She was born in Vietnam in an Indian
noble family from Pondicherry. Her name Laffon is synonymous with descent
from Comte de Laffon,a French ambasssador sent to fend the English off
and to create French trading posts in India.
Mahoganya living in France since
she was a child, wished to come in convent, but she finally chose to perform
her own musics and words that she began to write when she was 14, always
with plilosophical and poetic turn tendancies.
Her American-sounding voice (mezzo
soprano) with a technique easily adaptable to varied styles such as jazz,
gospel, rythm'n blues, classical song holds several producers' interest:
Rolande Bismuth (Fugain), Léo Messir (Nicoletta), Francis O'Neil,
Georgio Moroder (Donna summer), Irène Cara (Flash Dance).
During several years she thus is
taken in the whirl of Parisian circuits . She sings Janis Joplin, Aretha
Franklin, Chaka Khan, Billie Holiday, Ella ftzgerald
and some Dance music with her dancers
in the main discotheques in Europe.
She plays and sings in the musical,
Moise with Sapho and Gregory, directed by Francis Morane, accompanied by
Magnum (ex Halliday).
She is selected for the Europe
1 tour 1 in first part of Plachaert, Manson, etc, .ballets, is on TV in
a prime time in a gospel choral with Nicoletta., goes on tour in several
countries: Germany, Greece, Spain, Reunion, Swiss, Tunisia ... where she
sings known as Sandra Säär.
She stays for 5 months at Trois
Maillets alongside La Velle and Dany Brillant and for 3 months at Pied
de la Butte.
She thus decides to create her
own rythm'n blues group with the Higelin and Cheb Khaled 's musicians and
appears in the main Parisian clubs: Baisé Salé, le Bouchon,
la Locomotive.
At the same time she works with
the sick for ten years .
Then she decides to leave the Parisian
whirl and to go and live in a southern town named Apt, where she wishes
to find the deep origins of her culture and her real identity.
The experience she won during all
these years built a voice, a personality. She finds her Indian inspirations
.
Mahoganya who lived in France and
got a mixed culture needs to blend cultures to express the peoples reunification
whatever they are, wherever they are from.
She thus composes music and texts
for her show:" Emanoume and light bird", above all trying to refine the
meeting between West and East as in music as in human meetings. Her musicians
are Western and Eastern, from the South and from the North.
The ensemble is made up of high
level classical musicians from North India, (sitar and tablas players),and
baroque musicians.
The ensemble recently performed
at the New Morning in Paris on 24 October and in world festivals. At the
same time spirituality still present in Mahognaya's life leads her to perform
in churches and cathedrals singing gospels and sacred songs.
One'll note her interpretation
in the Schubert Ave Maria . Then she produces her Gospel and sacred songs
CD in which she signs a few titles.
She was selected to sing in front
of the Holy Father at the Youth World Days on last Sunday 24 August at
the Longchamp hippodrome beside famous singers as: Liz Mac Comb, Dee Dee
Bridgewater, Andrea Boccelli, Jane Manson, the conductor Mr Chung. Mahoganya
is very touched by love, peace and emotion being in these Days. Whether
she sings in Indian or in English, her message always is one of ties, peace,
unity between every people and every religion, one of respect for woman,
childhood, earth, and being, because wisdom in truth is love.
On 10 October she will sing for
"Enfance et Partage" in Paris at the Garden zoologique .
You 'll soon see her too on screen
beside Claudia Cardinal, Marisa Berenson, Sonia Rykiel in a film by Bunny
Schpoliansky. This film will deal with childhood and its psychological
problems.
