“A line from the film Network directed by Sidney Lumet in 1976 encompasses the heart of song perfectly, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’,” says Navzar Eranee, Co-founder IncInk about Ayo Burn, their latest number. Tapping on all the angst that has enveloped the country, with voices coming out of universities, Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai, and at least 30 other big and small cities, IncInk Records dropped its first bilingual track in English and Hindi earlier this week. It’s been produced and performed by Anushka Manchanda aka NUKA whose bars in English merge beautifully with Mumbai rapper Kaam Bhaari’s Bombay-Hindi tirade.
Interestingly, the song was actually written two years ago but what hits one’s conscience is the fact that the lyrics have only gotten more relevant as the country continues to burn with the same issues. IncInk thought, “it’s about time everyone stirs enough emotion to act”, and decided to drop the track now. According to Eranee, “Burn is the moment after awareness and recognition. It is when you decide to take responsibility for the actions of humanity. It is the death of ignorance.”
“It’s only when we burn at the state of the world that we live in”, says NUKA as she and Kaam Bhaari take us on a 360 of our current affairs and show us that we have enough reason to make our blood churn—from sexual harassment, patriarchal conditioning of Indian men, deforestation, global warming, greed and corruption to religious persecution and lynching, domestic violence, and farmer suicide.
The song bursts out of the desperation and the suffocation that is there to trying to speak up and act out. There is an urgency to the tone—urgency to demand freedom and have the fence-sitters know that staying silent or being nonchalant is not an option anymore. As the whole country comes out on the streets this chilly January, Ayo Burn, with its high tempo and insistent ringing, scorches our spirits and makes sure we listen, burn, and churn.
The setting of the music video doesn’t immediately clue in the content of the song. It’s actually set in a party with a group of people who don’t really seem to be affected by what’s going on around them. As the video progresses with NUKA and Kaam Bhaari verbalising the issues, the people start understanding. Disagreement ensues and a fight breaks until they realise that so far, they have been fighting against each other, whereas the solution lies in coming together and moving forward. An important lesson against factionalism and majoritarianism, amongst other issues, the scene hits hard, as does the video and the track.
So, are you ready to listen to the truth? Because if you’re not, the latest jam on the block is going to hit you like the dash of lightning that it is.
Check out the track below.
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