Today we’d like to introduce you to Kiran and Nivi.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
When we were born, everything seemed normal but we weren’t normal. By the age of two, normal babies would start speaking and saying sounds but we didn’t speak a word.
Our parents decided to take us to a speech therapist. It didn’t help much. One week later, our parents found an Indian church and decided to go there every Sunday morning. That Sunday, the host of the center asked our mom, “Why can’t you make your kids sing?” Our mom didn’t know what to answer but just figured “let’s give it a try,” and taught us a short song. The next week when we went to church and the mic was given to us: we both sang the song we learnt in perfect pitch and rhythm. Our parents were shocked after hearing us. Our first sound ever was through singing. We started speaking fluently just months after this event.
It was in the year of 2021 when we started to post videos on TikTok. And we suddenly blew up and it was a huge surprise to both of us. Our most popular TikTok, “Hopelessly Devoted” has surpassed 18M views. We are just grateful for what has happened and grateful to our fans. We would be nowhere without them! Our latest single, ‘1 last bye’ got so much connection with our fans and we are so grateful that they love this song. We can’t wait to continue to release new music and hope that our music can make a difference in everyone’s lives!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It definitely isn’t a smooth road. There are times where we don’t have our best days mentally. When we were young, we have gone through some tough failures in some singing competitions that taught us to be strong enough to face them and I think this helped us when we started to post on social media. Not every post goes the same way and we have learnt that if we keep trying, we will get to the level that we want to attain.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We are singers/songwriters from San Diego, CA. One thing that really captivated people in our videos is our aspect of including our culture. We have learnt Carnatic Music (South Indian Classical Music) from the age of 5. We started to introduce this aspect of Swarams (Indian solfege – SRGMPDNS, Do re mi fa sol la ti do (Western Solfege) and mix it with pop songs. The first-ever song we added swarams was Overwhelmed by The Royal and the Serpent. We first posted this on Instagram reels and it went viral overnight. The next day we posted this on TikTok and it also went viral overnight. It was a shock for us because people who didn’t know what this music was commented saying “whatever you were doing there, that’s so cool. Keep doing that.” This really exemplifies the power of music and that it has no boundaries. We like to represent our identity in our music, including our original songs; “y’all got it wrong’ and “1 last bye”. “y’all got it wrong” was written during the pandemic, when boredom was at its peak for younger fans, and how even though this era is mostly seen in a negative light, we wanted to inspire people to still work on your dreams and goals, and that it’s possible to achieve new heights, even during these difficult times. The verse of this song is based on a South Indian Classical scale called “Rasikapriya”. This is a scale that has never been used in pop music and we hope to bring our cultural music theory into the pop scene. Some Indian classical instruments used are Tabla and Zkanjira. The release was supported on BBC Radio and Hollywood Life. “1 last bye” is a song about our cousin who passed away last year. We added swarams in the 2nd chorus in which our fans recognized and loved. It was recently featured on Rolling Stone India in their new music list. We have gotten so many messages and DM’s about this song and how this song has healed people and that’s what makes what we do meaningful.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
Our dad is our biggest supporter, mentor, friend and has helped us majorly in our career and life. Whenever we felt down, he would always motivate us to work and try harder. And one statement he would always say is, “no matter how much obstacles/problems come your way, you got to have grit and keep trying harder each time; it will pay off”. This really motivated us to keep working hard and trying and we do believe that hard work can never go waste.
Our mom has always been so supportive of us and the music industry is completely new to her. Normally, in the Indian community, you either have to be a doctor or an engineer but our parents let us do what we love and we’re so grateful for that. Without them, we definitely would NOT have come this far.
We thank our management team who have put in their hard work towards our career.
Contact Info:
- Email: mgmt@kiranandnivi.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiranandnivi/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kiranandnivi
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kiranandnivi
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZAmGuTduF2G64SAU6sEf2w
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/sai-sisters-kirannivi
Image Credits:
Photos by: Ryan West
