While in college, Vedi Sinha, Founder of The Aahvaan Project, had hardly given a thought to folk music. But a chance travelling assignment for a cultural festival not just changed her worldview but even her career path.
At the time of our interaction, the 29-year-old singer-storyteller from Delhi was perfecting her notes for a stage performance at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Vedi, who performs with an ektara (one-stringed musical instrument), says the music collective The Aahvaan Project was conceptualised sometime in 2015 and early 2016.
“We were deeply inspired by the words of philosophers and mystic poets such as Kabir, Lal Ded and Lalon Fakir. Their words of love had a deep impact on me,” she says, adding, “It has always been a collaborative project where various artists have joined us, created something, stayed or parted ways. My twin Pakhi has been an integral part of the evolution of our project.” The Aahvaan Project spreads the message of kindness and love using historical and philosophical examples but after contextualising it for a modern-day audience.
While Vedi sticks to script, storytelling and vocals, her collective has Anirban Ghosh (bass, keys, gabgubi), Sumant Balakrishnan (guitar and vocals), Nikhil Vasudevan (percussion), and Varun Gupta (sound). Vedi, who dropped out of a film and video course midway at the prestigious National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, had never intended to be a folk musician.
But fate had other things in store. It was an opportunity to be a volunteer at Kabir Yatra, a week-long travelling folk music festival in Rajasthan that changed her life’s course.
She spent many months researching folk-music traditions of several states in north and central India. She started travelling around Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, chronicling her thoughts and soon words were interspersed with music.
But popularising folk music with storytelling isn’t easy. The challenges of earning are real. “All of us are freelance artists who create music in various spaces. Sometimes commitments seem overwhelming and at other times underwhelming.
What remains constant is the space which we seek to create—music.” She believes The Aahvaan Project was learning to take baby steps for the past couple of years, and is finally beginning to learn how to stand. “We want to listen to stories and share them in as many places as we possibly can. The smallest of gigs could be our biggest success even if one person relates to it.
So many forces have conspired to put good people along our path, that we may draw strength from them to continue to spread our message of love—to speak our truth. In a world, as polarised as it is today, it’s hard to find a common rhythm where we can converse despite disagreement.
This challenge is above and beyond the challenges of daily life,” she says. Somewhere, Sant Kabir and Lalon Fakir will be nodding their heads in agreement.