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Ahana's music treads a confluence she finds bewildering; where East meets West, soma seeps through soul, and the mystical mingles in the material. Currently she is in the mixing phase of her first album — a collection of folk-inspired love letters to the body; the most insistent of her muses.

Photographer: Nuria Castro (@nuriacastro_photo)

Ethnicity: Indian-Portuguese
Location: Brighton, UK

Instagram: @ahana.music
Website: 



GET TO KNOW - completed January 2025
3 words to describe you:
Not very technical

Describe your sound:
Hmm...I feel too close to my sound to know how to describe it – it's like I can't get perspective because I'm inside of it. I also don't know if it feels like 'my' sound because what I make lives only in the context of so many other people. Whether they're family who made me, friends who've shaped me, people I collaborate with or artists who inspire me – they're all trickling into the songs, always, in real time.

English is so funny; there must be languages that don't feel so possessional. My sound. Can it be everyone's sound? Maybe that's silly. I sound like other people, I think. I sound like I'm trying to translate the untranslatable thing many of us spend lives stretching and contorting to touch. And I hope I sound like I'm having fun while I do it because I am, I really am.  

Describe the moment you knew that you wanted to pursue music:
Most of my life I wanted to be a doctor, but that was no longer an option after discovering my brain couldn't hack A-level science. Looking back, my imagination in the vocation department was stunted: I viewed medicine as the most direct way of being in service to others, and couldn't for my life conceive that the arts might be just as essential. Thankfully that deranged notion dissolved over the lockdowns, though I don't quite remember how. 

My application for university (for a non-music degree) was a whole essay on my simultaneous fear and love of music. I was offered a place but at the last minute I changed tac and went to drama school instead, during which time all I did was write music. I even made a song and song-analysis for my end-of-year project. The teachers would encourage us to read plays and go to the theatre and watch movies for our dramatical enrichment. I was working in a cinema and could have seen any film for free, but I think I saw two in the eight months that I worked there. I just wanted to write songs. So I left drama school and, soon after, with much fear and doubt in my heart, I contacted the person who would eventually become my dear friend and producer, Diogo. I suppose I am pursuing music in a way, but it kind of feels like music pursued me. It followed me around all my life, shadow-like – even when I couldn't sing – and eventually I relented. 

How does your heritage impact your art?
I guess I'm less aware of my heritage affecting the music than I am of how music-making can reveal my experience of heritage. Maybe those are the same thing, I'm undecided. In any case, India and Iberia inevitably worm their way into the art just by virtue of being in my body, my blood. But I don't speak Punjabi, or Hindi, or much Portuguese, and I didn't grow up steeped in their musical traditions. Song, therefore, offers a canvas on which to interpret and interface with liminality in all its guises.

In other words, song-writing invites me to contend with my relationship to heritage. It's a link that feels nebulous and difficult to grasp. But sometimes the threads are more obvious. On my album, for example, there's a sprinkling of sitar and tabla, a Sanskrit phrase I grew up saying everyday, reference to Vedic geometry, and some northern Portuguese birdsong and frog-speak! (Or perhaps the frogs weren't 'speaking' per se; perhaps they were doing their version of singing, I don't know!)

I've always held a deep desire to connect with my south Asian layers, and so it feels important to work with south Asian artists. Ours, like any, is a massive and violent history. And I run the risk of connecting with that land through abstraction alone, of reaching for understanding over feeling. I think direct relationship through collaboration may help remedy that. Are you a fellow mixed kid with hazy ties to the motherland? Nice! Let's tell each other our stories, make something together and hold one another in our haze. Or are you an artist from Punjab with thick, deep roots there? Cool! What does the land sound like to you, through you? Can I tell you what it sounds like to me? What blanks might we, and only we - in this singular interaction - fill in for each other? Or maybe I'll just cook for you, or take you to see some Fado. There are endless possible combinations, and such richness to be found in the sharing.

What moment are you most proud of in your music journey so far?
In 2018, I was diagnosed with a partial vocal paralysis (without clear cause or cure), eighteen months after I first started experiencing mysterious symptoms of distortion and restriction. My heart was a good deal broken because singing was my solace and I couldn't do it anymore – not the way I used to. But I decided to keep singing, even though I made a terrible sound and my confidence was in the gutter. I'm proud of 15-year-old Ahana for doing that. 

Your next music goal:
To get more relaxed inside some of the questions i have: Where do music and social movement/ecological healing meet? How can I give to that place? Should I be there always? Are there any 'shoulds' at all? Can something be too personal to benefit the collective and does it need to? Is that question redundant? What are my limits, my wishes, and how will I let them matter in the face of...well, everything?

If you could collaborate with anyone, who and why?
This is ridiculous but Benjamin Clementine. My friend seeded the idea in my head one day and I've not let go of it. 

Lyrics you live by:
'I love the real when I love my dreams' – technically a line from 'Epigram' by Fernando Pessoa, but Alexander Search turned the poem into a beautiful song by the same name. I think Salvador Sobral sings on it. 

Also a special mention for the line 'How long do you think we can sit here before we have to move?' from 'Pool' by Samia. 

3 songs you're listening to right now:
Collect Colour - Half Waif
Miragem - Himalion
A Day In The Life - The Beatles (Esperanza Spalding and Milton Nascimento's version)

Your community shout out:
Ganavya (@ganavya) has been restoring me these past months. 

Anything else you'd like to share:
My friend Tommy (@tommykhosla), a sitarist and fellow mixed heritage artist, recently released an LP with his band Jawari. It's called 'Road Rasa' and it's very wonderful. I recommend a listen, I recommend it with my whole chest.