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The dance collaboration, I Wonder, by Frank Walker and MOTi, featuring 27-year-old Shayaan Oshidar who has adopted the stage name Shai, has reached the number one spot on Mint Canada playlist. The song even earned a cover shot, "a first for me,” gushed the song writer cum songstress cum actor. Within a month of its release on December 10, 2021, the song had crossed 1,116,895 streams (the number of times this song has been played for a minimum of 30 seconds) on Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service provider.
Besides collaborating with Walker and MOTi she has penned lines for the likes of Nicky Romero, W&W, Ayokay, Jay Pryor, Freedo and others. For the songs she has written, Shai has had over 50 million streams on Spotify alone, notes her music profile. Her compositions feature at No. 20 on Dance Club Songs, a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States based on the most popular songs played by disc jockeys at nightclubs across the country. On the global Shazam charts (where a song is identified by creating a unique digital fingerprint to match what is being heard with one of the millions of songs in the Shazam database), she ranks No. 5. The budding artiste took pride in reporting that her songs "have got synced on multiple platforms including Netflix’s Lucifer and ITV’s Love Island UK & USA.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through the pandemic, her career as a songwriter has been "flourishing, touch wood,” said Shai who divides her time between the UK and Bombay, with two separate managers to handle her assignments in these regions. On an average she is booked four times a week. Usually the song writing schedule is completed in one session that could last between three to six hours on the Zoom platform. Occasionally it may require two sessions. Each session is attended by a producer, song writer, artiste and occasionally lyricist too. While she has established a comfortable working relationship with certain team members she also gets an opportunity "to constantly make new connections across the globe,” appreciated the gregarious Shai. "I get to live through their stories. I love it. I am constantly exposed to new languages…
"As a songwriter I have always written for others. I now want to be able to do the same for myself and tell my own stories through my own songs,” mentioned Shai. Known to have opened the 2016 Champions League football play-offs ceremony for the home team Manchester city as the lead singer of HICARI, a Liverpool based multicultural pop band, Shai had then stated in an interview, "It is wonderful to have people dance to your music, smile back at you and fight to get upfront to watch you perform, that too at a football game in Manchester. It’s a big deal.”
Keen to "infuse the cultures of both India and the UK” as well as to break onto the Hinglish scene, singing in both English and Hindi, Shai aspires to become a "crossover pop Indian/UK artiste and bridge the gap between the two countries. This is my chance to show how close we are even when things seem so different on the surface.”
She is currently focusing on her "Artist Project” under which she released her bilingual single Read Your Mind last September and All Dressed Up two months prior. Having studied music at the True School and the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, she continues to be inspired by artistes of different nationalities like Arijit Singh, Rosalia, Lauv. The vivacious singer is currently "open to accepting acting roles too.”
Influenced by many genres of music, Shai mentioned how her mother Simeen, an artist, who graduated in Indian classical music gave her an appreciation and understanding of Hindi lyrics while father Cyrus who once headed the creative and content department for popular television channels MTV and VH1, and later ran 101 India dealing in digital content would play African music, jazz, opera at home. Not only has Shai taken to music as a career, so has her younger sister Sahirah who works with Universal Music in the UK on the brand side. "I have grown up with music and creativity,” she acknowledged.
"I wrote my first poem at the age of seven” when studying at The J. B. Petit High School for Girls, mentioned Shai who is keen that through her songs she can vent her feelings on subjects close to her. "I want my music to be used in such a way that women can come together,” she stated.
"It is in England that I appreciated my roots even more,” said Shai. "Around five years ago when in University, I had an asho farohar tattooed on my right wrist. It is visible when I sing with the mike in my hand. I like it when people ask me what it is and I can talk about my Zoroastrian roots.” Although she is not overtly religious, she respects the religion’s fundamental teachings of good thoughts, words and deeds.
Disappointed with the differential treatment meted out to Parsi women who have married out of the community, Shai believes "the community needs to move forward.” Having sung for community events like the Dadar Parsi Colony’s spring festival, she is keen to attend the next World Zoroastrian Youth Congress where she would get an opportunity "to meet Parsis from around the world. There is some sense of comfort and familiarity in the presence of community members.”