Rahman, and a new EP of original music, Vox has tapped into an international vein with nearly 300 million YouTube views and over 3.5 million subscribers on her Vidya Vox channel.Ī Twitter-age, multi-culti diva, Vox is an instinctive marketer and a tell-tale face in a globalized music landscape of streaming, pollinations and crossovers. With hybrids that mix the likes of Taylor Swift with Indian composer A.R. Vox is at once an ancient heart and a modern confection, slipping between love, abandon and defiance in videos that move in swift rhythms and lyrics that weave English, Malayalam and Tamil. “I thought if Coachella happened in Rajasthan or Burning Man happened in Rajasthan how would we all look?” “I love mixing Indian and Western,” said Vox, who for the video teamed up with Arjun, a Sri Lankan-born British singer with a large YouTube audience. Vox was as focused on her dance steps as she was her fashion, changing from cut-off shorts to Indian bubble pants and twirling amid women in folkloric dress, as if a bit of Bollywood had bloomed in the scrub-brush and sage. The dancers included a Vietnamese, two women from Delhi, two guys from California, and a hip-hop-jazz man from New York. Vox met her choreographer, Kavita Rao, an Indian American who lives in West Hollywood, on an earlier shoot. The YouTube star was shooting a new video and had packed an array of talents and nationalities to spend two days kicking up dust in Joshua Tree and Palmdale. Performed by Vidya Vox.Vidya Vox, a mash-up singer of Western electronic dance music and Indian ragas, loaded her crew into cars and ventured into the desert with sun visors from a 99-cent store. The lyrics are below if you'd like to sing along. Please check out the video of Vox performing "Diamonds." Featured in the video is British singer-songwriter Arjun Coomaraswamy. She also regularly performs as a vocalist with the Shankar Tucker Band. After majoring in psychology and biomedical sciences at George Washington University, she returned to her native India for two years to study music.ĭue to her popularity on YouTube, the 28-year-old vlogger, dancer and actress has earned a cross-cultural, international following. The "Diamonds" video has been viewed more than 26 million times.īorn Vidya Iyer in India in 1990, Vox grew up in Virginia, but always remained connected to her Indian roots. The term "mehndi," which is noted in the lyrics, above, refers to the art of painting elaborate patterns on the skin with henna.Ĭo-written by Vox and her boyfriend Shankar Tucker, "Diamonds" was published to her official YouTube channel, which currently boasts 5.8 million subscribers. She's wearing more than a dozen gold bangles, multiple rings, a lavish necklace, diamond nose chain and a "tikka" pendant on her forehead. Indian culture puts a high value on fine jewelry and gemstones, and the Chennai-born artist who immigrated with her family from India to the US at the age of eight, is impressively adorned in the opening scene of her video. Vox sings, "Diamonds and gold / Mehndi and bangles / So beautiful / She moves like an angel / Dance like she don't got a / Care in the world like / Eh le le le le, le le le lo." This high-energy track opens with the description of a bedazzled Indian dancer. Today, Youtube sensation Vidya Vox merges Indian classical music with Western pop, hip-hop and electronica in her 2017 release, "Diamonds." Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you fun songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics.
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