Wani Ardy

Wani Ardy (born 25 October 1984) is a Malaysian independent singer-songwriter. She was born in Kuala Lumpur and raised in Subang Jaya. She describes the genres of her music as acoustic and lyrical poetry.

Background

Wani does not regard herself as having an artistic or musical family right from the start. Her father came from a Javenese-Johorean background while her mother's family is Javanese-Singaporean. Though her father was a multi-instrumentalist and her mother was an English Language teacher, their occupations changed soon as they had children. Wani is the first in her big family to pursue performing arts and literature.

Education and Career

Upon finishing her undergraduate studies in Performing Arts, Screen Writing and Screen Arts with first-class honors, Wani subsequently functioned as a scriptwriter at Red Communications. Working with TV host-writer-actress Rafidah Abdullah, Wani wrote scripts for a few episodes of Gol & Gincu The Series, Goda and Number Squad. She also did captioning for a few episodes of Sadiq & Co., 3R, Breeze Padang Pintar, as well as the film KAMI The Movie under Redfilms. She then became a junior lecturer in Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan University College, teaching Film Studies and Basic English. Later she moved on to Universiti Teknologi MARA, teaching Script Writing, Songwriting, Poetry and Fiction Writing. Currently residing in New South Wales, she is completing her postgraduate studies in Creative Writing before resuming to her full-time job as a lecturer.

Music

Wani began writing short stories at the age of 7; penning poems, proses and songs at the age of 16. She has been performing her original pieces since 2002, both individually and by group within Malaysia and Sydney.

While citing KT Tunstall, Priscilla Ahn, Angus and Julia Stone, Sara Bareilles and The Swell Season as her inspirations, Wani particularly singled out Yusuf Islam as her personal idol.

Her earliest musical companion was Shukor Fuad, whom she had a band with called Boneca. Their single Cela grew quite popular that it was aired by various local radio stations without their consent. Today her sessionists are Acap F of the indie pop band The Fridays, Ikmal Ibrahim and her percussionist-cellist husband, Syafiq Zakaria.

Her songs are briefly featured in the drama series Blogger Boy and the upcoming reality drama Gadis Semasa Sunsilk.

Having organized art events around Klang Valley, she now co-manages a couple of companies with her husband, Fynn Jamal and her husband Tri Soundhause: Aftertwelve Studio a live sound company and Gravy Baby! a Malaysian cuisine restaurant with live acoustic music.

Personal Life

Admitting that her guitar skills are "extremely basic" and writing is something that she "cannot escape from", Wani sets "being a lecturer" as her top priority over "being a singer-songwriter".