Sriya Lenka, an 18-year-old from Odisha, has been making headlines as the first Indian K-pop idol. She is the first Indian to join a K-pop group, namely, DR Music’s BLACKSWAN. Although K-pop literally spells out Korean pop, there have been idols of many other nationalities, predominantly Thai, Chinese and Japanese over the years.
BLACKSWAN is a multinational K-pop band that debuted in 2020. Although the initial conception of the group happened in 2011, as Rania, there have been numerous changes since then.
In 2016,the group rebranded to BP Rania before debuting as BLACKSWAN in 2020. Other members of BLACKSWAN currently include rapper Fatou who is Belgium-Senegalese, Brazilian-Japanese singer Leia, and Korean members, Judy and Youngheun, who is also the leader of the group.
Sriya joins BLACKSWAN along with Gabi Dalcin from Brazil. The addition to the band comes after a tough competition involving 4,000 others. Initially, Sriya and Gabi had been competing against each other for a spot on the band, but DR Music’s official announcement last week stated that both of them have made the final cut. The two also participated in a number of challenges and activities as seen on DR Music’s official YouTube channel for the past year, including one testing their Korean language skills.
Previously, the Z-pop Dream Project, which had aimed to curate the world’s first “international K-pop groups”, had debuted India’s Priyanka Majumdar and Siddhant Arora as part of Z-Girls and Z-Boys respectively. Like them, Sriya too has undergone the so-called K-pop training system in South Korea. Sriya has additionally studied Indian traditional dance, is a trained classical vocalist and also, a yoga enthusiast.