KOCHI: Chaitanyasre Lenin, or Chai Lenin as she’s popularly called, has an innate disposition to making music. She reconstructs her experiences and explores sojourns using everyday life experiences as a point of departure. Then, she improvises and experiments with the right raga composition. Her debut single ‘Rebirth’ released last December and the latest release ‘Tomorrow’ which came out last month blend Carnatic swaras and electro elements.
“For Rebirth, I wanted to explore what it means to embrace a journey full of ambiguities and bittersweet moments, and yet, seek liberation. I quickly became fascinated with the way the raga Sindhu Bhairavi helped me manifest my questions and emotions into a state of mind,” she says.Chai is Singaporean but spent a lot of time growing up in India, especially Kerala. She is currently majoring in Philosophy at the Yale NUS College.
Representing her roots
The coffee lover, Chai owes her interest in music to the commitment her parents have towards the industry - they run a music school. While the constant exposure to music made her repel the idea of a music career, Chai began scrutinising the industry. “I realised very quickly that the Indian classical music industry specifically, was heavily dominated by male voices and had many cultural norms that perpetrated caste-based prejudices.
As a Singaporean-Indian, I found my background being unrepresented,” she says.
Wishing that the nuances of Carnatic music would be better appreciated, understood and represented around South Asian identity, she wanted to do something that would redefine what Carnatic music looks like for her.
Electronic elements
Perhaps her perception of different worlds let Chai infuse three languages (English, Malayalam and Tamil) along with traditional and modern elements that echo with her state of mind. “In ‘Tomorrow’, I wanted to bring out the sense of despair that was running through my mind, and simultaneously try to bridge it with hope,” she elaborates. You can listen to her songs on her YouTube channel ‘Chai Lenin - Topic