This bus has a mini studio room, a sound console, a workshop space, and can record music on-the-go! Krantinaari, a Mumbai-based rapper is on a journey to record the music of women from rural India in her new mobile studio bus.
Rapper and communication designer Ashwini Hiremath, known by her artist name Krantinaari, is breaking barriers and aiming to make the music industry a safe space by empowering women in rural India to record their music in a safe space. Krantinaari, who is also the co-founder of rap collective Wild Wild Women, admits that she started this journey of research across India four years ago but is now crowd-funding to finish this project smoothly.
Earlier this month, she finally embarked on her mission to record the music of women in Kumaon, Uttarakhand in her safe mobile studio bus.
Hiremath aka Krantinaari has been travelling across the country for four years. During his time, she worked on getting the bus ready, seeking untold stories, researching and discovering the sounds of women in music. “Despite my roots in Mumbai that grant me easy access to studio spaces, I witnessed a troubling reality – it became increasingly arduous for women elsewhere to claim their space,” she says. This disparity pushed her to find a solution to this problem. During this time, she also uncovered a “dark truth” that countless women endure the horrors of sexual harassment, abuse, and unjust treatment within studio walls. “Sexual assault and abuse is spoken about very less in the music industry, and where it gets uncomfortable in these spaces but no one talks about it because you think it is a norm and that is how it is supposed to be. Like the film and music industry, people prepare us [women] for these unsafe spaces but no one is working on making these spaces safe,” she declares.
Hiremath soon witnessed this to be a conversation among many friends who shared their experiences and realised that this is common in other states to the extent that they have stopped pursuing music, and avoid going to the studios. Besides Kumaon in Uttarakhand, she also travelled to Rajasthan, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Kalimpong.
Unfortunately, Hiremath experienced this issue of an unsafe recording space. During her stay in Naintial, she wanted to send a recording to Mumbai and was unable to find a recording studio. “I finally found one studio three hours away and it was deeply uncomfortable,” she says. “They were awkward and didn’t know how to act and it was very strange to be in that studio because the doors were locked, they wouldn’t open easily and there was a weird vibe in that room.” “The fact that there is just one studio and that is also not safe, then why would women come and record?”
To make the bus, Hiremath collaborated with Delhi-based music education non-profit organisation Manzil Mystics. Picture a normal bus but upon entering, there is a classroom space for 12-15 kids, a sound engineer’s table with a sound console and other equipment, a sound-proof mini AC recording studio, and a generator backup as well. Another cool feature is a pull-out stage for performances on the go.
Through this initiative, she will record music and songs women from Kumaon and other regions already know. “This is for the preservation of their language which is deteriorating over time.” The first angle of this project is to make it as inclusive as possible of other ways. Through this, she aims to archive traditional music and sounds to make a library for others to learn. Thus, she decided to opt for the route of preserving the language via folk music, theatre, songs, and storytelling.
The end goal is to make these women independent musicians, who will be releasing music, and recording original songs. “After our process of archiving and preserving the language, we will sit with them where they write their own lyrics, re-innovate, and create something in their style as artists which can be copyrighted,” she concludes.
The goal for this fundraiser is 4 lakh. You can contribute to this cause here.
