Life & Work with Sanaya Ardeshir

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sanaya Ardeshir.

Hi Sanaya, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up surrounded by music – instruments, 3 hand piano jams with my dad, loads of CDs that my parents had collected, and records from my Grandparents. It was a lot of jazz, blues, americana, folk, Bollywood, and pop. A bit of a cocktail, typical for a Parsi family in urban, postcolonial India in the 90s. My dad used to play bass in his band in college in Kharagpur while he was studying engineering. I grew up with a lot of stories of how they’d have to build their own speakers and carry around all the backline on local trains to go compete at college festivals. In those years, there was no real infrastructure for alternative music in India. Music mostly lived as an offshoot of the film industry (Bollywood). Live music was much less common, and in many ways, I grew up in a very different India where music-making slowly revealed itself to be something I could pursue. 

I grew up with a piano and took lessons when I was 6. I never ended up sight reading but developed a good ear. I recall running between the piano and a CD player in the living room, pausing Dave Brubeck or Oscar Peterson’s records and trying to figure out those pieces on the piano. 

Piano lessons lead to recitals, which eventually lead to playing keyboard with bands in college. We played a lot of funk, pop, rock, soul covers. There was a day we were rehearsing in Mumbai at a friend’s studio for a covers gig, and someone called me into the control room to lay down parts for an ad-jingle they were producing. That’s the first time I was exposed to the world of music production. It totally blew my mind. 

I wound up in a music production school in London for a year, and it exposed me to a world of incredible music, performance, and magic at the intersection of electronic and acoustic sounds – that became the substance of my creative pursuits for several following years. 

I started releasing and performing electronic music as Sandunes in 2012. I’ve played across the country and in several parts of the world at festivals and venues, listening circles, and in creative communities. In 2023, my partner and I moved to LA – both to pursue a new chapter in life and music and to level up. The creative and production quality here feels like a result of a saturated musical environment, and there is so much inspiration at every turn. Being here has sort of brought me back to the craft! 

I just released an album on Tru Thoughts called The Ground Beneath Her Feet – go listen to it! 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Navigating the music industry has been a tricky part of my journey. There’s immense pressure to make external a lot of the music-making processes and discovery, which by design sort of flourish in intimate spaces or in solitude. Social media and the need to be a consistent marketer of the work being a huge factor. I’m still finding my place, my balance, and trying not to let the projected desires or outcome colour the love of the process and the deep-rooted spiritual intention that is the essence of where the music writing process actually resides. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I release music and perform under the title Sandunes and have been doing so for 12 years. This has been my creative outlet for experiments in field recordings, electronic music, and alternative pop. I think I’m best known for being an early electronic musician from India and for my performances which integrate synthesis and live instruments. I’ve performed at several festivals and venues and am currently deeply inspired by the theme of collectivism. My work can’t be boxed into a specific style or genre; it is inspired by everything from classical music to dancefloor culture and soundscapes from wild spaces. I’m a certified Ableton Trainer and also the co-founder of Ears to the Ground – a project centered around deep listening, field recordings, and experiments in electronic music with a focus on the Western Ghats. I’m most proud of my collaborative work – I feel like the industry side of music is very swallowed up in a late-capitalist and hyper-individuated universe, and I find it most nourishing to platform collaborators and pull instrumentalists into my sound worlds. 

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I think there are some major shifts that will affect music and the way the industry functions. These have to do with music-technology and AI, but also the volatile landscape of social media virality, celebrity culture, and feedback loops with major labels. On the bright side, things are already quite bleak in terms of streaming platforms and de-valuation of music – both live as well as recorded, so I’m quite positive about the changes that are coming! 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sandunesmusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandunesmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sandunesmusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sandunesmusic?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sandunesmusic
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/sandunes
• Other: www.ears2theground.org

Image Credits
Sumaiya Sayed
Nachiket Parchure
Abhishek Shukla
Dreokt
Aditya Thakker