First for India, Sriya Lenka becomes K-Pop star
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New Delhi: An 18 year old from India has become India's first K-pop star.
Sriya Lenka from Odisha,was chosen long with Brazil's Gabriela Dalcin to be a part of the Korean pop band Blackswan
An anouncement was made on Instagram by Blackswan's label DR Music, "Sriya and Gabi were finally selected as members of blackswan after participating the global audition program for last 6 months".
The famous Korean band Blackswan made its debut in 2020. The group currently has six members including Sriya, and Gabi. Other members of the group are Youngheun, Fatou, Judy and Leia.
Born in 2003 in Rourkela, Sriya Lenka has had training in Hindustani classical as well as Odissi and other forms of contemporary dance, according to The News Insight. She was reported to have said to Odisha Bytes, "Since I have a deep voice, I faced difficulty in finding the right vocal trainer. My grandmother helped me find one"."She took me to a Hindustani classical music teacher, who taught me twice a week. But, for the western songs, I had to rely on online videos and self-learning," Sriya added.
Last year the Korean band had held auditions to find a new member after the group's oldest member Hyeme quit the band in November 2020. The Rourkela girl was selected last year among the finalists to train with Blackswan in Seoul, according to NDTV.
More than 4,000 applicants had responded to the audition call given out in May by the DR Music, out of which Sriya Lanka and Gabriela Dalcin were the finalists chosen to replace Hyeme.
Although Blackswan was only supposed to pick only one member as replacement, they decided to include both Ms Lenka and Ms Dalcin. "With their debut, we will be back with the new blackswan," DR Music posted on Instagram.
Ms Lenka and Ms Dalcin will be in Seoul for the next few months for practice. In the last 5 months, the two were put through an intense training process which included standard vocal, rap, and dance lessons to personal training, language, and musical instruments.