Bindhumalini is an Indian singer, composer, and graphic designer.
She has received National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer (2018) and Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer – Kannada (2019) for her songs in the movie Nathicharami. She has composed and recorded songs for films and albums mainly in Kannada, in addition to Tamil and Hindi.
Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy is a singer, composer and artist working across music, cinema, theatre, dance and interdisciplinary performance.
Trained in both Carnatic and Hindustani music, she has developed a practice that moves freely between classical traditions, folk music, mystic poetry and contemporary sound. Her work is deeply influenced by poets such as Kabir and by an ongoing curiosity about how music can connect people, places, histories and cultures.
Her independent work includes Suno Bhai, a collection of Kabir’s poetry created with Vedanth Bharadwaj; Threshold, a musical exploration of women’s voices and histories with M. D. Pallavi; and Re/Semblance: Saath-Saath, an India-China collaboration involving musicians and artists across India, China and Hong Kong.
In cinema, she has composed music for films including Aruvi, Harikatha Prasanga, Nathicharami and Aachar & Co., alongside documentary and independent film projects. Her work on Nathicharami earned her the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer and a Filmfare Award.
Her collaborations with choreographer Bijayini Satpathy have taken her music into the galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she created new soundscapes for site-specific works that brought together Odissi, poetry, voice, world music and the architecture of the museum.
Across these projects, Bindhumalini’s work is less concerned with preserving boundaries than exploring what happens when they become porous: when classical meets contemporary, poetry becomes music, sound responds to movement, and different cultures begin to listen to one another.
