Bridging music and Hindi Poetry through the ‘Music and Poetry Project’

When we remember the “ golden era ” of Indian cinema, we remember it through great music – music that had soul, great melody and beautiful lyrics. Great songs are always created by a combination of great melody and great writing- a piece of poetry. However, nowadays it is difficult to hear great, meaningful poetry in popular music and film music barring a few exceptions, although there is large volume of great poetry, classic writings by great poets in our country. This gap was identified by Chinmayi Tripathi, an entrepreneur and singer – songwriter who started off a unique initiative - Music and Poetry Project in association with her partner and producer –composer - Joell Mukherjii.

A singer-songwriter and an MBA by profession, Chinmayi is a trained classical vocalist and has released 3 music albums so far with Times Music and Worldwide records. As an artist, Chinmayi is known for her own original songs that have meaningful lyrics and rich compositions. Chinmayi has received Vishnu Prabhakar Puruskar for her work in music and poetry and was one of the five nominees from India by British Youth Awards 2012. Her music also has been nominated for RadioCity Freedom Awards 2019. Chinmayi has also been the co founder of an music platform-Songdew(web and TV) that promotes independent music. After working for 5 years in the corporate world, Chinmayi decided to dedicate her entire time and energy to music and started off the Music and Poetry Project .

The objective of this initiative is to merge great Indian poetry with contemporary music and extend it’s reach to young audience. Over the last couple of years, this project has been known to reinvent classical Indian Poetry in the form of contemporary music for new audience. Started off through a crowd funding campaign on Wishberry(reference- https://www.wishberry.in/campaign/the-music-and-poetry-project) the project received support from large number of people online who believed that great poetry should be composed and presented as songs. After raising the required funds through crowd sourcing campaign, Chinmayi Tripathi composed and produced a bunch of songs in association with Joell Mukherjii- a versatile, multi talented artist who came on board as the music producer of the project.

The first set of songs comprised of "chhayavad" poetry by iconic poets such as Nirala, Mahadevi Verma, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Shivmangal Singh Suman, Ramdhari singh Dinkar, Dharamvir Bharti, Bhavani Prasad Mishra and poets of today such as Anamika and Shellee. The songs have been released by Times music. Here are some of the links to the music videos –

Jaag tujhko duur jaana- Mahadevi Verma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4f1tE-u4Kk

Dheeth chandni- Dharamvir Bharti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvtu0vl5aKE

Khushgappiyan- Anamika

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQaeaj34fW4

Anhad Baaje- Shellee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgajMnyM8C8

Chinmayi and Joell with their live band have been performing this music along with their live band at various music festivals, college festivals in India and UK- with the objective of popularizing great poetry and literature among the youngsters. Their live performances have been received well at the venues like - The Nehru Centre, Richmix, Oxford University and Asia House, India Habitat Centre, NDMC-Central park, Spoken Fest, Sahitya Aajtak- Delhi, Worli Festival, Kumbh Mela- Prayagraj, ICCR Mumbai,Levi's Lounge, Jaipur Lit Fest,Kala Ghoda Festival among others.

Here are some of the links to the live renditions of songs-

Bandho na naav is thaanv bandhu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0PDakHH9ck

Rashmirathi ( teesra adhyay)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsLpC2fYkFk

“The idea behind producing the music has always been to experiment and bring different kinds of sounds, genres to give it a rich and vibrant form of music but at the same time, keep the soul of the poetry intact” say Chinmayi and Joell.