Personal details
- Professions: Composer, Music Department, Actress
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Tamar-kali comes straight out of a musical lineage, with deep family ties to the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Seriously, you can just hear the roots in her work. She’s not about fitting into boxes, either. As a composer, she’s out here blending genres like it’s no big deal—her debut album "Black Bottom" basically tossed alt-rock’s rulebook out the window, mashing up metal, classical, and prog in a way that got critics buzzing. Her Psychochamber Ensemble? It’s this wild collision of Catholic church music from her childhood and the edgy, raw energy of post-punk. And when she gets onstage? Her voice is the kind that gets under your skin—powerful, honest, and impossible to ignore. 2017 was a game-changer for her—she broke into film scoring with Dee Rees' "Mudbound," which ended up scoring some Oscar nods. Critics couldn’t get enough; Variety called her score “expressive and varied,” and she snagged the World Soundtrack Academy’s Discovery of the Year Award. Indiewire even put that soundtrack in their top 25 of the century, which is kind of a big deal. Fast forward a bit—her haunting score for "Shirley" got a shoutout from The Guardian as their Contemporary Album of the Month. Most recently, she cooked up the opera short "We Hold These Truths," which opened LA Opera’s digital season in 2022. Honestly, Tamar-kali’s just getting started, tearing down walls and making the kind of music that sticks with you.
She went to Adelphi University and majored in English Education, which is kinda funny because you’d expect someone with her sharp wit to have studied something like theater or film, but nope. English Education. She probably spent a ton of time buried in classic novels, dodging term papers, and figuring out how to explain Shakespeare to a bunch of rowdy high schoolers. You can almost imagine her rolling her eyes at the idea of grading essays, but crushing it anyway. Adelphi’s not some tiny school either—it’s got a decent rep, so she was definitely getting the real deal, not just some fluff coursework. Honestly, with a background like that, it’s no wonder her dialogue has that quick, clever snap. A lot of writers come from English backgrounds, but she actually seems to have used what she learned, which isn’t always the case. Can’t help but respect the hustle.
Konidela Ram Charan