Ganavya, moreover, didn’t stop there. “I was certain I didn’t want to be an artist because of what I’d seen in my family,” she explains.

“Some parts had all these awards and medals, but at various points had considered melting them down so that certain members of the family could eat. I was haunted by this image of how the world treats artists. When I returned to the States after my injury I studied psychology, then worked jobs no nineteen-year-old should, including as a counselor in a correctional institution teaching poetry to people on Death Row.” 

Before long, she found herself studying again after being recruited by Berklee College of Music to join their Contemporary Performance graduate program. This was followed by a graduate degree in Ethnomusicology at UCLA, and she recently wrapped up a doctorate in music at Harvard.

“That I have become a person who holds four graduate degrees is,” she smiles gently, “confusing.”

In fact, Ganavya didn’t so much return to writing and performing music as music returned to Ganavya. It brought with it, too, much to her bewilderment, an A-list of artists eager to work with her. like the sky i’ve been too quiet, her most recent album, features contributions from, among others, Floating Points, Tom Herbert, Carlos Niño and Leafcutter John, and was recorded with Shabaka Hutchings, who released it earlier this year on his label, Native Rebel. But even this might never have happened without an accident in the mountains outside Portland, Oregon, where she lived for a while during, and following the pandemic.

The dualling, “ethereal” (Rolling Stone) eight-and-a-half-minute track “Ami Pana So’dras” arrived with a slowly unfolding visual, filmed in the salt plains of India’s Rajasthan.

With her story in mind, you can see why this dynamic artist is not one to miss. See Ganavya live in San Francisco on September 22 at the Gray Area / Grand Theater.

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