Nine months after having her face crushed in from a car accident involving a drunk driver, nineteen-year-old singer/songwriter Anjali Asha released her debut album titled, “CHINGONA” April 12th, 2019. “Chingona” loosely translates from spanish to “Bad Ass”, a nickname given to her by her mother growing up. Anjali embodied the name as she fought through her recovery quicker than anyone expected, becoming a miracle child to her surgeons, friends and family alike.

Injuries:

• Laforte II fracture
• Broken upper jaw
• Torn upper lip
• Shattered nose
• Lacerations to forehead
• Multiple stitches
• Severe nerve damage
• Severe concussion

• Multiple surgeries
• Permanent nerve damage
• Deviated septum
• Titanium plates along cheek bones
• Recurring migrains
• Difficulty breathing
• Back pain

Doctors told Anjali her recovery would take a year and a half at the least and that she may never sing again. The news was a crushing blow in itself but her family and friends decided to focus their attention solely on her rehabilitation.

With three surgeries down and at least one more remaining, Anjali began the more monotonous part of recovery routines; resting and tending to her wounds slowly. Still on a steady liquid diet and rotation of heavy narcotics Anjali would spend most of her days incoherent and groggy, it didn’t take long for the singer to grow frustrated with the cycle. “I felt like an unproductive zombie” said Anjali, explaining that she could barely remember most of her time in recovery.

On a whim and without consultation, Anjali decided to stop taking her pain meds. Withdrawals began to kick in immediately, along with the initial pain from the accident and surgeries. Armed with a trash can, water bottles and a wet washcloth, she locked herself in her room through the first night and wrote the emotional and heart breaking “These Things Happen”. For the next week she would continue to cope with sobriety by writing for the first time in months, citing that this was the first time she had been able to process what was happening. 

With her resilient take to the situation, Anjali quickly began to return to her old self creating art and music in any way she could. She started to contact her team and pull them together for an almost entirely new project. With a considerable amount of hesitation from her loved ones and her team, they got to work.

At the age of nine, Anjali had mentioned her musical intentions to her father for the first time, asking to record a song in his studio. His initial reaction was a simple “No.”, followed by a short chuckle of admiration for his daughter’s innocence to a dark industry. To his surprise Anjali began to argue. Entertaining her persistence her father listened and was quickly won over by a song she had written on her own and was blown away by her natural response to music and presence in a vocal booth.

She spent the next nine years preparing and perfecting her skills. All of which came to a halt in June 2018, just a few days before she was set to release her original album “Silver Linings”, which she’d ultimately decide to scratch and reinvent into “Chingona”.