How many millionaire financial advisers also win Grammys? On Monday, the world discovered one – Chandrika Tandon. The 71-year-old won the Grammy for the Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album – her first win and second nomination.
With this, Tandon made a list alongside Peter Gabriel and Enya. Yanni, nominated twice in this category, never won.
Accepting the award with her collaborators on the album, Triveni, she said, “Music is love, music is light and music is laughter. And let’s all be surrounded by love, light and laughter.” This was no platitude about positivity. Because, for those who know her, these three words are her signature – she ends all her texts with: “Love, light, laughter.”
It is also the story of her life. “You do music not for the virtuosity of music, but for the higher purpose of what music can do,” Tandon told TOI from Los Angeles hours after the award. “I found myself through music.”
It took a lot for the oldest daughter in a conservative Chennai family to break convention and, instead of getting married, become a banker, then the first Indian-American woman to become a partner at McKinsey, the founder of her own financial advisory firm, a major philanthropist and, now, a Grammy winner.
