Kiran Ahluwalia

Kiran Ahluwalia is a two-time Juno Award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter who infuses Indian music with African desert blues and Western styles, creating a sound that transcends cultural boundaries. Born in Patna in the state of Bihar, Northern India, to Punjabi parents, Ahluwalia spent the first four years of her life in New Zealand before returning to India for five years and then moving to Toronto at age nine. After completing her MBA at Dalhousie University with plans to work in financial services, she changed her mind and returned to India to study music, spending a decade in intense study with her guru Vithal Rao starting in the early 1990s. With roots in Sufi, Qawalli, Ghazal, and Punjabi folk traditions, she crafts contemporary songs that are equal parts reflective and groovy, embodying the essence of Indian music while embracing influences from Mali and Western blues, rock, R&B, and jazz. Ahluwalia has toured around the world, recorded eight albums, topped the North American and European World Music Charts, and won two Juno Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, and the UK's Songlines Award for Newcomer in 2009. In 2016, she was one of the recipients of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards. Married to guitarist and co-arranger Rez Abbasi, she currently lives in New York. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018 and surviving both that and the COVID pandemic, Ahluwalia is happy to be back releasing new music and performing in front of live audiences, continuing to push musical boundaries.

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