Indiva band to pay musical tribute to Nirbhaya on her 2nd death anniversary

The all-female band will perform in the city tomorrow to celebrate the spirit of Womanhood

The death of Nirbhaya is what propelled these four talented women to come together and form a band. And so Vivienne Pocha (earth), Merlin D’souza (fire), Hamsika Iyer (air) and Shruti B Padhye (water) got together in December 2012 to form Indiva, to create their own brand of music. This all female band is not a feminist band as one might assume. “Our music doesn’t have any gender bias and speaks of equality and we salute the strength and spirit of womanhood. The Nirbhaya incident created awareness about the issue of the safety of women in this country. Today, safety of women is the need of the hour. The law isn’t strict enough. Nirbhaya’s incident shouldn’t go unnoticed,” says Merlin.

Sound of music

All of them come from diverse musical backgrounds. Vivienne — rock, pop, jazz; Hamsika —Carnatic and Hindustani classical music; Merlin — Western Classical; and Shruti —Hindustani classcial and plays the violin. They truly are a multilingual band making music in more than eight languages English, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Konkani, Kannada, Bengali, Swahili (and you thought Swahili was a made-up language!). “The best way to describe our sound is folk music to which we, Indiva give our own twist of world music,” says Merlin.

Around one-and-a-half-years ago, their song Suno, which salutes the spirit of womanhood received positive response. In June 2013, the band released their debut self-titled nine-track album. Some of their songs include: Mannidhu (Kannada) is about celebrating womanhood; Uyire (Tamil) speaks about flying and soaring high like a bird; Helelele (Swahili and English) is about one world, one nation; Amar Maa (Bengali) is about mother, you’re the one.

Upcoming gig for charity

Indiva’s will be collaborating with artist Shweta Kanhai, artist who will be painting live as Indiva performs live tomorrow. Her paintings will be auctioned and all the proceeds will go to Zonta, an NGO which works for the upliftment of women.

Also Read:

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Nirbhaya rape case verdict: Karan Johar, Nikhil Advani, Raveena Tandon applaud death sentence!

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