that year.

Her third album is called “Soul March,” and is inspired by Gandhi’s 390-kilometer, or 241-mile, Salt March in 1930 from Sabarmati to Dandi in Gujarat, to protest the British Salt Tax. During the march, Gandhi and his followers repeatedly sang “Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram,” and many Indians now closely associate the bhajan with him.

The CD will be released on Monday, and like all of Ms. Tandon’s other music and concerts, all proceeds from its sale will go to charity. She recently spoke with India Ink about her early years in the United States and how a gift for her father-in-law led to her second career.

Q.

Can you tell us your coming to America story?

A.

I came here in 1979 after McKinsey hired me. I was working for Citibank in India after graduating from I.I.M., and the company sent me to New York on work for a few weeks. While I was here, I met a few McKinsey partners who flew me back from India to interview for a position. I remember doing 17 different interviews in a yellow sari, but no one commented on what I was wearing—they were all interested in me as a person.

Q.

What was it like working in corporate America? How did you hang on to your Indian roots?

A.

I am not sure I hung on to my roots at all. I focused on working hard and integrating into my new country. I was working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, but I loved the work ethic. I loved that even though I was fresh off the boat, McKinsey was so open and saw potential in me that I didn’t even see.

I had clients all over the country and also globally, and at the time India wasn’t on the forefront the way it is now, so I would have some of them asking me with fascination about cows on the street and what the red dots meant that some Indian women wore. But at the same time, a lot of my clients were excited about showing me American experiences such as having key lime pie.

Q.

Do you have any formal music training?

A.

When I was growing up in Chennai, my mother had a music master come to our house a few times a week to teach my sister [Indra Nooyi, chief executive of PepsiCo] and I South Indian classical songs, but Indra would always distract me from the lessons so the training wasn’t anything serious.

I think music became a part of me because my mother used to play the radio at full blast all day starting at 5 a.m. We heard everything from devotional music to Hindi and Tamil film songs.

In my adult life, around 1990, I was desperate to learn again because I wanted a way to express myself, which I felt music provided, and I found out that Sangeeta Kalanidhi T. Viswanathan, who is one of the great masters, was teaching at Wesleyan University. I was working full time and had a 2-year-old daughter who used to sleep till 11 a.m., so on Saturday mornings I would leave Manhattan at 4 a.m. and make the two-hour drive to school to be there for a 6 a.m. class. I worked with him till 8 and drove back to the city to be there for when my daughter woke up.

Eventually I started learning with masters from India who were visiting New York and would also make trips to India for a few weeks in the summer when my daughter was at camp to work with teachers there.

Q.

How did all this learning lead to making a CD and getting a Grammy nomination?

A.

When my father-in-law was turning 90, I got the idea to make him a CD as a gift. I took the words “om namah shivya” and composed them in different ways for him. I wanted the job to be professional so I recorded it in a studio, and a friend showed it to a record label in London who wanted to make it commercial, and that’s how it all started.

Someone submitted my second album for the Grammys, and I got the nomination. It was such a glorious shock that the Grammy voters took the time to listen to the music from a complete unknown.

Q.

How would you describe your music?

A.

It’s ancient words set to simple modern rhythms within a classical framework.

Q.

Can you talk about your life since the Grammys?

A.

I perform a lot more now, including at Lincoln Center, the Global Peace Initiative in Iowa and at the Golden Jubilee for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. My songs are also up on iTunes, and my CD sales have gone up into the thousands, which isn’t the norm in the world music category. But I also continue with my work in consulting and at NYU. My music takes 40 percent of my time.

Q.

There are some amazing stories about the music you make and the profound impact it has had on people around the world, including cancer patients who listen to it as a form of healing and those with depression who use it as a way to lift their mood. Can you talk about a few of these stories?

A.

They have been unbelievable. A woman wrote me about her sister, who had an inoperable brain tumor and communicated with the twitch of her eyes that she wanted to hear my songs. Another man wrote about his father, who was dying of cancer and listened to my CD 24 hours a day in his final weeks. And last year, a journalist who was interviewing me told me about his 5-year-old son, who got agitated during July Fourth fireworks and only calmed down after listening to my music.

Q.

Your sister Indra Nooyi is the chief executive of PepsiCo and your brother runs a hedge fund. In a family with so many powerhouses, was there ever any competition between siblings?

A.

Truthfully no, because we all did different things and came to America independently on our own paths – me to work and my brother and sister to go to school. We had and continue to have different epicenters of interest. Today we see each other often and are there for emotional support, but our personal and professional lives are mostly separate.