{"id":8950,"date":"2011-07-05T18:04:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T18:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2011\/07\/05\/olympic-dreams-for-teen-singer-shakila\/"},"modified":"2011-07-05T18:04:48","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T18:04:48","slug":"olympic-dreams-for-teen-singer-shakila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/05\/olympic-dreams-for-teen-singer-shakila\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic Dreams for Teen Singer Shakila"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Talented 13-year-old Brit launches singing career<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/strong><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

TEENAGER Shakila Karim may look like she’s wasting no time targeting showbiz glory – but for this 13-year-old performing at the London Olympics next year is holding more importance than a number one single.<\/strong> <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Shakila, who was born in Whitechapel, east London, releases her debut single \u2019Just Let It Go\u2019 on 4 July\u00a0-and she’s hoping the song will help her achieve her Olympic dream. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The teenager, who is part of East London\u2019s Bangladeshi community, is proud of being British and equally proud of her family heritage.\u00a0<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

So far, there hasn\u2019t been a singer of Bangladeshi origin who\u2019s made a big impact in the charts – but Shakila is hoping to change that this year. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cAlong with my team, I\u2019ve been working extremely hard to prepare for this moment and I hope we can give people something they will enjoy listening to. Like every newcomer to the music scene, I hope this single will be the first of many recordings I\u2019ll make. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, as someone who has nearly all of their family and friends in East London, I\u2019d love to have the opportunity to show what\u2019s good about the people of this area to the world \u2013 and, maybe, get to sing on \u2018home turf\u2019 at the Olympic Games. It would be a dream come true,\u201d she added.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Despite showing an aptitude for music as a toddler, Shakila had to spend time with speech therapists in school and also locally to help her speak. Yet she was able to sing nursery rhymes perfectly while she was seeing her speech therapists. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

About that time, Shakila started playing her first musical instrument: the violin. She then learnt to play the recorder and her music teacher, Miss Barrett, thought highly of her musical talents \u2013 prompting Shakila\u2019s father, Karim Ullah, to encourage and help her to develop her musical skills.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The family moved out of the East End when Shakila was 11 years old and she started her secondary education at Hockerill Anglo-European College, a state boarding school in Bishop\u2019s Stortford. Shakila started taking singing lessons from the first term and, in her first year at the school, she passed her Rock School grade three exam. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

During the 2010 summer holidays, Shakila focused her attention on singing and uploaded her first videos on YouTube. But tragedy was to strike her family.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

That year, her father, Karim\u2019s, business failed and, consequently, Shakila had to be taken out of boarding school and had to stop taking singing lessons. The business failure also meant the family became homeless and had to live in a hostel for some time. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

While living in the hostel, Shakila\u2019s father became ill. He had to have major surgery and was hospitalised for several weeks. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

During this time, Shakila took her music even more seriously. She started performing at local venues, entered this year\u2019s Stortford Music Festival and even auditioned for \u2018Britain\u2019s Got Talent\u2019.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

On being told that she might be able to use her musical career to represent the Bangladeshi community from the East End, she has become even more determined to give her all to make this happen.<\/div>\n

\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talented 13-year-old Brit launches singing career TEENAGER Shakila Karim may look like she’s wasting no time targeting showbiz glory – but for this 13-year-old performing at the London Olympics next year is holding more importance than a number one single. Shakila, who was born in Whitechapel, east London, releases her debut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}