About Chardanai
In 1991 Chardanai began to pursue her musical interest with violin tuition, soon after a blistering experience she turned her energy to a more suitable feel of the piano. She also got a feel with a natural instrument, the Steel Pan, and it wasn’t long before Chardanai started to broaden her keen interests with recomposing hymns and producing short songs.
Born and raised in London by parents of Bajan, Lucian and Nigerian heritage, Chardanai’s ambitions developed with growth. Even whilst at primary school as confident as she was, Chardanai had the skills to teach her classmates songs to play together on various instruments, composing and arranging all the elements of the song with the bass and the melody. She would also perform in assembly and church festivals for the school.
Just before celebrating her 13th birthday, she was given a golden opportunity to record a song for the first time and made her first song called ‘Its Freaky’. As if that wasn’t enough, one of her group member’s managed to get them a first show at the well known Hackney Empire, which was also to be televised on Channel 4. By age 14, she was setting herself high standards and goals by enrolling herself on various music technology courses. At the end of course, she received her first certificate in music technology.
A few years past and she teamed up with another group formed with four girls, and decided to put her own flavour on a hymn by taking the lyrics home and re-arranging the melody and style. Chardanai, being a perfectionist, came up with a promising production and the performance was a success. Two months later she attended a gospel work shop run by LCGC, a popular UK gospel choir, and was given the opportunity to perform the hymn in the prestigious Hammersmith Town hall.
In 2001 Chardanai decided to enter her new group into a London competition for soloists and groups. She and the girls didn’t have a name at the time so they just called themselves ‘AZILE’ which was one of band member’s names’ spelt backwards and they won the West London heats and final.
Having a versatile ear across all music genres, Chardanai has always held a big passion for Soca, Calypso and Zouk music. Whilst developing her craft she had been writing raw materials and performing short rhythms, but she never really kept up with the Soca scene as she felt it catered towards the older generation as at the time she was only 15/16 years of age. From 2002 Chardanai began to work on Soca and slightly Zouk orientated beats, being so used to doing R&B, Gospel and Jazz she didn’t feel she had the skills to take on another music genre with a totally different vibe.
As her days at secondary school drew to an end, Chardanai was accepted to study at the Summer school of excellence at the Royal College of music. Her time there concluded an influential experience that introduced to her to an even wider variety of music genres, instrumentation and compositional styles. This included genres such as Gamalan, Far Eastern, South American and West African music. By the time Chardanai reached the end of her college years, she had successfully managed to gain a National Diploma in music technology Distinction, from that she went on to do gain a Higher National Diploma in Music Technology Production.
Chardanai has used her knowledge and experience to continued to perfect her craft and in 2008 she was appointed The Best UK Soca Artist at the Calabash awards. Her latest single, ‘Hush Ya Mouth’ which fuses Soca and Zouk, has had immenent support from Choice FM’s Martin Jay and is rotated across various radio stations internationally including the West Indies and the USA. The music video to ‘Hush Ya Mouth’ can be viewed on her myspace and youtube pages, which also profile an Unofficial Funky House, remix. Chardanai is the 1st soca artist to add Yoruba lyrics in a Soca production.
To this day Chardanai has always received positive feedback about her ideas and talent, which gave her the encouragement to pursue her musical ambitions. She believes that with support and a keen motive to learn support, which will result with acknowledgment and success. Whilst 2009’s agenda is scheduled with various projects throughout, Chardanai continues to fulfil a prosperous musical venture.
Chardanai Online