“Writing can flow out when I'm feeling something strongly, whether that's joy, pain, fear, desire or anything else. The challenge is actually later, in the second or third or 100th draft of the music, when it can be so easy to cover up the original sentiments by making the music more ornate or cloaked.”

British-American sitar player and musician, born 1981

Anoushka Shankar is a British-American sitar player and musician, with work as an occasional writer and actress. Born in 1981, she has built a career that spans classical and contemporary music, and both acoustic and electronic settings. She began releasing solo studio albums with Anoushka in 1998 and has since issued seven in all. She has also collaborated with a range of musicians, including Karsh Kale on Breathing Under Water in 2007 and her father, Ravi Shankar. Her career has brought her 14 Grammy Award nominations, and she was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live at the ceremony and to serve as a presenter there.