Who is Saleka Shyamalan? How M Night Shyamalan's oldest daughter became a soulful sensation as classical pianist
Who doesn't know M Night Shyamalan? Popular for billion-dollar movies like the Oscar-nominated ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Unbreakable’, ‘Signs’ and ‘The Last Airbender’, the Indian-born filmmaker and actor got his claim to fame with twisted supernatural stories. Now, he is all set to show his magic in a psychological horror ‘Servant’ starring Lauren Ambrose, Toby Kebbell, Nell Tiger Free and Rupert Grint.
The series follows a Philadelphia couple who hire Leanne to be the nanny for their baby son, Jericho. Leanne's arrival brings about strange and frightening occurrences for the couple. Married to Bhavna Vaswani, Shyamalan is blessed with three daughters — Saleka, Shivani and Ishani. As the show gets set for its premiere on Apple TV+, here's a slice of his personal life and a deep dive into his musician daughter Saleka's career, who is slowly coming into the limelight.
Who is Saleka Shyamalan?
Born in 1996, Saleka Shyamalan is popular among R&B music lovers as Saleka. At 16, a passion to learn classical piano blossomed in her and she decided to pursue singing and become a classical pianist. The oldest of three daughters, she studied Literary Arts and Music at Brown University and was raised in an environment where creativity was supported.
“Our parents were and are pretty strict with us, but in the sense that they have high standards and truly believe we can be great, and they wouldn’t want us to settle for being less than what we are capable of,” Saleka said in an interview. “I understand how so much of that stems from the immigrant experience they and their parents had, and their constant awareness that nothing will just be handed to us, so we have to put in extra effort as kids to build foundational habits for a successful and fulfilling future.”
A scintillating music career
The singer is known for her opening acts for performers like Boyz II Men, Baby Rose and Summer Walker. Recently, she grabbed many eyeballs for her debut single ‘Clarity’, which has struck a chord for its neo-soulful keys.
Talking about her musical inspiration, she told Okay Player, “Nina Simone and Bob Marley are two musicians that I really look up to as people and also through their songwriting. They’re both amazing songwriters and have dealt with so much in their lives and persevered through all those hardships to continue to spread messages of strength and love.”
The beautiful bond with sister Ishana
Shedding light on how her sister directed her music video, she said, “It kind of was both of us being inspired by each other at the same time. She really resonated with the song “Clarity” and when she first heard the album she was like, 'This one should be the first single!' She felt the song and saw a lot of visuals to go with it. For me, it’s my first video and I was watching her do her shorts and learning in school and I was inspired by her visual artwork and I thought she could really kind of create this story that I wanted to tell. So it worked out really well for both of us that we both kind of resonated with each other’s work and we’re both in the beginning stage of our careers and both just starting out.”
She added, “It’s the first for both of us in that it’s the first time she shot a video and it’s the first time I was in a music video. It worked really well to have that sister bond translate to that. Even though it was super high stakes, it created this kind of familial comfort between us on the set because we know each other’s tastes and how we work and we were able to communicate very well. It was a very unique thing I wouldn’t have had if anyone else directed the music video.”
The family lives near Philadelphia at Ravenwood, a 125-acre estate, built around a 27,000-square-foot 1937 Georgian Revival house.