Gallatin senior Aneesa Sheikh has balanced a variety of passions — from competitive figure skating to modeling — since she was a kid, but decided to pursue her love of music business at NYU. Now, she uses her growing online platform to share original music and advocate for greater South Asian representation in the industry. 

In an interview with WSN, Sheikh spoke about her journey in music and her hopes to expand her budding nonprofit organization down the line.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: How did your childhood interests set the stage for your career in music now?

Sheikh: With ice skating, I was exposed to various genres in music — from Santana to Beethoven — and that was what triggered my desire to pick up an instrument. While I was closer to graduation, I decided to take my friend’s suggestion and entered a pageant. The pageant felt very natural to me, and everything with it was fun and aligned with skills I had already developed. Through this, I was able to explore music further on a larger platform by singing for events. Most girls who are pageant title holders would just attend these events, and that’s fine, but I took it a step further and emailed the organizers to be able to play at these events. 

After spending her childhood in Kentucky, Sheikh said that she moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 2015 to take her skating to the next level and train at a world-class athletics facility. She went on to win a triple gold medalist distinction with the U.S. Figure Skating Association. Besides graduating high school in 2020, Sheikh also won Miss Michigan Teen USA, and in 2022, she became the longest-reigning Miss Michigan Teen USA titleholder in history — a milestone that helped kickstart her career in music after years of playing guitar.

Before coming to NYU, Sheikh first attended the University of Michigan for two years to stay closer to her father, who was hospitalized after suffering from a stroke. She transferred to NYU in 2023 and is gearing up to graduate from the university in May with a Gallatin concentration in music business, communications and economics.

WSN: How has your time at NYU influenced your music career?

Sheikh: Each class and professor here is just top-level when it comes to supporting the students. I chose Gallatin because a lot of the music industry is not just about talent or your skill set, it’s about how you can market yourself as a product and how you can promote your music as a product, so I needed business skills to do that. Within music business, my favorite classes would have to be with professor Jerry Del Colliano, who taught Stress-free Living & Working in the Music Industry, professor Beth Tallman for core Music Business classes and professor Melissa Newhart’s Strategic Music and Branding. Some other classes I loved were Philanthropy and Social Difference taught by Gallatin Dean Victoria Rosner and The Business of Nonprofit Management with Alyson Niemann — I took those two specifically for my nonprofit work down the line. I was actually able to copyright and trademark my nonprofit while at NYU, which I learnt a lot about in my music business class. 

With over 200,000 Instagram followers and over 6,000 monthly Spotify listeners, Sheikh has continued to gain recognition as she’s released more pop-fusion original songs in the last few years. A couple of her singles, including her most recent “NY 2 LAHORE” and “Tough Times,” have each garnered over 100,000 views on YouTube. “Tough Times,” which Sheikh released as a senior in high school, has been streamed over 45,000 times in more than 82 countries. 

Over the past year, Sheikh said she has focused more on connecting her culture to her music — she has been working on learning Urdu, with goals to integrate the language into her songs and once again perform internationally. In 2022, Sheikh was named Miss Grand Pakistan, paving the way for her to represent Pakistan in an international beauty pageant.

WSN: How do you think your cultural background shapes your approach toward your career? 

Sheikh: It’s been quite a journey just finding my own identity, and music has helped me do that, but also I’ve seen some hindrances and some stereotyping in the music industry. I’m American and South Asian, so my name and my accent raised questions. Spotify Pakistan has made me an EQUAL Ambassador, which is where Spotify highlights artists for their work promoting gender equality — which speaks to why I even sing at all. I want to share my experiences to uplift others, particularly women, because sometimes when words fail, music speaks. Being South Asian American, I definitely had some issues in the entertainment industry through perceptions of American industry executives, where they say, ‘If you keep going over to Pakistan or India or South Asia, you’re never gonna make it here in America.’ 

Looking ahead, Sheikh said that she wants to focus on growing her nonprofit organization, Music4M.I.R.A.C.L.E. — which she said stands for “music inspires, reaches and captures love equally.” 

Through the organization, Sheikh said she partners with technology and software companies to increase access to music rehabilitation therapy for hospitalized patients. The outlet has allowed her to share her story and ambitions to a larger audience, including at a United Nations General Assembly on how she believes nonprofits can improve mental health care and at a Yale University panel highlighting South Asian youth.  

WSN: What inspired you to start your nonprofit organization? 

Sheikh: In 2020, my dad had debilitating strokes, and I would go and bring normalcy back into his life by singing to him. I began taking my guitar to the nursing home and hospital. So it started as a very innocent, pure joy of seeing my dad smile. During COVID-19, I had made the decision to partner with places like C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and sing for them or get some musicians to do that. I was just doing this for fun, but as I’ve become more educated, taken specific courses at NYU and overall just grown up, I’ve understood what philanthropy is and what volunteer work is. I know the best philanthropic contribution is when it comes from your heart, so I thought this was simple — I loved singing and making people feel better.

Contact Lekhya Kantheti at [email protected].