At two years old, Kiran (’17) and Nivi Saishankar (’17) weren’t speaking or making sounds, like children their age usually are. Concerned with their slow verbal development, their parents took them to a speech therapist, but even that wasn’t enough. Ultimately, the cure was music.

“Every Friday evening, we would go to this Indian church, and one time the host was telling my mom to teach us an Indian devotional hymn called Bhajan,” Kiran said. “My mom had no hope that we would be able to sing when we couldn’t even speak, but she went for it and she taught us a song. The next week, we sang it with ‘perfect pitch and rhythm,’ as my parents say. They were shocked that we could do that. Months later, we were able to speak normally. For us, music is a miracle; that’s how it all started.”

Throughout their childhood, the twins trained in Indian classical music, beginning at the age of 5. They frequently incorporated elements of this style into their singing.

In addition to training in Indian classical music as children, the sisters also learned opera singing techniques. 

“Opera helped bring the power in our voices and to reach those high notes,” Nivi said. “That made our voices really powerful.”

The twins were both a part of choir, specifically Bella Voce, while attending Westview. Nivi said that she relished in the choir experience, enjoying the various shows, pep rallies, and lunchtime performances, as well as the valuable skills choir taught her. 

“[My favorite thing about being in choir] was performing and learning [vocal] exercises,” Nivi said. “It’s fun to be part of something with a bunch of other people and vibe with the music. Also, [choir] definitely helped in gaining a lot of knowledge. It gave us a head start.”

Nivi said that for the first three years of high school, neither Nivi nor Kiran knew exactly what they wanted to study in university. In their senior years, the sisters found a new direction when Kiran took AP Psychology and Nivi took a business course. Kiran eventually decided to double major in music and psychology, and Nivi double majored in music and business economics. They both attended UCI and graduated two years ago. 

One day during her second year of college, while scrolling on the app store, Nivi stumbled across TikTok. At the time, it was not very popular, but she and her sister decided to post a cover of the song “If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes while sitting in their dorm room. Neither one of them expected what they would wake up to the following morning.

“The next day, [the video] got 1,000 likes, and we were really shocked because we’d never seen anything like that before,” Nivi said. “We posted every day and started gaining some followers.”

Looking for ways to create a singing style all their own, the sisters recalled their training from years past and began working Indian classical elements into their covers, which were popular and modern.

“There was a lot of experimenting with content,” Nivi said. “One day, we thought of adding our own Indian music into popular music. We took the song “Overwhelmed” by Royal & The Serpent because that was trending at that time and we added our own sargam, which is Indian solfège [the unique syllables assigned to each note of a scale]. That just blew up overnight.”

Now, the sisters still live in San Diego but travel to Los Angeles frequently for work. They are in music full-time and pass their days filming brand deals, writing original songs and covers on various social media platforms, and performing around the world.

“Every day, we have a set number of videos that we do, either for brands or for our own social media, to post on Instagram, Youtube Shorts, and TikTok,” Nivi said. “The past few months, we [have been] sitting down to write a lot of songs and tease them on TikTok to see which one does well. Then we publish and make a full song out of that.”

About a year after first downloading TikTok, the twins released their first original song called “One Last Bye,” which, Nivi said, was inspired by the personal experience of having lost their cousin due to a brain seizure, and they wanted to write a song about it.

Kiran and Nivi have now released about five original songs and one full length cover on streaming platforms, in addition to multiple full length covers released on Youtube. Their latest original song is called “8 billion people.” Nivi said that the song is a runaway success, currently boasting more than five million streams on Spotify. 

“We teased the [8 billion people] on TikTok and overnight, that went viral, which was really unexpected,” Nivi said. “We thought we should probably complete the song and publish it, so that’s what we did.”

This song, too, draws from the sisters’ hearts, and from each other. Nivi said that the song is closely related to the experience she and her sister had growing up, specifically one set of lyrics that says, “Doesn’t matter how many friends I have cuz truth is I’ll sit down at 12 a.m. and the only face I see is me.”

“It’s a song about feeling lonely,” Nivi said. “We’ve felt this many times in our life. I never went to Prom; I would rather sit at home all day and sing. In those instances, I definitely felt lonely and that’s what the song is about.”

Since their time at Westview, Kiran and Nivi both feel as though they have grown and learned through the progression of their career. Kiran said that if she could give current Westview students one piece of advice, it would be to follow their passions. By pursuing a career in music, both Kiran and Nivi are able to live out their dreams and share them with the world every day.

“People could think what you’re doing is weird or not cool,” Kiran said. “People have all their judgments, but you should just go for what your heart says and do what you want because that’s what’s going to pay off in the end. “Through music, I can just follow my heart.”