Anjali Asha -
Chingona
ALBUM
Released during recovery: 04-12-19
Artist Info:
Label: Independent / Self Released / Illusive Records
Genre: Pop
Hometown: So. San Francisco / Stockton / Castro Valley
Inflences: Amy Whinehouse, Kendrick Lamar, Harry Belafonte
Sounds Like: Amy Wheinhouse, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa
Press:
India West: Hold Me Down
Brown Girl Magazine: Brown Girl of the Month
Hometown: So. San Francisco, Stockton, Castro Valley
Inflences: Amy Whinehouse, Kendrick Lamar, Harry Belafonte
Sounds Like: Amy Wheinhouse, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa
Bio:
Castro Valley, CA – Just nine months after her face was crushed in a drunk driver involved car accident, singer/songwriter Anjali Asha fought back against incredible odds to deliver her debut album. Appropriately titled, “CHINGONA” in Spanish translates to “Bad Ass Woman who lives life on her own terms.” It was a nickname her mother gave her when growing up but Anjali embodied it as she fought through her recovery. To her surgeons, she became a miracle child because they had given her a year and a half of recovery and possibly never singing again.
The release culminated from a journey she had set on since her childhood but had come to an abrupt halt last year just as she was wrapping up her debut album. In a flash, it was all gone. Her deep rooted passion and resiliency gave her the courage to fight back through it all.
Chingona's Accident and Road to Recovery:
Castro Valley, CA – Just nine months after her face was crushed in a car accident involving a drunk driver, Anjali defied odds to deliver us her debut album. Appropriately titled, “CHINGONA” in Spanish translates to “Bad Ass Woman who lives life on her own terms.” It was a nickname her mother gave her when growing up but Anjali embodied it as she fought through her recovery. To her surgeons, she became a miracle child because they had given her a year and a half of recovery and possibly never singing again.
The release culminated from a journey she had set on since her childhood but had come to an abrupt halt last year just as she was wrapping up her debut album. In a flash ,it was all gone. Her deep rooted passion and resiliency gave her the courage to fight back through it all.
After the accident:
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, while on a liquid diet for the next three months. On a steady rotation of medications most of her days were incoherent and groggy, and it didn’t take long for the singer to grow frustrated with this cycle. “I felt like an unproductive zombie” said Anjali, explaining that she can barely remember most of her time in recovery.
On a whim and without consultation, she decided to stop taking her pain meds. Almost immediately the withdrawals began to kick in, along with the pain from the initial 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”. She was finally writing for the first time in months citing that this was the first time she had been able process what was happening.
With her resilient take on her 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 pulled them together for an almost entirely new project. With a considerable amount of hesitation from her loved ones and team, they got to work.
Before the accident:
Just days before the life altering accident, Anjali had been wrapping up her original debut album for release. A journey she had been preparing for since childhood came to an abrupt halt. Little did she know th
At the age of nine, for the first time, Anjali asked her music producer father to record a song in his studio, as she disclosed her intentions of becoming a singer. His immediate reaction was a simple, “NO” followed by a short chuckle of admiration for his daughter’s innocence to a dark industry. But to his surprise Anjali began to argue. Entertaining her persistence, he listened and was taken back. She quickly won him over by singing a song she had written herself. A few minutes later they were in the studio and Anjali’s natural presence in a vocal booth really blew him away. He said, “It was as if she had been doing this forever”.
For the next nine years Anjali patiently prepared and perfected her skills under her father’s tutelage as well as gaining experience working with his most trusted peers. It all came to a halt as the accident happened just a few days before she was set to release her original album “Silver Linings”. Through her miraculous recovery, the album took on a life of its own reinventing itself as “CHINGONA”.
Anjali’s Speaks:
When asked, Anjali said, “As a whole I want Chingona to make people feel good. It’s an upbeat album representing growth and lessons learned. I want listeners to be able to come with me through the introspection that brought every word and read into the deeper meaning behind the lyrics that not only sum up struggles but influence a new attitude on how to process and push through them into a new chapter. My goal was to capture ambition, positivity, triumph and resilience.”
Anjali’s team brought with them a genuine generational depth of music experiences and inspirations which converged into the album CHINGONA