DIL SE : Belting out fresh music

At the IPL 2023 closing ceremony, one thing that stood out was Jonita Gandhi’s musical performance alongside DIVINE (Vivian Wilson da Silva Fernandes) at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. It was the crowning glory of one who had ‘made it’ after having started off as a passionate artiste posting videos on YouTube. Raised in a musical household, Jonita had tried her hand at the Canadian Idol at the age of sixteen. Today, she is one of the top singers in the industry with her channel, jonita music, active since 2011. The channel has over 1.11 million subscribers whose total views have crossed 178.9 million. Jonita never fails to mesmerise the audience with her soul-stirring voice. With a few recordings in Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, and Malayalam, she has recorded songs mostly in Hindi and Tamil. ‘Arabic Kuthu’, ‘ Mental Manadhil’, ‘Chellama’, and ‘The breakup song’ are among her highly praised southern tracks. The craze for her down south has been no less, with her back-to-back hits. To name one, for example, her song with Badshah, starring the national crush of India Rashmika Mandhanna, Top Tucker, was one of the most trending songs that eventually made her a south sensation too. 2013 saw her make her singing debut on the Chennai Express. From her bedroom, she started posting covers to YouTube, occasionally collaborating with other local singers like Akash Gandhi. Notable renditions of well-known Hindi-film songs, such as ‘Pani Da Rang’, ‘Tujhko Jo Paaya’, ‘Tum Hi Ho’, ‘Suhaani Raat’, and ‘Yeh Honsla’, were featured in the videos, which immediately went viral. The Pioneer’s Tejal Sinha connects with the Canadian singer of Indian descent, who takes us through her growing years, her formative years, and more, for our weekly special segment of Dil Se.