Shivani Rattan is a conductor, singer, music teacher & content creator at the start of an illustrious career. Having already worked with the Choir of Royal Holloway, the National Youth Choirs and the National Children’s Choir, she is paving an incredible path through the choral industry in the UK. Here, she talks about her musical upbringing, her experience with the Third Culture Collective and the difficulties of identifying as a British-Indian musician.

Hi! My name is Shivani Rattan and I am a British-Indian classical musician based in London. I am a choral conductor, singer, primary school music teacher and social media content creator. I’m so pleased to be writing this article as a member of the Third Culture Collective. I hope that you might find my background and career interesting and that it might spark a conversation about the future of music.

So, a bit about me and what I do: I trained as a choral conductor with Sing for Pleasure, an organisation which gave me lots of tools to act as a savvy networker, as well as amazing vocal leadership skills. I am currently a primary music teacher with Brent Music Service, who do amazing work across the borough and are so lovely and generous with their ideas. I’m also a Fellow with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, and an Assistant Conductor with the National Children’s Choir of Great Britain.

Unusually for an Indian family, my dad is a choral conductor who fought tooth and nail to further his own career against family prejudice. This means I grew up in choir rehearsals, sitting in the soprano section colouring, and occasionally following along the score. I loved the choral world so much, all I wanted to do was work in it. Other than the arts and languages, I had little interest in academic studies at school. I was lucky there were no expectations for me to follow a stereotypical Indian career and become a doctor or engineer. My family had grown up watching me on the stage and my dad had broken down so many cultural barriers that I didn’t have to.

Shivani is a Fellow with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain

Going to university wasn’t a daunting experience for me, other than the pressure of ‘getting the grades’. I made it to Royal Holloway, my dream university, and had an amazing time figuring out what I wanted to do and meeting lifelong friends whom I also collaborated with artistically. Singing in the Choir of Royal Holloway was the highlight of my university experience; not being an especially academically-minded person, I looked forward to the jam-packed schedule and all of the travelling on tours and recordings. My favourite tour was at the end of my third year in Paris, recording lesser-known music by Pierre Villette and Yves Castagnet in the beautiful Notre-Dame d’Auteuil. It was one of the most enriching musical experiences of my life so far.

I was one of a handful of South Asian people in my year studying music, which I did not take much notice of at the time - I saw people who were like-minded musically and I didn’t feel ‘othered’. Looking back, I was not completely sure of my identity nor did I particularly embrace my culture until after university. I link this to the social conditioning you experience much earlier in life, for example at school where you’d be embarrassed for looking, speaking or smelling a certain way. It’s no surprise that it has taken me so long to connect with being Indian.

Growing up, I received a privileged musical education because my father is a musician. Even then, there was not a musician I saw on the stage or in a concert venue who looked like me. I have even been considered the ‘token black’ and was actually labelled as such during my university years. At the time, I was too naïve to realise that this was tokenism.

When the Third Culture Collective approached me to participate in a collaboration day, I was excited and had no idea that my culture could be brought to the fore in my work and passion. I felt like I could belong in that space both professionally and also personally, something I was proud to mention on a National Youth Choir course where we were asked to discuss music we culturally identify with. I’ve always thought of my culture as being separate from my work, but more recently with the Third Culture Collective, I believe it to be the most enjoyable cross-over in my career so far.