Bengaluru folk-fusion band Swarathma has produced songs in 12 tribal languages for an upcoming album.
A 90-minute showcase of these songs was done at a tribal conclave Samvaad in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, last week.
Fifty-four tribal artistes, men and women, have given the lyrics and voice while Swarathma has mentored them and added contemporary arrangements to their songs, informs bassist and manager of the five-member band Jishnu Dasgupta.
These artistes are not full-time musicians. They are engaged in cultivation, weaving and forest-based livelihoods, and have learnt songs and instruments from their families and communities, generationally and orally.
They hail from tribal and ethnolinguistic communities like Karbi, Rabha, Bodo and Jamatia from the north-east, Santhal, Oraon, Ho, Kondha, Koya, and Bhumij from the central and eastern states, Kota from the Nilgiri hills in the south, and Warli in the west.
This collaboration follows a week-long songwriting residency Swarathma conducted for them last October in Jamshedpur, on an invite by Tata Steel Foundation for their tribal musical collective ‘Rhythms of the Earth’, also the album name, Jishnu adds.
While they mostly sing in praise of nature and about their work, the workshop encouraged them to explore new subjects.
‘Bepakuna’ is about domestic violence — “The title means don’t beat me. It is sung by a woman from the Kondha tribe,” says lead vocalist Vasu Dixit. A man in his late 50s from the Kota tribe wrote a song about his grandson, called ‘Methishkutty’. In ‘Sisir Da’, a Ho song, a deer wishes to have wings like a bird so she can fly her calf to safety. In ‘Titli’, a man from the Kondha tribe, recounts a natural disaster — “The memory of monkeys hanging on to a tree as it washed away in floods is etched in his mind,” he shares. Two Warli singers have lent a quirky treatment to ‘Maileki’, a wedding song. “It’s a back-and-forth conversation between a daughter and mother. It goes like ‘I’ll buy a sari; you buy a sari’,” he explains.
The band has retained the music tradition of each tribe and also their instruments such as mandar and nagada (percussion),and sarja (string). They instead offered them techniques to become a recording artiste, such as when they can add a chorus or an interlude or when they can end a verse. “For a majority, it was their first time recording. Some did not like their recorded voice, some found it path-breaking,” Vasu recalls. The band hopes this exercise will help youngsters take pride in and continue their tribal music tradition.
The release date for the album is yet to be decided.