A 58-year-old artist from Lucknow, Kamini Mishra, has been learning music through various folk art forms about the Awadh region like Chaiti, Sohar, Kajri, etc. At a young age, she began to learn to sing. She has been working hard towards achieving mastery in her craft and pursues it with tremendous passion. She considers Mohanlal Kunwar, Ravi Raj, Srishti Mathur, and Kewal Kumar Srivastava as her gurus, and speaks very highly of their teaching and achievements in the field of music. Most of her songs are thus made to be in a similar style. She believes her talent in music always came to her naturally, and her teachers helped her develop her incredible ability through their teachings over the years. She left singing in 1980 and continued to pursue her interest again in 2011 after being inspired by her gurus. After this, she delivered a brilliant performance in the Lucknow Mahotsav, where she received great appreciation from the crowd. She was then highly motivated to explore more events. Her singing ability clearly shows her ability to galvanize large crowds, and her humility reflects her true nature as a human being. She has six sisters with whom she has a musical group that calls themselves the Swargini group. They believe they have all seven notes of Indian classical music, residing in their family, and this proves that she has a musical lineage. She has also been a part of various singing TV shows such as X-factor and Rising star. Her attention towards developing folk music as an art form that the youth pursues is quite evident. She believes that her second innings as a musician is better than the first one and likes her life as it is right now. Along with a group formed by all the seven sisters, she is also a part of a musical duo with her sister Yamini, and they call themselves ‘Kamayani’. Being the accomplished musician that she is, she aims to influence folk music by contributing towards the preservation and promotion of the folk forms that seem to be vanishing.
- Awadh
- Uttar Pradesh