KCRW Presents Lockdown Listening: Madame Gandhi

Madame Gandhi is the stage alias of producer, drummer and activist Kiran Gandhi. While an undergraduate at Georgetown University, Gandhi sat in with Thievery Corporation as a drummer during their 2010 Bonnaroo set. After moving to L.A., she was working as a digital analyst at Interscope Records in 2012 when she uploaded a live drum arrangement of M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” recorded at their offices. On the strength of that performance, she joined M.I.A.’s touring lineup while earning her MBA from Harvard Business School. After matriculating, in an effort to destigmatize what she called “period shame,” Gandhi ran the London Marathon in the summer of 2015 while visibly bleeding. She subsequently moved back to L.A. and launched her solo career as Madame Gandhi in an effort to combine her dual loves of activism and music. As an activist, she has addressed the United Nations and presented a TED Talk. Her debut EP, Voices, was released in 2016, followed by Visions in 2019. Her new video, “Waiting for Me,” premieres on June 30.