To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, nine leading artistes have come together to sing a multi-lingual song in eight regional languages, including in Tamil, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. The album is titled Dharti Ma - A Tribute to Earth.
Put together by the Earth Day Network, an organisation that works with about 50,000 NGOs worldwide, the song, to be launched on YouTube on April 22, aims at “creating awareness among the masses about doing what little each one of us can,” said Karuna Singh, Asia regional director for the Network.
‘Reduce carbon footprint’
“They are all influencers and we want them to, through their voices and otherwise too, take the message of the importance of doing even small things to reduce our carbon footprint. When we talk to students, we show them how the simple act of reducing the brightness of their laptop screens can help reduce power usage,” she explained.
The seven-minute long song features leading vocalists — Bombay Jayashri, Shankar Mahadevan, Kaushiki Chakraborty, Hansraj Hans, Mahesh Kale, Abhishek Raghuram, Sweta Mohan, Abhay Jodhpurkar and M.D. Pallavi. It has been composed by Amrit Ramnath.
It features Sayee Rakshith on the violin, Abinandan David on the guitar, Sumesh Narayanan on the mridangam and percussions, M.T. Aditya on the tabla, and singers Karthik, Amrit and Sreenidhi Venkat on the chorus vocals.
Ms. Jayashri said, “As artistes, all of us do our bit. This album is one and so are concerts or songs performed for the earth. Personally, too, I don’t use single-use plastics and try as much as possible to reuse and recycle things. Last year, I had written to the city sabhas requesting them to provide re-usable water bottles to artistes and many of them had implemented it,” she said.
‘Absolutely spellbound’
Mr. Jodhpurkar said that when he heard the song, he was absolutely spellbound. “It is an honour for me to be a part of a multilingual anthem featuring such legendary singers of our nation and that too for the best cause possible. It’s the need of the hour and I am fortunate enough to lend my voice for this gem of a composition by Amrit [Ramnath]. Also, I have sung in Gujarati for the first time, so I am really excited for people to hear it,” he added.
Musician and vocalist Shankar Mahadevan recalled how he and Ms. Jayashri learnt music from the same guru in the initial years in Bombay and said he was happy to have lent his voice to a song composed by her son. “It is a wonderful cause, the tribute to Mother Earth. It is a huge song that has eminent musicians from different genres and I am happy to have gotten the opportunity to sing a small part in it,” he said.
