New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Critically lauded, Indian born world musician Falu (aka Falguni Shah) has won her first GRAMMY award in the Best Children's Album category for her latest album A Colorful World. Listen to the GRAMMY-winning album below, which celebrates diversity and unity through shared empathy, the impetus for Falu first making a children's album.
"A Colorful World was intended to be an album for children that is sheer fun, uplifting, and full of color," Falu first told Rolling Stone India. "We want children to see the world as colorful as it really is. We hoped to convey that people of different backgrounds and colors can all live together on this planet peacefully, lovingly, and happily, just like the crayons in a box or a rainbow. Each color conveys its own emotion, and collectively they create magic and beauty. I was also trying to have some fun with the kids. I love making kids' music."
Falu's win was preceded by a performance of Sly & the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" for the opening number of the GRAMMY® Premiere Ceremony last night alongside Madison Cunningham, Nnenna Freelon, Kalani Pe'a, John Popper, The Isaacs, and the all-star band, as well as her first GRAMMY nomination in 2018 for her album Falu's Bazaar. Falu's Bazaar explores Indian culture through song, celebrating the instruments, languages, sights, and humanity of a diverse world.
Soon after moving to the States from Bombay in 2000, the international singer recorded and performed alongside a wide array of artists including: A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), Yo-Yo Ma (in The Silk Road Project), Philip Glass, Ricky Martin, Wyclef Jean, her mentor Ustad Sultan Khan, Blues Traveler, and Bernie Worrell (Parliament Funkadelic). Her songs have been featured in multiple blockbuster films, including Angelina Jolie's directorial debut A Place in Time and her debut self-titled album was featured in Smithsonian's
National Museum of
Natural History's "Beyond Bollywood" exhibit as representative of the voice of Indian American trendsetting artists.
Additionally, Falu was named one of the 20 most influential global Indian women by the Economic Times of
India in 2015 and this year she won the Women Icons of
India award in Mumbai, India, has sung at the prestigious Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Dalai Lama, The White House for President Obama's first
State Dinner in honor of the Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, and at the Time 100 Gala where she performed a duet with Slumdog Millionaire composer A.R. Rahman in front of the one hundred of Time Magazine's most influential people in the world, including First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey. Listen to the new album here: