Writer Tanzila Ahmed is at Sundance, America’s premiere festival of indie flicks, held yearly on the snowbound streets of Park City, Utah. From her home base at the Taqwacore house (peopled with those who produced the film of the novel being shown there and the bands that soundtrack it), Ahmed will bring us a daily dose of indie celeb news. Learn more about her and her work here. And read her past blogs here.
I was sitting at the Filmmakers Lodge on Main St. at Sundance, and across from me was the pretty Gingger Shankar. I had been introduced to her by the team at Rukus Avenue label who insisted that we connect at Sundance. Gingger was a musician, not a filmmaker, and she has been involved with Sundance since 2007 when she got into Sundance Institutes Composers Lab. Our conversation was bubbly as we discussed her career, her family, and her love for the classics and rock. I had never met anyone with such a range of musical interest. Shes the worlds only 10 string violinist, a film composer, a Soprano rock singer, and oh yeah, she rocks out with Billy Corgan on tour too.
Gingger’s foray into music is part of a long history of family playing music. Both of her parents toured with George Harrison in 1974 when he was doing the whole Indian music thing. He found musicians in India, and brought them on tour with him in the US. This is how her parents met. When they came to the US, they decided to move here, and have been making music professionally in the burbs of Los Angeles ever since. At a young age Gingger had a fascination for classical music, and she started taking opera lessons. She also learned violin, dancing, and piano.
Her foray into musical composition began when she was invited to help score Passion of the Christ in 2004. When I asked her what parts she scored, and she said whenever it was a tragic part in the movie, it was her music that we were hearing. In retrospect, this did make sense considering that she is a violinist. After that, she went on to do songs for Born into the Brothel and Charlie Wilson’s War. She’s currently working on creating composition for the film by an Iranian filmmaker about a lesbian couple out of Iran.
I asked her what was one of the wildest experiences shes had in doing her work she started telling me the story of how she was on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins for their 20th Anniversary tour. She was helping Billy Corgan add an Eastern sound to the rocker music. They had canceled some dates because Billy had got sick and they rebooked the show for when she was already scheduled to sing in an opera at Carnegie Hall in NYC. Instead of cancelling one of the gigs, she double booked and did both shows. Straight after singing at the Carnegie, she jumped on a plane, changed into rocker gear and showed up on stage for a Smashing Pumpkin show in Chicago later that night. The concert was already in session, she literally just popped up on stage. (Check out her
I didn’t get to spend too much time with Gingger at Sundance, she had to leave early. She was returning to Los Angeles to film a music video off of an album that she is currently recording. Its a pop electronic type music, she said. Is there any kind of music this girl can’t do? Check her out on Myspace.
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