Who is the first Indian singer to be nominated for Grammy Awards?

Answer 1

The GRAMMY Awards, originally called the Gramophone Awards, were established in 1958. Since then only three Indians have won it.

This is how the Indians performed at the Grammy Awards so far.

Way back in 1967 Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar became the first Indian to bag a Grammy for his performance in West Meets East with violinist Yehudi Menuhin in the Best Chamber Music Performance category

In 1972 Pandit Ravi Shankar got his second Grammy for The Concert for Bangladesh featuring him, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann. The Concert for Bangladesh was also named Album of the Year.

In 1992 Tabla maestro Zakir Hussain's Planet Drum, an album he co-created and produced with Mickey Hart, was awarded the first-ever Grammy for Best World Music Album.

In 1994 Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt won a Grammy the album A Meeting By The River with Ry Cooder and other western artists.

In 2002 Pandit Ravi Shankar got his third Grammy for his album Full Circle - Carnegie Hall 2000 in the Best World Music Album category.

In 2009 Zakir Hussain won his second Grammy in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album Global Drum Project along with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju and Giovanni Hidalgo.

Now in 2010 our own Rahman has made India proud by wining two Grammys at the same time.

Also in the past many other Indians were nominated for the Grammys but did not make it.

In 2005 Asha Bhosle was nominated to the Best Contemporary World Music category for her album You Have Stolen My Heart: Songs from R D Burman's Bollywood.

Later Asha was nominated again for Legacy, a private album which had eleven fixed compositions in association with and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Others who were nominated but missed are Louise Banks, Anoushka Shankar, Debashish Bhattacharya, Lakshmi Shankar and Bickram Ghosh.

So first nomination was not Asha Bhosle. What makes A R Rahman more special than others is that A R Rahman collaborated with Indians unlike his predecessor who did with western musicians.