Singers collaborate for a music single on women empowerment

After the news of the encounter killings of Hyderabad rape victims came out, everyone from politicians, celebrities to activists celebrated it as ‘justice served’. Within a few minutes, the hashtag #Justiceserved started trending on social media. Instead of being a meagre social media activist, singer Shashaa Tirupati vented out all her frustrations, fears and worries on to a paper and wrote a song called Yezhundhu Vaa. She also conceptualised a music video. For this independent single, she has collaborated with singer Chinmayi Sripaada.

“I was so disturbed after hearing about the crime against women in the country. As a musician, I thought of conveying a message through a song. Women are being brought up in a way that they are not allowed to speak their minds. We sweep our problems under the carpet. Being a woman, our constant worry is what others will say or think about us if we ‘speak up’. Though women are becoming outspoken these days, many still maintain silence on a lot of issues. This song urges women to come out and talk about things, not just sexual abuse, but whatever they feel to tell the world,” says Shashaa about the song that will be released in a few days.

It is a bilingual song — Roothi Hui in Hindi and Yezhundhu Vaa in Tamil. The singer is known for songs like Singappenney (Bigil), Vaan Varuvaan (Kaatru Veliyidai), Kaara Aattakaara (OK Kanmani), Aye Mr. Minor (Kaaviyathalaivan) and more. “We are constantly struggling between the mental and emotional dilemma within us. A lot of times, we can deal with it andget out of that state of mind. We can come out of the mush that we create in our heads. This song just conveys the same. There are a lot of undertones to the song. It can be perceived and interpreted in a lot of ways,” the singer adds.

The Hindi lyric is different from Tamil lyric — Tamil lyric talks about breaking the silence, whereas, Hindi lyric is about how we had never thought of embracing tornados (read, issues here).  Shashaa says that while penning the charanam of the song, only Chinmayi’s face came to her mind. “Chinmayi has always been vocal about abuse against women and is supporting people through her social media. She is such a huge inspiration and who better can sing about it,” remarks Shashaa. 

As a parting note, the 29-year-old singer tells DT Next that independent songs and videos like this should be given more importance than commercial ones.