Sheela Raman

Writer / Singer / Songwriter

Sheela Raman hails from a first-generation Indian-American family, and grew up listening to the ornamented scales of Indian music alongside American jazz classics.  In both her writing and singing, she strives to find innovative ways to carry forward the rich, old world traditions she grew up with.   After graduating from Brown University, she wrote about art and culture for The Boston Globe, Art in America, and Forbes.  This month she has an essay featured in a new Mumbai-based literary magazine called The Indian Quarterly, which aspires to be the Indian equivalent to The Paris Review and Granta.  She is currently working on a series of short stories.

       While launching her writing career in New York, she sang on a whim for the jazz pianist Matt Ray, who decided to accompany her on a six-song demo of jazz standards.  This experience ignited Sheela’s longstanding passion for music, and she began to perform in New York and in Italy, where she spent one year.   She recently began vocal training in Carnatic music, the classical music tradition of India, and is now sharing her original interpretations of Indian songs with an NYC audience.