Vocalist Chinmayi Tripathi Crowdfunds Music Project to Revive Hindi Poetry

Chinmayi Tripathi’s Music and Poetry Project aims to revive Hindi poetry through the medium of fusion/contemporary music. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

What do Susmit Sen, Sharatchandra Shrivastav, Baiju Dharmajan and Deepak Ram have in common? Apart from being veteran musicians in their own right, they’re also the collaborators on Delhi-based vocalist Chinmay Tripathi’s initiative, titled ‘Music and Poetry Project’, which aims to revive Hindi poetry through the medium of fusion/contemporary music.

Tripathi’s crowdfunded project, which has been in the works for the past eight months, focuses on creating “a unique album that takes some of the most precious poems of Hindi and turns them into soulful songs.” For the [tentatively 10 to 12-track album], the singer [also the vocalist of Delhi-based fusion band Spice Route] is curating poems by the likes of Shivmangal Singh ‘Suman’, Mahadevi Verma and Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’ from the Chhayavaad [neo-romantic] era of Hindi poetry. “The selection has been made on the basis of poems which are inherently musical and have a rhyme and meter. There was a lot of romanticism in them, a lot of aspiration, against all kinds of social issues prevalent at that time,” she explains. “You will find a lot of color varying between nature and romance and anger against the system and society.”

Although Tripathi has not starting recording yet, she has already teamed up with veteran musicians like Sen, Dharmajan and Shrivastav to set the poetry to what she describes as a “pop/fusion” sound. Says Tripathi, “I had shared the concept with them they really liked it and said, ”˜Something like this should be done because of a lot of music these days has junk lyrics”¦ A lot of contemporary music can be created around poetry which is old but relevant, so why not?’”

Click here for more details and to contribute to the ‘Music and Poetry Project’ campaign.