Shreya Jain Brings Classical Vocal Training to New EP ‘Bawari’

Mumbai-based pop artist Shreya Jain offers the first glimpse of her debut EP Bawari with the song “Kaahe,” where producer Bluk’s house music approach goes over Jain’s classical vocal melodies about a magnetic kind of attraction, with lyrics by songwriter Juno.

Jain explains that her four-track EP Bawari goes in all directions, from bringing in rapper Gravity to Tamil vocals by artist Sanah Moidutty, all the while retaining her classical vocal roots. Jain says, “I think I just wanted to do crazy things in the EP, that’s why I’ve called it Bawari.”

Like we hear in “Kaahe,” Jain has specifically picked melodies inspired by Hindustani classical music for Bawari EP. She grew up hearing traditional music and received training from her father, vocalist Surmani Shyam Jain. “My father’s riyaaz [practice] used to be the alarm for me to wake up,” she says with a laugh.

Although it came naturally to her, she was “very scared” to finally share the EP with her father, although he liked it. Jain says, “I’m always very scared to present a song to him. I was surprised [at his reaction]. He usually will find at least 10 mistakes in each song of mine. I was surprised that he was really impressed. He was happy, and he was very proud. He was asking me, ‘Kisne compose kiya hai? (Who composed this?) I was like, ‘Papa, I did.’”

In a way, the songs off Bawari are Jain’s way of taking ahead her father’s 45-year classical music legacy ahead into a world where Indian music is slowly finding it easier to gain global acceptance. “I want to represent the culture of India and this is a great opportunity,” she says.

In addition to Bluk, Juno, Gravity, The Rish and Moidutty, Bawari brings in producer Nakul Chugh on two tracks, beatsmith Dropped Out, artist Saahel and songwriter Shayra Apoorva. Jain says it took “lots of effort, lots of patience” to make sure the project’s collaborations all took off. “I think collaboration is what makes a song 10 times better.” Jain says she picked up on potential collaborators based on recommendations (like Gravity) and other times, just following the work of other artists she felt would be a good fit for the eventual time she would make an EP.

After working with Kerala producer Pina Colada Blues and producer Vaibhav Pani on “Ratiya” last year, Jain says she received a lot of tracks from producers in her DMs and email. Among them was Bluk’s demo for what eventually became “Kaahe.” She adds, “I think Bluk initiated this EP. He sent me this track almost a year back, and then boom, then I decided I want to make an entire EP out of this [kind of approach].” She professes being a longtime fan of artists like Moidutty and The Rish, who appear on different songs.

The predominant vibe of the four-track Bawari EP is classical vocals over futuristic production. “I want to talk about love in a very old-school way. There’s a particular language that I have kept in in few of the songs, that is the braj bhasha,” Jain says about the lyrical concerns on the EP.

While she counters that the songs on the EP are not intentionally under the three-minute mark just to cater to social media formats, she’s more detached from the expectation of betting on these new songs to necessarily be a hit. “As independent artists, I think we’re not at a point where we can predict or bet on a song. You can obviously bet on a message, but you cannot bet on a sound or a kind of melody or particular production approach. Everybody is just trying and seeing what works,” Jain says.

The goal to release an EP was jotted down in her calendar back in December 2023, part of a larger planned schedule for 2024. To that end, there’s another single coming in October that Jain says she’s been “holding for two years” and working with Chugh on her father’s full-length album, which is more raag­ based.