‘Between the lines’ with Dahlia Fernandes

BENGALURU : Dahlia Fernandes may be the new kid on the block but has already made her mark as a singer and songwriter. The pursuit of her dream, which started at age seven, led her to win the Best Singer-Songwriter at the Toronto Independent Music Awards last year.She will be performing for the first time in Bengaluru, at blueFrog,  on Sunday at 9 pm.This pop singer-songwriter was born in Mumbai and attended a boarding school in Panchgani. Even though she lived in Dubai with her family and eventually migrated to Canada in 1998, she continued to sing throughout as a hobby but never thought of it as a career. 
With several opportunities such as singing the National Anthem for the UN dignitaries on International Peace Day coming, Dahlia decided to pursue music as a career 10 years ago. 

“I was still in school at the time and my professor approached me and said I would be the right fit,” she says. Understanding the challenges of the industry, which requires commitment in time and hard work, Dahlia worked as a marketer and a project manager for several years and sang covers part-time before entering the industry full-time two years back.As a child, she taught herself to play piano, and later to write songs. “Several years later, I won a songwriting contest and the prize was a music video done by an award-winning cinematographer. It was my chance to get into the studio and record songs I had written, which had been stashed away till then,” she says, adding that she wrote her first song when she was 10 years old. 

In 2008, Dahlia entered into a local singing competition that landed her in the Top Ten and led to an interview on Omni Television, CBC Radio, and the Toronto Sun.She finally launched her first EP ‘Shift’, which includes five tracks. Among these tracks, ‘Wash Away’ is a favourite song to the singer because it feels therapeutic. Dahlia had written it about a difficult time in her life, and she says that it takes a new meaning with every performance. While pop has been her main forté, Dahlia has also been into folk, reggae, and the classical styles. 

An advice for upcoming artists
“A lot of upcoming artists may not share their daily struggles and once they acquire some level of success, people assume they are “overnight sensations. This not only discount their tremendous journey to get where they have but also gives a fall sense of a short ladder to fame that is up for grabs! If you are willing to work relentlessly at your craft, to constantly rise above mediocrity and be resilient come what may, then the sweet gift of being able to make music for a living will be yours for the taking!”