It’s not every day you get to chat with a true musical visionary, but that’s exactly what happened on Wellness Wednesday when I welcomed Grammy-nominated artist Radhika Vekaria to The Debbie Nigro Show!
Radhika’s voice isn’t just beautiful—it’s healing. Her album Warriors of Light has earned her a well-deserved Grammy nomination in the Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album category, and let me tell you, this woman is redefining ancient music in the modern world.
Born in London with Indian and East African roots, Radhika grew up surrounded by music—literally from the womb! Her father was a connoisseur of Indian classical music, and she found her voice through song, even overcoming a lifelong speech impediment. Now, she helps others unlock their own voices through sound coaching.
Oh, and did I mention she’s collaborating with NASA on a planetarium show? That’s right—her cosmic vocals are about to be paired with stunning space imagery in a groundbreaking project with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.
A upcoming evening like never before is coming up at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center featuring Radhika Vekaria and NASA’s Nick Siegler. The event includes a live performance by Radhika, a screening of the short film I AM, and a discussion with the film’s creators.
Radhika’s philosophy? “I don’t make music for you to see me. I make it for you to see yourself.” Talk about deep!
If you need some soul-soothing sounds in your life, you must check her out. Listen to our full conversation now—trust me, you’ll feel inspired (and maybe even a little more zen). If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below .
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And now, back to The Debbie Nigro Show!
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Okay, I’m in the zone, got the sunshine in my pocket, I bring it every time I open the microphone here on the Debbie Nigro Show. Thanks guys for tuning in, lovely being with you. It’s my Wellness Wednesday edition of the show and happy Lunar New Year to the more
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than one billion people celebrating the arrival of the year of the snake, the wood snake this year to be precise, okay. And some people were born under the year of the snake that we know of Mahatma Gandhi, Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift. And as long as we’re talking about musical geniuses, which I love this transition, I want to introduce you to my next guest who is a musical genius in her own right.
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This woman’s voice is mind-blowing and mind-healing. Her name is Radhika Karia, and she’s been nominated for a Grammy Award for her album Warriors of Light in the category for Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album. So you see there’s more than Beyonce coming up at the Grammy’s, but you don’t hear about some of these categories and the real talent because you know household names every single day but she is absolutely a name in the music industry and particularly she’s doing something unique.
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She is redefining the perception of ancient music and she is doing it for a reason. She says, I don’t make music for you to see me. I make it for you to see yourself. Hello Radhika, welcome to my show.
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Hello Debbie, how are you?
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I’m wonderful. You are beautiful and so talented. It is my honor to get to know you and your beautiful music, Radhika. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You sound a lot calmer than me. Good, I got a laugh. Thank God.
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Yeah, I was hoping I’d warm up the connection here. I know we’re not face to face, so it’s very hard to see what you’re dealing with. Anyway, congratulations! Being nominated for a Grammy award is like major exciting.
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Yes, it really, really is. You know, you grow up looking at this and thinking, wow, could that ever happen? And now it’s here, you know, it’s a few days away. It’s a wonderful feeling.
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It’s really amazing, the reception to this kind of music. Well, you know, we’re in a new place in the world where I think people are much more receptive to all kinds of new ideas and things and are exposed to them through social media whereas before they might not be. Your background as I understand is from you’re Indian, you’re East African and British. You have a combination of those roots?
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Yes, my grandparents are from India, my parents are from East Africa and I was born in London. So culturally, yeah, I’m quite a bit of a mix, but my roots are really in the land of India.
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Beautiful.
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I was, I smiled when I read that you were influenced a lot by those strong women in your life who were also great free spirits, your mother, your grandmother, and that your father was a connoisseur of classical Indian music. So you were exposed to it at a very young age.
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Yes, I had music around me, you know, even when I was in the womb, my parents be playing music. So for me, music is like oxygen. It’s actually older than oxygen because I heard it before I came into this world, really. It’s always been around me. It’s like it was my first language, you would say, music.
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I was singing some of my perfect melodies before I could speak English.
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It was interesting.
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That’s really interesting. What I thought was really interesting is that you had a lifelong, you said, speech impediment, so music became your voice. Do you still have a speech impediment?
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You know, it does look that, you know, I wouldn’t have imagined being on a phone interview. If you’d have asked me a few years ago, you would do a phone interview and be comfortable enough to do that. I would probably have laughed. But yes, so it was always easier for me to sing than it was to speak. And so that was when my expression really came through with music.
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That’s great. I only smile with you because I too had a speech impediment. I used to lisp. So go figure I became a talk show girl. Okay. And I’m talking for a living. I mean, I didn’t see that one coming for sure. You know, I wanted to tell everybody how fabulous your your music is that other fabulous people have wanted to collaborate with you and you have in fact collaborated with famous people Eddie Palmieri and Iglesias and Shoshana Bean and and all these interesting names and that you are the voice of
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Chopra yoga Which is a new game based on Deepak Chopra’s laws of manifestation. I love this whole thing So may I just for a second play a little bit of your music so others can know how genius you are. Is that okay with you?
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Sure, absolutely.
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Okay, here’s a little something from her new album that’s up for Best New Age Ambient or chant album, Warriors of Light.
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I love you so I love you so I love you so
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Is healing, as you are trying to share your message with the world. Is that part of the love for it on your end?
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Well, you know, these ancient sounds, like my music is a lot of Sanskrit, which is a very vibrationally attuned language, and it basically, by default, it naturally heals the nervous system. And it’s had such a profound effect on me and my life, that I guess all I’m doing through my music is sharing that which has loved me. It’s my way of loving people. I’ve only come into this planet with the different ways of loving people and my way is bringing this ancient wisdom and these things that have helped people for millennia.
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I guess it’s just a beautiful place for it to be and it happens to be very healing as
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well. Very nice. So, I know you wanted to be a doctor, an oncologist when you were a young kid and then you had this obviously other path come up in your life and went on to music and other things. Do you play, where’s the music come from and what instruments do you play besides singing? Like, what goes on with you every day in your head?
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Like, who are you every day? Not just on the radio, like what’s going on with you?
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Oh, that’s a Pandora’s box asking me what’s in my head every day. That’s why the music
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I know, because we can’t see it.
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I don’t want to be in my head because that’s where all the problems are. The music pulls me down to my heart. But you know, I think if the whole world could get out of their head a little more, I think it would be a little bit sweeter. I play piano. I was trained in piano since I was six years old. And I also play the harmonium, which is an Indian instrument. And my father had a few of those in the house. And you know, a bit of percussion, I played violin for a few years when I was younger.
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You know, for me, music really is life. You kind of see the melody in everything. Everything has a sound. If you go through your day, you will notice that everything has a sound, even your breath has a sound. So for me music is all around me all the time and that’s just how I see it. As I said, it’s my first language. So really the communication and music has
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always been there.
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Wow, beautiful.
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I found it interesting and also fascinating and I wanted my audience to know you also do sound coaching for people who want to strengthen their voice and get more confidence, those who are in the leadership role. That is beautiful.
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Yes, as I said, it’s been profound for me to have these effects from these sounds and these practices and these techniques. Most people, you’d be really surprised, Debbie, most people you meet have either been told that their voice isn’t good or they can’t sing or they should be quiet in life. And that, you know, it affects everybody, not just leaders, but everybody in their normal day-to-day lives, you know, their level of confidence, their ability to articulate or
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just simply express themselves or see inside. So it’s really wonderful to work with people this way and the amount that moves in a relatively short time is quite profound
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really Wow, I always um well when I was in my dating phase If somebody had a wrong voice, I was like I can’t listen to that voice I’m so sorry I would never tell them but I had to find the right package guy with the right voice for my life You know isn’t that I wonder how many people have the same
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Yes, and problem like they have to the voice has to feel good every day, right? To your ear, to your ear.
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I think so. I mean, you said you had a list growing up. So you’re going to naturally be like more, you’re gonna need to be a little more refined when you’re listening to people because you had that obstacle growing up.
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I do believe that if you have an obstacle with your voice growing up, you actually become more sensitive to sound because you’re gonna spend a lot more time in silence. You’re going to be you’re going to the receptivity to sound is a little bit more intense So even for me, there’s particular sounds of voices that
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That I receive in a very intense way, so I completely understand what you’re saying that
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Yeah, I didn’t realize you you have me thinking back to my grammar school days when I used to go to speech therapy. I think I was in there for like five grades and it never dawned on me that like what did I sound like before I got out of there. I mean I have no idea. I want to move on because I want to make sure we cover this. I just want to talk about your planetarium show before instead of talking about me while I have you. Terry Turok who obviously is producing is my friend and he’s the one who tipped me off about you, you can thank him and I thank him uh… he was telling me that his mind-blowing show is about to launch shortly and I think it’s going to be in North Carolina the first one but hopefully up
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here and it’s apparently a planetarium show that’s being done in partnership with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab where somehow it’s your voice and their photos, tell me about it
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Yes, thank you and one thing I want to say, speech therapists are heroes, by the way, I just want to say they are true heroes because they help us so much. Yes, this, you know, is a beautiful collaboration with Terry, he’s just fantastic and when we met and he heard my voice we just kind of started to ideate this concept of this particular kind of music, you know, Sanskrit mantras and things like this, which are really the sounds are derived from the cosmos.
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They’re really kind of downloaded, you would say, from our existence. And that’s how the show came about, really, this idea of pairing space with voice.
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Awesome. Well, I’m a new fan, so I’m excited about that. And now I know about you, and my audience knows about you, in case they didn’t. Radhika Vekaria, up for a terrific Grammy award. I hope you get it. I hope you get it. I’m rooting for you.
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Best New Age, Ambient or Chant album. It’s just wonderful to have you. Your website I put up, but if anybody would like to go see, it’s yourname.com, radhikavakaria.com, is that correct?
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Yes, radhikavakaria.com. Okay, wonderful.
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So nice to meet you.
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Thank you so much. I so appreciate it. Lovely to speak to you, Debbie.
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Yeah, and you spoke terrific on this show, so you go knowing that, okay? You were perfect. Yeah, and you spoke terrific on this show, so you go knowing that, okay? You were perfect. Good luck to you. I’ll be following you.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
