Description

The role of music and poetry in the India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule is evident from the scores of songs that were popular among the masses. These songs, rich in political rhetoric and social messages, utilized folk tunes or specially composed melodies, but the texts found today are unfortunately not accompanied by musical notation. Vocalist Shubha Mudgal and tabla player Aneesh Pradhan have individually and jointly composed some of these verses in a manner that they felt captured those moments in history. In order to represent the period in a truer fashion, no attempt has been made to colour the instrumentation for the songs with modern electronic instruments.

This album is an attempt to musically reconstruct a historical timeframe. It is an effort to share with the listener the importance of music in the larger social and political fabric of our society, a factor that goes largely unnoticed in today’s world.

Sing-along tracks have been provided for two songs, to enable children to memorize and render these songs with musical accompaniment.

This album contains songs in Hindi and its dialects, and therefore does not represent other Indian languages. The accompanying booklet gives details about the historical context in which these songs were written and several other details. Some archival photographs are also included in the booklet.