Unshackled
by genres, Patowary’s high-pitched, raw and confident voice had the “urban”
audiences swaying to the groovy hook and hit Coke Studio @ MTV’s YouTube video
over a million times.
She is
back, this time even BIGGER with for the first time in the history of music,
she features Bhojpuri Khadi Birah, a folk for of the Ahirs, Uttar Pradesh in
the much talked about Mtv@Coke Studio Season 4 with Dhruv Ghanekar as the
Composer.
Dhruv is the co-founder of the path breaking Blue Frog
- a State of the Art Live Performance Venue, Recording Studios, Label, Music
Production, a Composer, Producer and highly respected Guitar player based in
Mumbai, India.
Kalpana
Patowary is currently the “reigning queen of the Bhojpuri music industry” and
her decade-old body of work is marked with versatility. She is one of the few stalwarts who have
popularized Bhojpuri folk music in a contemporary style that wows audiences
everywhere. “Among Bhojpuri speakers, she is a rage. Her collaboration with
Mika Singh on the chart-topper Gandi Baat from Prabhudheva’s otherwise dud
R…Rajkumar (2013) has already put her on the music map in Bollywood.
She got International acclaim with
the release of her Bhojpuri musical documentation on the Shakespeare of
Bhojpuri Literature – The Legacy of Bhikhari Thakur from EMIVirgin Records and Massical
from BIRDjam Label Germany with
world class India’s virtuoso percussionist and bandleader Trilok Gurtu, one of the most dynamic and prolific musicians and collaborated with
international unique musicians like
Carlo Cantini, Jan Garbarek, Phil Drummy, Roland Cabezas, Stefano
Dall’Ora.
She has performed and recorded with some of the biggest names
in music in India and on the International arena with Trilok Gurtu, Guru Reben
Masangva, Louis Banks, Ranjit Barot, Pritam to name a few...
Lately
she was on a 15 days tour for concerts in four Latin American countries
presented by The Ministry of Cultural Affairs on the auspicious occasion of Indian
Arrival Day, commemorating the arrival of
Girmitias from the Indian subcontinent to Caribbean and
the island nation of Mauritius presenting songs on migration.
Mtv@CokeStudio
Season 4...it’s still on…the
HANGOVER……ek MA apne bachhe ko,
safalta ki bulandiyo ko chhuta hua dekh jaisa mahsus karti hai.....the emotions
rolling deep inside me are the same....BHOJPURI hamari astitwa hai and in
CokeStudi@Mtv Season 4, it was as if BHOJPURI was proud to announce its dignity….Says Kalpana.
Taking
Bhojpuri music to the helm of one of the biggest music shows in the world for
the first time in MTV comes with its share of responsibilities.
I met Dhruv
Ghanekar in Blue Frog when I was performing with Trilok Gurtu. After then his
solo album “Voyage” was happening and Dhruv asked me to write and sing
something in African groove. I wrote for the first time. Baare Baare was the
track weaving a rich tapestry
of Assamese folk and traditional grooves from the Maghreb region of North
Africa. The idea to fuse the two began as conversations in his head, he shares.
“If I were to explain it to someone, they’d say, there’s no synergy between the
two cultures. But when you hear it, it makes perfect sense,” says Kalpana.
After then, when Dhruv met up for
Coke Studio, I was happy as I knew it’s time for some extinct folk to come up
where it should come. There is an unseen gap between my own lands. – My people.
The gap between India and Bharatvarsh.
In a way Mtv@Coke Studio musically tries to bridge that gap. This time I
thought of giving Biraha a folk form of the Ahir clan. Its singing and saying –
boli at the same time. Lyrically Khadi Birah also spoke about the expressions
of our cultivations, our village folk.
Dhruv beautifully designed the
rhythm which complimented the lyrics of Khadi Biraha. It became mere of global
now as if Indian and African both speaking about the pain and pleasure of farming.
Dhruv and I were thinking to put some African plantation folk music in the
track. But as we were short of time we changed our idea and instead think of
putting some English words in it.
I shared my knowledge about the
indenture laborers of plantation and the pain they went through when they
migrated from Indian shores to the Carribeans.
So we decided to write some verses
keeping in mind the indenture laborers point and what he’ll speak.
Dhruv wrote some beautiful lines
and then Sonia Saigal came into the scene to give the English lyrics a bold
vocal throw.
This track KHADI BIRHA is a folk for of the Ahirs
fusing with African music. This folk tradition is a fun song, reflects the
Migration content and evolved during the colonial period when a huge population
of Bhojpuri people left Indian shores to work in sugarcane, cocoa, jute and
other plantations in Caribbean countries, owned and run by Europeans.
Khadi Birha is actually a very positive song. It’s
one of those great ironies of life because the people who actually worked the
hardest are the most positive people…it’s a working man’s song.
Basically, this track would help understand how folk
culture helps migrants to recover from the pain and loss on leaving their
homelands,"
In Mtv@Coke Studio you can say transnational Biraha
: Bhojpuri Folk from North India to the Caribbean, Fiji, and Beyond…
This
track Khadi Birha forges the way forward for the culture from which the Caribbean countries
diaspora traditions find their origin.
