Chaitanya Skye Riffle is a singer songwriter who is enjoying the best years of her life, living openly and freely as a transgendered woman. She plays multiple instruments including acoustic and electric guitar, ukulele, keyboard, autoharp and harmonium. Besides her original songs she enjoys covering a wide range of music spanning many decades of Americana, folk, blues, and pop.

Born in a small town in southwestern Ohio surrounded by corn fields, Chai grew up listening to her mother play the piano with her father singing along. She briefly studied piano and trumpet as a kid but in high school quickly gravitated towards the guitar. After graduating from high school she moved to Seattle to attend college at the University of Washington, and it was there she started to perform original folk songs in coffee houses and folk festivals throughout Washington State.

In the 1980’s Chaitanya moved from Seattle to the foothills of the cascades where she built a cabin using recycled materials which she affectionately called her tar paper shack! Enjoying nature and the simple life! With a musical friend, Rhona Baron, she formed a duo they called Rhona and the Riff that sang and performed on both sides of the Cascades for several years. When she moved back to Seattle her son Chris Riffle, also a singer songwriter, helped record her first album titled Patience of a Seed. While in Seattle she started studying Yoga and meditation and eventually moved into a yoga community outside of Seattle. Here she started another chapter of her music career learning to play Sanskrit chants and mantras on guitar and harmonium while playing in community sing-a-longs called Kirtans.

After this period of communal living she took an even bigger jump to the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. Along the way she got to tour the US from the west coast to the east coast, playing music in places like, Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, Phoenix, Rapid City, Chicago and finally New York City! Chaitanya is currently living in Rapid City, SD, playing music, writing songs, enjoying the sunshine, hiking and biking and working on recording a new album.