ABOUT

Vanita Singh was born in Lucknow, India. She is a folk singer, songwriter, musician, writer, and collagist. Attracted to the acoustic guitar and folk music’s lyrical, humanistic, social, satirical, and mystical expression, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen were early inspiration for Vanita.

Vanita sang solo with her guitar for the first time at age 13, at the prestigious Sapru House Auditorium concert venue, located in the heart of New Delhi. She was an empanelled Artist on All India Radio (AIR) Delhi, for several years, and occasionally on the national television channel Doordarshan. Curiously, it was India’s iconic newsreader and features producer Melville de Mellow, formerly a Lieutenant in the 5/2 Punjab Regiment of the Indian Army before joining AIR, who encouraged Vanita to audition for the radio, where stalwart producer Rita Mukherjee at Yuva Vani [YV]—the unique youth service--was a pillar of support. Vanita’s advertising jingles have been aired on AIR’s Vividh Bharati Service as well as on Doordarshan at prime time, and she has had the rare opportunity to perform on Radio Tashkent.

Vanita’s music albums are inspired by influences that go back to an early childhood in the Poona Military Cantonment area (10, Prince of Wales Drive Road): exposure to The Artificial Limb Centre--a pioneer in the field of rehabilitation of the orthopedically handicapped; close bonds with the pre-eminently gallant and absolutely loyal, instinctively disciplined, heroic, affable and happy family members of the Gorkha infantry tradition; her own father’s significant work as a doctor in the British Indian Army during the Burma Campaign of the Second World War, and subsequently in the Indian Army Medical Corps, especially on High Altitude Pulmonary Edema [HAPE]. Vanita’s exposure to the plight of the battle casualties of the 1962 Sino-Indian War in the Delhi Cantonment’s Military Hospital, when she was a young girl, left an indelible impression on her consciousness.

Formerly a permanent Lecturer in English at Delhi University’s Hindu College, Vanita went on to study and research post-World War I and II countries and societies in Eurasia, Central Asia, and the Balkans. Of particular interest to her in this canvas of history and human destiny are historical collisions as well as the feelings, ideas and values with which people view their societies at various times; the issues, themes and paradoxes that continue to be at the heart of ongoing debate on the experience of  shared history and the survival  of mutually exclusive groups and their vested interests; the far-reaching consequences of a tenacious legacy of divided  tribal and spiritual loyalties and ethnic identity.

Vanita’s research has delved into the expression of social values through literature and song that is an important facet of society’s aspirations. She draws special attention to the context of oppressive variables, within which the human capacity to hold out and continue to live in the vital sense of preserving an identity, emerges as a significant constant in the lives of people.

Of current interest to her are the international initiatives intended to pave the way for peaceful conflict resolution by strengthening the intercultural dimension in pluralistic societies; and attempts to achieve a balance between regional, national, and global approaches in the realm of history by introducing new theories.  Importantly, as in folk music’s honest probing, questioning, powerful existential humanism, Vanita’s research underscores the individual-collective essence of being and the validity of an old question for all time: “… in the past as in the present do we really not confront the same phenomena and the same problems?” To be a human being. To exist.

Concert venues: The Asia ’72 Trade Expo, New Delhi; The HMV Nite, Simla; Mavlankar Auditorium, New Delhi; and India International Centre, New Delhi.

Header: From the painting "Sunset at Benaras" by Sir William Rothenstein.