Radha Thomas

Radha Thomas
Radha Thomas
Background information
Birth name	Radha Thomas
Genres	Jazz, Blues, Indian classical music, Contemporary music
Occupation(s)	Singer, jazz musician, writer, radio personality, media personality, songwriter
Associated acts	Ryo Kawasaki, John Scofield, Michael Brecker, John Faddis, Alex Blake, Joe Farrell
Website	radhathomas.com

Radha Thomas is the Executive Vice-President at Explocity Private Limited, a media publishing house in India. She has held this position since 1999. She is an author^[1][2] and also a jazz vocalist^[3] and the band leader of the jazz-fusion band, UNK: the Radha Thomas Ensemble.^[4] She has one son, Stefan Persson, born 20 June 1986.

Musical career

Thomas studied classical Indian music with two Hindustani vocalists, Kumar Gandharva in New Delhi, and with Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar in the art of Dhrupad singing.^[5] She blends Indian influences into jazz singing.^[6][7]

Radha Thomas began her career as a vocalist^[8] in a rock and roll band called Human Bondage.^[9][10][11]

In 1976, she was selected to represent India at jazz vocalists festival held in Warsaw, Poland. She moved to New York, where she lived for 20 years. She performed at major clubs such as Sweet Basil Jazz Club and The Bottom Line. Some of the musicians she has performed with include John Scofield, Michael Brecker, John Faddis, Alex Blake, Ryo Kawasaki, Joe Farrell, Greg Alper and others.^[12]

Thomas, known as Radha Shottam, was the featured artist on two albums (Mirror of My Mind^[13] and Ring Toss^[14]) released by jazz guitar player Ryo Kawasaki (Gil Evans Band) and wrote the lyrics for several of the tracks.

She returned to India in 1993 and began performing with musicians such as Louis Banks,^[15] Sanjay Divecha, Gerard Machado,^[16][17] Keith Peters and others. She formed her own band in 2009.

She was host / Radio Jockey for the weekend night jazz show Indigo And Blues on Radio Indigo in Bangalore for two years.

Thomas will be performing with Mishko M'ba at the EUROPAFest jazz festival in Bucharest, Romania, in May 2014.^[18] Radha has Performed at the ICCR Delhi jazz International Festival,^[19][20] the iSai Music Festival,^[21] The Bangalore International Festival,^[22] the Bengaluru Habba,^[23] the Jazz Yatra,^[24] the Arcosanti Festival and others.

More recently, Radha's spoof on Bob Marley's (originally The Toyes) 'Smoke Two Joints' called 'Rendu Dosai' was written about and gained a lot of popularity online.^[25]

UNK: The Radha Thomas Ensemble

Jazz, bebop, hip-hop, blues, Indian classical music, rock and roll and other modern influences go to create the sound of the band which features Aman Mahajan on piano/keyboards.^[26] Mahajan is also co-producer of the band, Mishko M'ba on Bass, Matt Littlewood on Saxophone, Suresh Bascara on Drums and Ramjee Chandran on Guitar.^[27] Their first album,^[28] produced independently was released in September 2012.^[29][30] Called, "I Only Have Eyes For You"^[31] it features original material and re-arranged jazz standards.^[32] The album has been widely written about and reviewed.^[33][34][35]

Writing career

Besides writing the lyrics for all the original material she performs,^[36] she has written, mostly in a humorous vein for the Bangalore Monthly, a column called, 'Between the Sexes.' She has also recently released her first book – Men on my mind.^[37][38][39] The book was categorised by Rediff as one of the top 5 romance novels by first time authors^[40] and has been a part of a user review campaign by Blog Adda^[41] and has also been written about by several bloggers^{[42][43][44][45][46]} and newspapers.^[47] She also led the editorial team at Explocity. Her work has been published in The Hindu,^[48] Man's World, Explocity.com, Bangalore Mirror,^[49] Asian Age,^[50][51] The Bangalore Monthly and others.

She has also authored the bestselling book, The Cauliflower Diet, a unique book that talks about replacing rice and potato and other carbs with cauliflower. ^[52]

Literary mentions

• Savvy magazine July 1998
• Rasa: Music and Dance by Bimal Mukherjee, Sunil Kothari, Ananda Lal, Anamika Kala Sangam and Chidananda Das Gupta
• Gay in the Garden City – The Bangalore Monthly Update, September 1998
• Attendance by the Mohan Khokar Dance Foundation

References

External links

• Mirror of My Mind on Sound it Records