Sheila Chandra

Sheila Chandra first came to prominence as a teenage actress on the British teen school soap "Grange Hill" playing the character Sudhamani Patel between 1979 and 1981.

At the same time as she left the series Steve Coe head of Indipop was looking for a vocalist for his Asian fusion band Monsoon. Allegedly he found an old demo tape of Chandra's in a box at Hansa and was attracted by her rich, fluid voice and South Indian heritage.

Monsoon's debut single, the much sampled "Ever So Lonely", recorded when Chandra was 16, reached #9 in the UK charts in April 1982, but subsequent singles made less impact and she left the group at the end of the year

She subsequently made 4 solo albums with Indipop, before retiring at the age of 20, coming back in 1991 for a 5th solo album "Roots and Wings" for Indipop where she began to expirement with voice tracks laid over drones, a style which set the tone for her work in the 90s

From there, Chandra's association with Real World Records began as she made 3 remarkable albums, "Weaving My Ancestors Voices" and "Speaking In Tongues" Parts 1 and II, fusing Arab, Andalucian, Celtic and Indian vocal styles with even older traditions such as Gregorian plainsong. She also performed live for 2 years in the 90s, for the first and so far only time in her career

In 1999 Real World released a retrospective of her work "Moonsung" and a retrospective of her Indipop work appeared in 2003