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‘The intent was to break the stereotype that Bhojpuri is crass’: Creators of folk fusion Champawa Ki Kaliyan | Exclusive
Maati Baani’s Champawa Ki Kaliyan blends Bhojpuri folk with Japanese shamisen, crossing 25,000 Instagram shares as its creators challenge Bhojpuri stereotypes
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A Bhojpuri folk song with a Japanese shamisen is drawing attention on Instagram. Champawa Ki Kaliyan, the latest release from Maati Baani featuring Ghazipur folk artist Jeewan Ram and Japanese shamisen player Sayo Komada, has picked up rapidly on social media in recent weeks. According to vocalist Nirali Kartik, the song crossed 25,000 shares on Instagram in 24 hours, without a marketing budget.
But the song’s appeal goes beyond its unusual sound. For Maati Baani founders Kartik Shah and Nirali Kartik, the response has also opened up a conversation around how Bhojpuri music is perceived.
“If you read the comments from the post, a lot of comments are mentioning that this should be a benchmark for Bhojpuri music because it's not vulgar, it's cultural,” says Kartik. “It's very interesting to read the comments actually. It’s not just ninth song, eighth song, tenth song. But it focuses a lot on the perception of the community.”
That perception was part of what led them to make the song. As part of their Folk Unmapped series, the duo wanted to explore Bhojpuri culture while moving away from the stereotypes often attached to the language.
“We wanted to explore more culture through music,” says Kartik. “We decided Bhojpuri would be really, really interesting to explore because it's considered like it has a stereotype that it's only crass, it's a little wild word, and people kind of associated it with all the Gangs of Wasseypur kind of thing.”
“So we were like, how can we break that stereotype and how can we make it fun and clean and just pure entertainment?”
Why Japanese shamisen?
Instead of altering the Bhojpuri identity of the song, the duo looked for another musical tradition that could sit alongside it. Kartik came up with the idea of using the Japanese shamisen, a traditional three-stringed instrument, and approached Sayo Komada for the collaboration.
The track, released in July, brings together Maati Baani, Jeewan Ram and Komada. Its video was shot across Uttar Pradesh and Tokyo, retaining the locations, dance and cultural elements that the duo wanted to foreground.
“I came up with this idea of having a Japanese shamisen,” Kartik says. “We were very conscious of getting the culture, the route, the dance, the location.”
For Kartik, the combination fits the way Maati Baani has approached music from the beginning.
“Maati Baani is a meeting of two different worlds,” he says. “One is the traditional music of India, which is classical and folk, and then it has this way of merging with other genres across the world.”
The Japanese element, therefore, was not intended as a novelty. It came from the duo’s larger interest in finding unfamiliar sounds and placing them alongside Indian folk and classical traditions.
“When you have got the elements in a room, which I felt is as a producer and as a music composer, it kind of... we have tasted everything,” says Kartik, referring to familiar instruments such as the sitar and tabla. “There is nothing new to that layer, except for the tribal instruments that are completely unknown in India.”
A visit to Brussels’ Musical Instruments Museum further expanded that curiosity. “I saw instruments which I had never even thought, like 150-year-old instruments, Renaissance time. And I then started noting them down and then I did research on them that there are people who still play those instruments.”
“That was like an explosion for me,” he says. “Suddenly I'm not limited to one city or second city or just a folk domain of just Rajasthan. I can do anything with it.”
From remote collaborations to a global sound
That approach has been central to Maati Baani since Kartik and Nirali began collaborating with musicians across countries. Their first major remote collaborations came in 2012 with Balma, when such a process was far less common.
“There was no concept of remote collaboration,” Kartik recalls. “We had to explain everything to the musicians. In fact, we hired cinematographers for each one of them. We used to pay for the travel, for the cinematographers, so that everything is in one format.”
The process has since become integral to how they work.
“If you tell us to meet in a studio and do a song for me, that's difficult right now,” Kartik says. “It's completely opposite of how it's perceived. Let's say, let's all meet up in a studio and just create a song. For me, the studio is scattered between several countries.”
The duo’s own musical backgrounds are different. Nirali is a trained classical vocalist from a musical family, while Kartik grew up in a Gujarati business family.
“I was forced to actually pick up music,” he says. “So folk music was a relief.”
They met through music when Kartik asked Nirali to record an alaap for a documentary. “I was blown over by what he kind of made out of my alaap,” Nirali recalls. “I really felt that was super talented and in my mind I knew I will always have him as my partner. So there was no option of not being with him.”
Their musical partnership followed naturally.
“We didn't even know when we started to create music together,” she says. “It was so natural and we had so much fun doing so. And I think it also reflects still in our music. There is so much fun. There is so much, you know, a sense of curiousness and wonder.”
“Music feels like our home because we create together,” she adds.
Beyond the viral numbers
While Champawa Ki Kaliyan is currently reaching new listeners through Instagram, the duo’s larger interest lies in the folk artists they collaborate with.
Through Folk Unmapped, they have worked with folk musicians who may be recognised within their regions but have limited visibility outside them. Kartik recalls projects that helped artists receive more performance opportunities, including a musician who played the rare Surandho instrument and worked as a truck driver.
“These are our victories that you cannot put in views,” he says. “Just one song, how one song can literally affect the whole community. How we can change the direction of our folk artists through our platform, from our very little, small platform.”
For Champawa Ki Kaliyan, the viral response has added another layer to that idea. The song has brought Bhojpuri folk, a Japanese traditional instrument and artists from different musical backgrounds into the same conversation, while the comments have sparked discussion about the language itself.
As Kartik puts it, the appeal is not only about the novelty of the combination: “It's fun, it's fun, that's also important. But this seems like more... it feels great actually when something like this happens.”
