HYDERABAD: Telugu have had a lot of success this year in the fields of music and film, and they are soaking up the praise of plaudits from all over the world. Following Rajamouli’s RRR’s Golden Globe and Oscar nominations, a Telugu boy from Andhra Pradesh, Sashank Navaladi, has been nominated for Best Global Music Album for his album Shuruaat for the 2023 Grammy awards.
Sashank Navaladi was raised in a household of classical music lovers and began learning the Sarod, Tabla, and Carnatic vocal at the age of six. Since then, he has performed in various countries, including the United States and Russia. He has travelled widely with the Berklee Indian Ensemble as a sarod player, keyboard player, and singer, as well as with Simon Shaheen, a renowned violin and oud musician.
A graduate of Berklee College of Music with a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Production and Design, Sashank has performed with A.R. Rahman live at the United Nations in New York and participated in the Boston tribute performance ‘A.R. Rahman Meets Berklee — Festival of Lights’. He has worked with several Grammy-winning vocalists and has composed numerous original songs. His song Arz-E-Niyaz which also features Vijay Prakash and the Berklee Indian Ensemble has created a sensation of sorts.
He shared the stage with Shankar Mahadevan last year at the Berklee Performance Centre in Boston to perform his song Shatabdi. He has also made several short films, television programmes, and documentaries in addition to writing songs, such as Atul Mongia’s (director of Netflix’s Mai) debut short film Awake and Time Machine, which aired on the Epic Channel.
Sashank is the recipient of the prestigious ‘Samaikhya Bharat Gaurav Satkar Puraskar’ award given to young musical prodigies by the Madras Telugu Academy as well as the ‘Kala Bhushan’ title by the Nehru Bal Samiti for excellence in Sarod. Sashank was given the CCRT scholarship by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
…
