New Delhi, Dec 17 In addition to being a world-renowned musician, Anoushka Shankar is also an activist, producer, and film composer. Nikita Gill, a well-known British-Indian poet, playwright, writer, and illustrator, will be featured in Shankar's new song, "In Her Name", released soon on December 16, 2022, 10 years after the horrific event that served as its inspirationthe gang-rape of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi in 2012, which left her injured and dead 13 days later.
The song was debuted live for the first time on December 16, 2022, in Mumbai as part of Shankar's first multi-city tour of India since the pandemic. This release follows Shankar's nomination for Best Global Album at the Grammy Awards for "Between Us," a live album featuring Manu Delago, Jules Buckley, and the Metropole Orchestra that was released by LEITER earlier this year. For their joint song, "Udhero Na," from the Deluxe Edition of Arooj Aftab's album "Vulture Prince," Shankar and Aftab were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Global Performance. Now, Shankar has an astounding total of nine nominations during her career.
'In Her Name' is a newly recorded and substantially developed version of a track originally released in 2013 as 'In Jyoti's Name', included on Shankar's 'Traces Of You' album. The new title reflects its significantly expanded horizons, and acknowledges how little has changed in the decade since the atrocity that first provoked the song as well as headlines across the world. Six months afterwards, in July 2013, the UN estimated that one in three women would be beaten or raped in her lifetime. Almost 10 years on, that harrowing figure remains constant. 'In Her Name' now bears witness to the global ubiquity of violence and sexual violence against women, the policing of women's bodies, and the increasing erosion of women's rights in more insidious but no less dangerous manners throughout the world.
"One of the reasons I've come back to this song," Shankar says, "is because of this endless wave of horrifying story after horrifying story, and each time there's this wave of pain and grief: 'When is it going to stop? When is enough enough?' What happened to Jyoti should have been the last time anything like that ever happened. The song was about her, but now it's also about everyone else like her."
This, sadly, is a theme acutely close to Shankar's heart. In 2013, in the wake of Jyoti's tragic death, she recorded a message of support for 'One Billion Rising', a campaign whose very name highlights the number of women who will suffer sexual violence in their lifetime. The organisation's founder, V
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