Kranti Havi: How Swadesi Became India’s Most Potent Voice of Protest Hip Hop
Swadesi. Photo: Samarth Shirke
“We intend to make people realise that they can only change themselves before changing the world.” Multilingual Indian hip hop crew Swadesi discuss their inspirations, their place in India’s music scene, and sparking a revolution through rap.
American Rapper Chuck D, in the peak of his powers as the frontman of the revolutionary hip hop group Public Enemy, once famously said that “rap is Black America’s CNN”. The insinuation made it clear that America’s heavily-discriminated minority had found in rap music a more reliable voice for news, and a better source to understand their history. Public Enemy backed up this proclamation with classic politically-charged albums and anthems from the late-80s onwards, including It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet, “Fight the Power”, “Don’t Believe the Hype”, “Rebel Without a Pause”, and more.
In May 2020, in the heat of the Indian summer, in the heat of the pandemic and National Lockdown that crippled countless Indian lives and institutions, Mumbai-based rap group Swadesi released the lyric video for their song “Mahamaari”. Over an aggressive, insidious beat, the crew’s Maharya and MC Mawali rapped a public service announcement about India’s response to the pandemic, the media’s role in spiking religious tensions, critiquing those who had the privilege to stay home while others took the road, police brutality, and much more.
On the YouTube clip for “Mahamaari”, the top comment is from a user who wrote, [sic] “I rather listen to this rather NEWS channels, these rappers are the true REPORTERS of the society.”
If the news—in its ideal form—is meant to be a true voice of the people and a reflection of society, then the Swadesi movement has picked up the tradition right at the trails of Public Enemy. The multi-lingual crew—formed in 2013 and now boasting of a fluid group of MCs, producers, and artists—has staked its place as a representative voice for India’s disenfranchised. It is the CNN—or the Times News Network, if you please—of society’s lesser-heard voices, a group that intends to educate as much it does to entertain.
Swadesi’s origin story goes back to earlier in the decade, when they were just a crew of friends with similar artistic influences. Their first release was the track “Laaj Watte Kai”, a song by MC Mawali (Aklesh Sutar) written in response to the horrific Delhi Gang Rape of December 2012. “We decided that we didn’t want to stay quiet anymore,” Mawali told Red Bull in an interview. “We would use our interest in music to raise our voices. Hip-hop was the perfect way to do that.”
The Swadesi crew now features rappers MC Mawali (Sutar), Maharya (Yash Mahida), 100RBH (Saurabh Abhyankar), MC TodFod (Dharmesh Parmar), producers DJ BamBoy (Tushar Adhav), RaaKshaS (Abhishek Shindolkar), NAAR (Abhishek Menon), WhayL (Joshua Fernandes), and graffiti artist Lobster (Robston Soares). True to their collective moniker, Swadesi perform their raps in a variety of domestic languages, including Bengali, Gujrati, Hindi, and Marathi.
They say pressure makes diamonds, and in one of the worst stretches of social and environmental unrests in contemporary Indian history, Swadesi responded with a strong run of releases as a musical answer to the country’s ongoing trials and tribulations. Apart from tracks like “Mahaamari” and “Plandemic” that have been a reaction to the pandemic in India, the crew also released the Marathi anthem, “The Warli Revolt” in collaboration with the Warli tribal chieftain Prakash Bhoir. The song was rapped from the perspective of tribes who would face the brunt of the proposed tree-cutting of Aarey—a forest in the Mumbai suburbs—for a metro car shed project. The song’s powerful video featured a creative animation of traditional art-work from the Warli tribes. Its lyrics—by Mawali, TodFod, and 100RBH—criticise deforestation, over-industrialisation, and “fake progress” in India.
The multilingual nature of this album gives it a quintessential All-India feel, the hip hop equivalent of taking a nationwide train journey, buoyed by the thumping beats of the train rumbling on the tracks, looking out at the country with concern as it passes by, and overhearing conversations and sermons in multiple languages along the way.
In February 2020, Swadesi released their first album Chetavni (Warning) on Azadi Records, a call-to-arms project that bound together the group’s socially-conscious messages into a collective mission statement. As much as a musical experience as the seed of a revolution, Chetavni is reminiscent of the American revolutionary band Rage Against the Machine’s debut LP: the songs reverberate like an urgent emergency siren, booming for attention, making way through the slow-moving traffic of the predictable Indian music scene. The multilingual nature of this album gives it a quintessential All-India feel, the hip hop equivalent of taking a nationwide train journey, buoyed by the thumping beats of the train rumbling on the tracks, looking out at the country with concern as it passes by, and overhearing conversations and sermons in multiple languages along the way.
Chetavni earned the band critical acclaim and the crew bagged the ‘Artist of the Year’ award at The Indies 2020. The album tackles a myriad of issues, including media misinformation in India (“Stithi”), and income disparity and the great economic divide (“Galliyan Bhool Bhulaiya”). “Jung”, with its aggressive production, lyrics, and an animated video that evokes battles from the great Indian mythological epics, is a memorable anti-war protest anthem. “Kranti Havi” (We Need A Revolution) brings listeners to the front-line of last year’s Anti-CAA/NRC protests around the country. In December, 100RRBH released his debut solo EP, Bahas, another project that furthered the group’s sonic and philosophical direction.
In a recent email interview, members of Swadesi joined The Chakkar to discuss their place in their inspirations, their future plans, and sparking a revolution through music.
The Chakkar: In a number of your songs and videos, you have used the motif of news, and many of your fans have responded to your music as more than rap, as a real source of information. In India, when most mainstream news sources are heavily compromised, do you feel that hip hop can be that type of source for the country's disenfranchised?
MC Mawali: Definitely! Hip hop gives the freedom to express oneself and reach people in a better way. It’s education and entertainment away from censorship. Unless its mainstream or commercial, hip hop has been hacking all sources of media to spread the real messages. Its motive revolves around amplifying people’s lifestyle.
Swadesi album launch at antiSOCIAL, Mumbai. Photo: Anurag Sharma
The Chakkar: How does “underground hip hop” in India reach the masses? In tracks like “Shambar Bars”, you have been critical of the mainstream or commercialisation of Indian hip-hop. In your opinion, should hip hop purely be a medium for protest and social consciousness? You currently occupy a sweet spot in the Indian music scene, where hardcore fans love and respect your music and there is not that much of an outreach outside of that niche audience. Do you wish to expand your fan base, go more mainstream, so that your messages can go mainstream, too? More importantly, do you consider the mainstream Indian audience ready to accept your music and message?
MC Mawali: I don’t feel hip hop needs to be defined only as protest or socially-conscious music. It could be anything; for instance, it could be about space, or maybe how to tie a shoelace… The mainstream is more censored, and it restricts one to go out there and say everything one would want to. If you pay attention, India certainly has the highest number of censored radios stations, and if you look further, these stations are owned by big companies invested into the mainstream, and most certainly, into Bollywood.
Mainstream audiences probably wouldn’t like to listen to something that is so dark or political in its nature and essence. Common people are so occupied with their own life that they wouldn’t want to hear about more problems.
‘Hip hop gives the freedom to express oneself and reach people in a better way. It’s education and entertainment away from censorship. Unless its mainstream or commercial, hip hop has been hacking all sources of media to spread the real messages.’
The other side of mainstream is exposure and money, so a lot of the underground artists end up in the mainstream bandwagon. Also, India hasn’t had any systematic revenue generation mechanism (like royalties) for non-commercial artists. Usually, artists are hired and given one-time payments, while comprising their royalties. This is slowly changing, however.
So, the system of revenue generation is hijacked right there; with limited streams of exposure, one ends up moving to the mainstream chain to sustain their artistic lifestyle. We have been pushing ourselves to undo this, so the future generation could speak up more powerfully without being chained to the censorship of their content.
The Chakkar: You guys famously perform in a myriad of Indian languages. Apart from the captions in some of the videos, most of the message is left untranslated. Your audience could be speakers of Marathi, Hindi or Bengali, or they could be general hip hop fans who don't understand the words, but still feel the vibe of the music. This is an issue many authors and other creatives always wrestle with: are they creating something with an audience in mind, or are they creating something that is an expression of ourselves as it is, without targeting any particular type of person. What is this process like for you guys?
Maharya: We don’t really have a particular audience to target or shoot for. We are comfortable representing our mother tongues and it’s been great. We have our audiences spread across the languages we speak, but we have also had audiences who don’t understand us and can yet vibe to our songs. At the core essence, the target is to improve the mindset of our listeners. What we express comes from our own personal and collective experiences.
On another note, I feel we are more conscious about the vibe, with language being secondary. For instance, people used to vibe to the music of Sean Paul, Flo Rida, Pitbull, etc., even though we couldn’t make out of their accents or lyrical context. I feel it’s pretty much similar.
The Chakkar: What is your creative process like in general? You guys are a big crew of MCs and producers and artists with a variety of different backgrounds and influences. So how do you get together to make music that still has the trademark Swadesi ‘sound’? Even though the tracks have different rappers/producers on them, Chetavni sounded cohesive in its overall sonic feel and message.
MC Todfod: The creative process has been ever evolving; we don’t have a set of rules or processes. Each of us is different creatively. We come from various backgrounds, listen to different sets of artists across genres, and look up to different people, so there’s a lot to it—and yet, we have a similar mindset to navigate through the process.
Sometimes, it really is just emcees coming up with a thought, rhyme or a structure, and then others adding on their vision—maybe producers bringing in a beat that relates to our collective thoughts—and it just evolves form there. We know our basics, the right and wrong that is stuck in our motherboard [laughs]. That’s how even Chetavni came about. Being from different backgrounds and then writing our own songs as a collective… it’s so cool!
The Chakkar: You guys always had creative visuals to accompany your music. The video for "Jung", for example, turned a Mahabharata-era story into modern concerns. Still, using anything mythological can often be misconstrued by the audience if they aren't paying close attention. What would you say has been the reaction to "Jung" so far?
MC Mawali: “Jung” has been really good. I said whatever I wanted to, and it’s out there for interpretation. The music video was made by Graphic India Productions. It’s a part of their animated series called ‘The 18 Days’, which is based on the 18 days of The Mahabharata. It worked really well, since what we are trying to convey is that there has been a war going on through various eras, and whatever we are doing is continuing that old conditioning instead of living a fresh life. What we are trying to say is that we haven’t learned from all these wars, and are just in a loop of making more disastrous moves.
We have evolved physically as humans, but not as much psychologically or emotionally, while we keep calling ourselves the ‘evolution of the highest form’. The video was to convey this message; I personally haven’t come across anyone misinterpreting the video, but I might have read some comments on YouTube suggesting ‘Why is this Hindu guy holding a flag’ or ‘How can we talk about The Mahabharata to convey such a message?’ The interpretation can be based on the individuals’ set of beliefs and understanding. I feel it’s alright if you don’t get it; one day or another, the message comes around in life.
‘Each of us is different creatively. We come from various backgrounds, listen to different sets of artists across genres, and look up to different people, so there’s a lot to it—and yet, we have a similar mindset to navigate through the process.’
If you don’t learn from the song and music video, then you have been unchanged, that you have continued to be out there with emotions of hate, or of supporting war. For instance, if you listen to “Jung” and if you pay taxes and contribute to the system for war, then you’re still a part of the ‘jung’ (war).
The Chakkar: Listening to the album, the energy and passion for protest also has early Rage Against The Machine vibes, of music that is unapologetically the part of a larger movement. What would you say have been some of the musical or artistic inspirations for you guys—in your sound, lyrics, and your message?
MC TodFod: Absolutely, they [Rage Against the Machine] are the pioneers, and we all listen to them. What moves me is the raw vibes and straight up unapologetic nature of the content. They have been speaking of revolution, about the system, and why they have been against the system. It’s not a system—it’s a cycle, really.
Some major artistic inspirations for us would be Immortal Technique, People’s Army (UK), Lowkey, Akala, Wu Tang Clan… they are all genius. I listen to some jazz, classics, electronica, jungle and a lot of reggae. So, it’s literally a lot of inspiration. For me, it’s music or bullshit—and I stick to the music [laughs].
The Chakkar: In India, unfortunately, there is always the next concern, the next thing to worry about, whether the issue is political and environmental. After the revolutionary messages of Chetavni, where are you guys turning your attention to next? What are some of the specific burning issues that you hope to address in future music?
100RBH: Our eyes are on so many things right now. For me personally, it’s about foreign MNC [Multi-National Corporation] expansion in India. The reason being is that all corporations take the raw materials out of the country to manufacture internationally, and then sell the finished product back to the country with a hefty margin and profit. This is the case in most industries, be it cotton, motors, or raw food products. If this cycle could be changed, we could bring about a boom in the business for locals, and bring about valued labour and skill in the Indian market itself, without the foreign invasion. Then we would be in a position to sell these products internationally for a better revenue setting a healthy standard of living in India.
Swadesi at NH7 Weekender. Photo: Mrigank Manurshi
The Chakkar: Most artists are in flux, never a completed project, always looking to improve somewhere. Looking ahead, where do you guys hope to improve in terms of both your messaging and your actual artistic skill, whether it is song-writing, production, etc.?
WhayL; RaaKshaS: We only aim to excel our artistic skills in each and every field, be it song-writing or production. Learning theoretical stuff, reading books on music, and practicing a skill on an instrument is what we tend to look forward to. When there are uncertainties about a track, we tend to speak with the whole crew, get some ideas off and then start working on it back again.
In regards to developing a message, we intend to make people realise that they can only change themselves before changing the world. We’ll keep writing and speaking about what we’re feeling spontaneously. We, too, keep learning and understanding new things every now and then. So, our message will keep evolving as we evolve.
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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, The Literary Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. Karan is currently working on his first novel. Twitter: @karanmadhok1.
