LADY SKAVYA
Growing up in a household of art lovers, Lady Skavya took singing, painting and dancing as her most serious hobby what became her full-time profession. What started as journaling and writing a diary, became poetry, then she found the rhythm in the poetry and eventually evolved into songs and art and beyond.
As a multifaceted artist, Sravya had multiple influences in arts and literature. Youngest and first influence was Leonardo Da Vinci- a polymath, a scientist, a genius artist, and so was she encouraged to persue all of it and all at once.
It's by far the hardest to believe this woman is entirely self-learnt, self taught and self made. Be it painting, singing or songwriting..
She grew up all her life in Hyderabad and says her parents always knew she's choose a creative field.
Her parents introduced her to classics by Elton John, Elvis Presley, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston when cassette tapes and DVDs were a serious thing. But Sravya's first musican purge was sufi and ghazal style. Her ground work was listening to mastros like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Rekha Bhardwaj, Nooran sisters. As a teenager she was competitive, kept trying talent shows and her father was her coach and mentor through out her childhood and early teens., but never had thoughts about persuing music seriously (rather than a hobby) until her late teens.
She loved to rap and was heavily influenced by Ms Lauryn hill, Missy Elliott, Rapsody, Beyonce and other pop icons but was a shy talker and a loud singer. Learnt to sing by singing Amy winehouse, Christina Aguilera, britney spears, Adele, Avril Lavigne and the other 2000 ladies.
Only by her late teens she was influenced by diverse cultures of music. According to Sravya, the age of 17 to 21 were the most crucial years of exploration and surrendering to music. It in those years she discovered hard rock and psychedelic rock, was pretty influnced by psychedelics and was even called "Lady Zeppelin" for the initial tunes she wrote with her bands.
Initially she'd do very small scale cover gigs in bars, clubs, launges, and 5stars while struggling to cope with college (bachelors in geology) . By the age of 19, the beginning of dreaming big, she struggled with sexist and male centric live music community. Claims to have started one project after the other such as "Deity", "Ze Walkman" , "ADAVI" with her local musician friends but nothing worked out until she decided to go solo.
Her initial songwriting was mostly only in telugu and released her first single "dammu" in 2017 which was much disputed as the band broke up and the contract with then's label (monkstar) terminated, hence the tune is been remade and released in July 2021.
By her earliest 20s she liked to travel for art and music and developed a fair reputation of an artist. Was discovered by Vivek Sagar, and got her tollywood (telugu) debut with a tune "idhem life ra" that streamed #2 on radio (2018).
It was her vexation with Hyderabad's live music and independent scene that led her to go to Goa and discover her new love for reggae and dub culture. It was her first time meeting 10000 lions sound system, witnessing sunsplash festival (2020) and was invited to perform on the soundsystem and claims to have changed her life.
Performing in sunsplash exposed her to worldwide producers who were intrested in sampling her vocals and how her life was flowing kept her ready with many tunes to share. The lady from "lady Zeppelin" stayed and the Sravya became 'SKAvya' after months of skanking.
She became the first reggae singjay to record and release international records and vinyls by 2021. Her tune "Lost and found" was a part of Radikal Guru's album 'Beyond the Borders' was a mad success before she released "new revolution" (Universal Echo- Spain) , "sound system" (Praise Jah Sound- Russia) and "Bright side" (Arrival sound system- Nepal/UK).
In the same year she also released her first English single "last night" which was an absolute fresh sound from her.
Off late with all the experience and experimentation, she finally decided to call her music 'jazz-hop' which is a mix of jazz and hip-hop and 'soul-reggae' which is a mix of soul and reggae and oh yessss, she finally does rap a little bit.