Kiran Gandhi

Kiran Gandhi is a Drummer, Producer and Activist

Kiran aka Madame Gandhi is an award-winning artist and activist known for her uplifting, percussive electronic music and positive message about gender liberation and personal power. She began producing music in 2015 - her third studio album, Vibrations, was just released in December of 2022, following the release of her previous albums Voices (2016) and Visions (2019). In June of 2022, Gandhi completed a Masters in Music Science & Technology at Stanford University's CCRMA where she spent time in Antarctica sampling the sounds of glaciers melting to create empathy and awareness around climate change.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kiran at a coffee shop in downtown LA, right across the street from her old apartment. A conversationalist at heart, she was radiating warmth, positivity and an everlasting sense of gratitude for the world around her. I felt comfortable expressing myself in her presence - although I was the one asking questions, I got to tell stories in response to her own. I enjoyed Kiran’s assertive yet open-minded way of being.

I’m so glad we connected.

What are some issues that you, as an artist and activist, believe need to be addressed and dismantled within society? How are you trying to create solutions for those issues in your work? 

Today is Indigenous People’s Day, so it's actually the perfect day that you're asking me this question. It's been wonderful to see so much awareness from the big corporations representing Indigenous People’s Day, that they’re seeing it as their corporate social responsibility to post on their Instagram accounts a land acknowledgement or to donate funds to Indigenous women's communities. Even a year ago, I don't think that awareness existed. Due to social media, there's so much opportunity for people to respond, actually vote with their dollar and really bring awareness to the different companies who don't participate on the right side of history. I’ve actually seen an enormous shift in the last couple of years, in terms of how activism plays a strong role in shifting culture quite rapidly. 

One thing I feel very nuanced about is the concept of “cancel culture”. In certain scenarios, where there's a clear repeat offense with no desire to change or improve, I do think we get to choose whether we want to boycott someone - saying: I don't want to participate in what you're putting out, so I'm not consuming your product or I'm not following you on social media anymore. That makes sense. But I do think it's really important for our society to create space for empathy and a change in behavior, because if we don't have the awareness of something and we do something problematic, there should be room for forgiveness. Once the awareness is brought to attention, someone could say, ‘oh, man, I'm so sorry. I had no idea that my choices were negatively impacting this group or this person, or the planet. Now that I have this information, I'm going to make a different choice. I'm going to behave differently. I'm going to do something differently’. Because ultimately, that's the goal. The goal is not to cancel people left and right for their lack of awareness. The goal is to create education and long term change. I'm very interested in gently pushing for more nuanced healing dialogue around activist conversations.

 What are you doing right now?

‘Vibrations' is the album that I'm working on right now. We’re gearing up for the third of three, coming out in the fall of this year, 2022. The first album was my first opportunity to make music - it was very feminist forward. The second album was still very feminist forward and a bit more of queer, vibey love songs. The two things that motivate me most to make music are love and my activism, which at its core is also love - so either intimate, romantic love or love for social change or the planet. 

I came out of the pandemic having done a lot of personal healing work, so it was really nice for me to take my activism and my passion for gender liberation, specifically, and take a look at healing the planet and leading with emotional intelligence as a whole. One song on the new album is called Crystals & Congress (already released) and it's basically a wellness meditation anthem. It talks about leading from the self. One of the lines is ‘I just want to go and heal all my wounds so that my moodiness is rarity’, which takes responsibility for times when we may not be feeling so good or feeling in a mood. We have to be responsible for asking ourselves: ‘what is it that's upsetting me? What's making me sad?’ because now I'm being rude to other people, which is not the goal. The goal is for us to be self aware and say: maybe my needs aren't being met, maybe there's a wound from my childhood that continues to play out, maybe I hold a belief about the world, and that belief keeps manifesting unless I choose to change my beliefs. So 'Vibrations', the third in this trilogy, is really about how I can be my best self, my most aware self, so that I can be in service to others. This is the shift in activism. It's really starting from a ‘work on the self’ space, which I think is relevant right after the pandemic, so that we can contribute to the big picture.

How does focusing on the self then translate into community work? 

I love this question, because I feel like I'm in the ‘butterfly coming out of the cocoon’ phase. And I honestly just haven’t arrived at the community work yet. I know that the community I'm going to tap into and start building is going to nourish me more than anything. And I think that to show up as a good community member and attract the right community members - we have to know ourselves, we have to know what lights us up, we have to know where we're going. 

When I was a kid, I was bullied by other girls in my middle school, and going into high school. It was a really profound experience because I just ended up hanging out by myself, learning how to play drums, learning how to DJ, and just hanging out in New York City. I feel like the lack of a group actually allowed me to grow. But I also don't want to lead from a wounded place, where I’m never fully a part of any community because I always have one foot in one foot out. So I think part of my work is to ask: what are the different things that nourish me and how do I build community around that?

As a woman of color, when you think about safe spaces, what does that mean and look like to you?

When I went to Harvard Business School, one thing that I learned about was this concept of psychological safety. For the first time someone had applied a term to something I've always craved. Growing up, children were told to be quiet, or if you have too much of a divergent opinion you're told to conform. I went to a school that had uniforms, or even my curly hair -I remember my parents used to make me straighten it so that I would look more ‘presentable’ for job interviews. Things like that really psychologically hinder us, and so the concept of psychological safety is that I can speak what I'm truly feeling and know that it will be heard, received, considered, discussed, rather than triggering somebody else, upsetting somebody else, or getting me in trouble for speaking my truth. They were teaching this concept in a business school context, so if an employee comes to a manager and says: ‘I've been feeling really excluded’, ‘I've been feeling really tired’, or ‘I've been feeling really unmotivated’, instead of the manager firing them or responding with: ‘you're just not a good fit’, or ‘you have to try harder’, there's a sense of empathy. There's a sense of: ‘let's talk it out. Let's heal it and fix it together. How can I support you in achieving the desired outcome?’ We have to, of course, be mindful of: are we just complaining to complain? Or are we sharing a wound with the intention of achieving resolution? If that desire is there, we must be able to hold space for one another. Whether it's in my personal relationships, my siblings or even my parents, I’ve enjoyed modeling this concept of psychological safety because that's what I'm looking for when I'm not well.

How has your art been a source of healing for you in that sense? 

I think it's about noticing when I feel overly sensitive about something. And I say ‘overly’ because if somebody else isn’t trying to hurt my feelings, but my feelings are hurt, then there's clearly a disconnect that I want to understand. My music heals me because it soothes me - I think we all make art at frequencies that we sonically or artfully enjoy. I'm choosing notes and melodies and beats per minute that I find soothing. Even today, I was walking in downtown LA, singing back one of my own songs, and I thought: that's funny, do people sing back their own songs? And then I thought, but of course we do because if it's healing to me, that's why I'm making it in the first place, in hopes that it’ll heal somebody else. 

There's a vibrational healing and then the lyrics are like mantras. The song ‘Set Me Free’ just came out last week as part of the third album - when I look at the lyrics of that song, which are calling in certain aspects of a romantic partnership that I would love to have, I look at my partnership now I'm like, ‘yep, check, check, check’. So music is also healing in the sense that we're manifesting with our lyrics, our desires, our dreams, in hopes that that timestamp of emotion manifests in reality.

Are you spiritual or religious? If so, how does that play a role in your life?

My grandmother is Irish Catholic, married to an Indian man who’s Hindu, so my mom is half/half. And my father's side is Sikh Punjabi. So I grew up going to the Gurdwara, to the Catholic Church and celebrating Hindu festivals. I think because my siblings and I weren't forced to practice any one of those religions, it was the best case scenario. It led me to spirituality and I’m grateful for that. I was able to connect the dots from all these different organized religions and just make them my own, forming my own connection to the universe and developing my own sacred, daily practice. Just believing in a power greater than yourself. A sense of underlying hope, a sense of magic. As human beings, we're not meant to feel alone. So if we don't have community with other human beings, at the very least, may we have connection to Source.

Spiritual melodies really resonate with me. My mom's side of the family lives in Dubai, so every Christmas we go there. Although the prayer happens multiple times a day, I love getting up early and hearing that first call to prayer, even if I don't practice Islam. In all the Dubai Shopping Malls, the biggest irony of a place like Dubai, is they also have a prayer room. And it's my favorite place because interestingly, most people actually don't even use it. Someone who is looking to pray will go to the mosque and those going to shop in the mall, are not going there to pray. Theoretically, it's nondenominational. It just says ‘prayer room’ on the door, it doesn’t call to a specific religion. I’ve actually entered those spaces multiple times because when I’m with my family for Christmas, everyone is taking up space. So I need those 15 minutes. 

I share that as just a small example of sitting for meditation, sitting for gratitude. I sat in the Dubai Mall prayer room, and cried like a baby. It felt so good. I released so much because it was the end of 2021. I understand that feeling of crying while praying. There's something profound about being connected to the Divine, it's overwhelming. And I like the privacy of the Dubai Shopping Mall prayer room. I'm less interested in crying publicly, and maybe that’s because I'm the eldest sibling. I was always taught to heal my wounds privately, so that when I sit down for an interview with someone like you, I feel like these are things that I’ve really thought through, so that I can add value to the next person who's reading. With each generation, we get to create community and redefine, rebrand if you will, how we want to show up in these spaces in a way that has positive value for us, whether it's religion, culture, etc. And then evolve the parts that no longer serve the needs of the time.

Images — @madamegandhi

Do you feel like your art or music is made for a certain audience? 

I think about this all the time because theoretically, we want our music to be for everyone. I really love it when people who I wouldn't expect to love my music, do love it. I think it’s great that a lot of the men who find my music really enjoy it because it provides a nuanced perspective on the female experience. And interestingly, similarly, I love listening to London Grime, which is super masculine. If it’s too misogynist, I press next. I'm not trying to turn up to the sound of my own oppression. But, if I'm listening and there's a nuanced, masculine perspective about his girl, I actually really enjoy it. Men are in their feelings too and just as much as there is patriarchal oppression, wounded people have the ability to hurt others. 

I also love when kids love my music because it's pure and kids like what they like and don't even notice what they don't like. I love when older folks love my music because there's a sense of wholesome timelessness that they're picking up on, and they’re vibing with that. They’re just thinking: ‘this made me feel good. I like it’. And that, to me, is what’s going to last. My music is intended for folks who want to make the world a better place, whomever that may be.

How did you find your sound over the years?

I'm still developing it. I know it has to have big drums. I love laying down and programming beats electronically, and then laying real drums and real percussion on top. That’s how I make all my songs. I like it to be danceable, but I’ve definitely also made a lot of music that's super chill and vibey, like ‘hanging out’ music. Most of the music that I've made really exists as a live show. It’s made for a high energy setting. My next project I imagine to be mantra oriented - a long form album and a much gentler, easier listen. 

I think the music that I make right now super commands your attention. It doesn't hang out in the background. But it’s accessible. It’s authentic, honest and true. And it’s loving, caring, and at the end of the day, I’m just trying to provide good vibes. When I make my music, and my dear ones listen to it, I want them to think ‘oh, that’s so Kiran’. I want my voice to be recognized. My artist name feels empowering, it feels feminine and I love that. It evokes this strong, thoughtful, intelligent voice - which feels very Kiran to me.

Photography & Interview - Naomi Joshi