Sriya Lenka, 18, joins Korean band Blackswan to become first K-pop star from India

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The 18-year-old will be joining the South Korean girl band with Gabriela Dalcin (19), from Brazil, after global auditions that began in May 2021 due to the departure of Hyeme, the group’s oldest member.

Lenka will become the fifth member of the group. Shortlisted for training in Seoul in December 2021, she was put through rigorous training of vocal, rap and dance lessons along with language and musical instruments.

Trained in many dance styles, including the Odissi, freestyle, hip-hop and contemporary, Lenka enjoys listening to BTS, Stray Kids and The Boyz. She arguably decided to pursue K-pop after seeing a video of the hit Growl MV by Exo. While she has learnt Hindustani classical music, for western songs she reportedly relied on online videos.

 

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Philip Y Joon, director, DR Music Entertainment (Korea), reportedly stated that both Lenka and Dalcin showed them “positive energy” and added that “it was one of the reasons [we] decided not to separate them” despite the original plan being to just replace Hyeme.

Blackswan was started as Rania in 2011 and later called BP Rania, before finally getting its current name in October 2020. Its current line-up consists of its lead singer Go Young-heun (Youngheun), Belgium-based singer-rapper-model Fatou Samba (Fatou), Korean singer-dancer Kim Da-hye (Judy) and Brazilian-Japanese singer Larissa Ayumi Cartes Sakata (Leia).

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