More desi firsts at Grammys, Sundance 

India-origin artists continued to make their presence felt this award season with multiple nominations at the Grammys, a first-time win for Chandrika Tandon, and a win for Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), a queer Marathi drama at the Sundance Film Festival.  

At the Grammys this year, India-American businesswoman and musician Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon’s album, Triveni, won the award for Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album, edging out three-time desi winner Ricky Kej, multiple-times nominated Anoushka Shankar, and British Indian musician Radhika Vekaria. This was Tandon’s second Grammy nomination after 2009, when she was nominated for her album Soul Call. 

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Triveni is a collaboration between Tandon, Wouter Kellerman and Eru Matsumoto. 

Tandon is also the older sister of former Pepsico CEO, Indra Nooyi.

Several South Asian-origin musicians – individually and in collaboration–  were nominated  for the Grammys this year, including Noshir Mody, Varijashree Venugopal, and Pakistani-American musician Arooj Aftaab.

However, the omission of four-time Grammy-winning tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain from the In Memoriam section of the ceremony left his fans fuming worldwide. The list of lost luminaries was later updated on the website to include Hussain, sarod maestro Aashish Khan, and singers Pankaj Udhas and Sharda Sinha. 

The awards were presented on February 2 in Los Angeles.

At the Sundance Film Festival, Indian films kept up their recent winning streak with Marathi queer drama Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears)  by Rohan Parashuram Kanawade winning the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. A co-production between India, the UK and Canada, Sabar Bonda was the only Indian title at the festival this year.

Award-winning Indian American director-editor-producer Geeta Gambhir won the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary for her film The Perfect Neighbor. The film is a true crime nonfiction that uses mostly police bodycam footage to tell the story of how a petty fight turned tragic.

Since 2021, Indian co-productions and documentaries have won several awards at Sundance. Girls Will Be Girls, Nocturnes, Writing with Fire, All That Breathes, and Against The Tide have all won big at the festival. 

The Sundance awards were announced on January 31 in Utah.