From Lofi To Reimagining Chet Baker, SCayos Is A Bonafide Homegrown Musical Polymath

The hardest part of being an artist is pushing yourself to get started. So many of us are stuck with the precursor 'aspiring.' As aspiring writers, aspiring musicians, and aspiring artists, we're chasing a level of skill or achievement that feels out of reach. The pressure we assign to ourselves to create something perfect then leads us to create nothing at all. 

Shaan Chhadva is a musician who has escaped this curse. Working under five aliases, Shaan is an explorer, using each of his projects to delve into a different genre. To understand him as a musician, we have to understand these five fragments of his creative mind, which culminate in an artist free from expectations, with a cumulative total of over 250 million all time streams worldwide. 

Shaan started his music career in 2018, dropping a now-unavailable EP under the moniker 'SCayos'. He quickly branched out in the years to come, explaining that “by 2020 I had [B9] for my piano compositions and ambient tunes, and as I started transitioning to more singing music on SCayos, I created Ornithology for my instrumental beats and Jazz compositions.” As Ornithology, Shaan was once India’s most-streamed lofi artist, and recently went viral with his EP ‘Chet Baker Reimagined', a series of psychedelic jazz remixes made in collaboration with Baker’s estate. 

His most recent project, Picture Frames, is an annual affair, or as he puts it, “a yearly art journal where I make an entire album in a single day, all in one take.” After starting this project at just 21 years old, Shaan hopes to capture a picture frame every year for the rest of his life, calling it “almost like a way to check in on myself each year.” 

And lastly, we have Shaan Chhadva, a project that takes after his real name. Though he has only released one song as Shaan Chhadva, a mellow indie pop track called 'same things twice,' Shaan intends to use this as an independent project, forever unsigned to a label, “where [he] can showcase the songs that mean a lot to [him].” 

Whether you’re feeling inspired or seething with jealousy, you have to admit his output is beyond impressive. But, the most impressive part is how organically each of Shaan’s projects emerged. “I think the main reason that I started each one was because I was just making a lot of music,” he said, expressing that his diverse taste, “from hiphop beats to jazz and classical music, to ambient soundscapes and film scores” inspired him to explore different genres and avenues to creating music. 

Shaan wasn’t always musical; growing up in Mumbai, his family didn’t raise him around music. “Even the car rides were pretty silent,” he stated. But at 11 years old, he discovered his passion online. In the pre-streaming era, when Youtube-MP3 converters reigned supreme, Shaan became his “school plug” for music, downloading his favourite songs and going through the efforts to “painstakingly fill out all the metadata, cover art, and download music by hand.” 

His musical aspirations started with the dream of becoming a DJ, but Shaan soon realised he wanted to make music of his own, so he started making beats at age 12. At 14, he left Mumbai to attend the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan to major in contemporary piano. This is where his taste in music blossomed, branching into jazz and classical music, and later lofi. It’s also where he achieved his “first bit of success”, with a few of his songs hitting 100,000 streams on Spotify and Apple Music.

When Covid hit and Shaan had to move back to India, this time to his grandfather’s farmhouse in Gujarat, he wasn’t deterred. Instead, he focused all his energy on making his first lo-fi album, Ethereal Nights, which has now garnered over 60 million streams. He later went on to study at the prestigious Berklee School of Music, before dropping out after just one year to pursue music full time. As folk music entered his listening repertoire, Shaan found himself evolving once more, and began incorporating vocals into his work. He made a home for all these different interests in his creative headspace, using them to make music freely instead of burdening himself with constriction to a single genre, style, or name. 

There’s no denying that Shaan is a very talented, hardworking musician — he couldn’t have reached these creative and career heights if he wasn’t. But what’s far more impressive about him, what I believe is the true secret ingredient to his success, is his lack of inhibition. When you’re making an album in a day, you don’t have time to bite your nails to the quick and overthink your every move. Of course, his art is made with immense intentionality, but he has been able to push through the self-doubt that plagues every artist.

He’s genuinely excited by what he’s making, telling me, “I feel really free creating in whatever genre I want nowadays and blending genres or pulling influences from different spaces always fuels my creativity.” Rather than feeling burdened by the millions of ears tuning into his work, or pressured to maintain his five projects, he explained, “it allows me to create really freely and selfishly, which I think leads to the best art.” 

When making music, Shaan has started centring his process over the final outcome, expressing that, “Lately, instead of creating with the intention of creating a complete song or idea, I’ve been creating with the intention of learning.” Far too many artists, across all mediums, lose themselves to numbers and an impossible pursuit of perfection. While Shaan’s streaming success and his resulting residual income absolve him of the monetary pressure many rising artists feel, his free, curious mindset seems to be the driving force behind his creative endeavours. Shaan possesses something far more lucrative than streaming numbers and paychecks: a healthy relationship with his art.

When I asked Shaan about his upcoming projects, he responded with an excited “Ahhh, I got so many!” As SCayos, he’s working on a record produced by Phil Ek, the iconic indie rock producer behind music by Fleet Foxes, Duster, Built to Spill, and more. A few weeks ago, Shaan released “Anyways,” with Roger Rosenberg, a saxophonist known for playing with Chet Baker, Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, amongst other legends. His next song, “Michigan,” made in collaboration with Juliana Chahayed and co-written by Andy Min and Aric Ogle, will be out later this month. 

He is also “working on so much more Ornithology music” in light of his live psychedelic jazz performance– “my first ever live show, by the way”– that went viral online. Shaan recently played a sold-out show in Mumbai, from which he will be releasing footage shortly. “A few days before the show,” he told me, “the band came together and wrote 6 new compositions that are [currently] being mixed and mastered at Abbey Road Studios.” Yes, that Abbey Road. 

The second ever Picture Frames album will drop later this year, and is something Shaan says he will remember “really fondly because I feel like I started coming out of shell a little bit and recorded a truly honest album in this.” And finally, Shaan has been doing production work for his close friends. He’s currently sitting on an unreleased hip-hop and sitar fusion album with Ravi Shankar’s disciple, Rishab Rikhiram Sharma, on top of what I’m sure is a mountain of other unreleased works. 

It may feel like Shaan Chhadva has more hours in the day than the rest of us. But really, he has just let his curiosity take the wheel. He’s intrigued by new genres, ready to try new things at a moment’s notice. It’s this free-spirited energy, this willingness to explore, that propels him forward.

Follow Shaan Chhadva here. 

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