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When Homegrown first reached out to rapper Duleswar Tandi, aka, ‘Rapper Dule Rocker’, he was already on his way to becoming a star. Happily assenting to our proposal for a phone interview, he greeted all our requests with his ever-cheerful “always welcome”. Over the call, we were welcomed with a number from Gully Boy (2019), the film that pushed Duleswar to break all barriers and pursue his dream.
Over the course of the next 30 minutes, 27-year-old Duleswar, who raps about politics and the tribulations of society out of his little house in Borda, Kalahandi, Odisha, told us about his life and what moves him. Duleswar is an exemplar of the fact that as of 2020, creativity and art are no longer in thrall to expensive studios and industry godparents. All one needs is a social media account and the spirit to create.
Opening Act
On being asked about his passion for music, Duleswar redirected us to his childhood. Hailing from a ‘musical’ village, Duleswar, who was quite bright as a child, was chosen for all child-actor roles in the village plays. At school too, he was known for his singing-dancing and acting skills. Growing up as a ‘kalakaar’, says Duleshwar, “I can’t tell you when I started writing rap. Perhaps, I was writing rap without even realising that it was actually called ‘rap’. When he moved to Bhawanipatna to attend college, his friends made the connection and told him that someone called Honey Singh was writing in a similar way as Duleswar. It was then that he realised that rap was his passion. Duleswar, however, knew that his themes had to be quite different from Singh’s. He fondly remembers the poetry he had written in jest for his college magazine. The poem, that eventually got published in the magazine, pushed him to write more and more. He kept writing and showing his poems to his friends, who were indubitably quite impressed. He always wanted to write ‘something different’, and that’s how he picked up rap.
Around the same time, there was a massive tragedy on the home-front. Left with no option but to work to bring in money to his mother, he moved to Raipur. An Indian Chemistry graduate might not be supremely hopeful of a high-paying job, but for Duleswar, all hell broke loose when despite trying, he couldn’t even get a job as a waiter at a restaurant. With all his tenacity, besides working as a cleaner at a restaurant, he kept writing about social issues and knocking on the doors of different studios. Ironically, all of those studios rejected his work because his songs didn’t talk about luring or objectifying women or venerating money and power. Instead of the usual concepts heard of in India, Duleswar’s heart was set at talking about issues like corruption and poverty — issues that he was tackling on a personal level himself. Set on finding a way to broaden his musical talents, he kept moving from place to place — Raipur, Kerala, Gujarat — to look for work and a studio that would produce his music. All of this, however, to no avail. He was turned down everywhere.
While looking for a platform to showcase his talent on, Duleswar chanced upon reality show ‘Raw Star’. He came to know that someone from Odisha had made his way to the competition. Upon looking further into it, however, he realised that he needed something else. Something more.
Verse I: The Oriya Gully Boy
And then he watched Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy. Admittedly, it was on watching this film that he told himself that he would not beg before anyone. He pulled up his socks, tightened his belt, and started making his own music — no expensive equipment, just his phone and his voice. He worked hard and saved for a boom box, and there in his tiny house, with his phone and a boom box, began his journey. Duleswar says that he doesn’t mix or edit his videos. Usually seen in a regular vest and bermuda shorts, Duleswar records and posts his reality as it is.
Although he doesn’t deny the possibility of having the opportunity to use more advanced machines, Duleswar is pretty proud of his ability to churn out good content exclusively with the help of his phone and mobile apps.
Duleswar, who says that hip-hop is never bound by language and is always about the meaning, never the language, sings in Kosali, Hindi, and English. His songs are already a rage on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Having been interviewed by reputed journalists like Barkha Dutt, Duleswar has been appreciated by industry bigwigs like Vishal Dadlani, Swara Bhaskar, Richa Chadha, and Dub Sharma.
Verse II: Themes That Move
In Kalahandi, outbound migration is particularly high, and therefore, when the Great Indian Coronavirus Lockdown happened, Duleswar, found many, including himself and his mother without any money, at the mercy of his relatives.
Duleswar, who writes about the plight of migrant workers, says that while he thought that the lockdown was a necessity, he couldn’t look away from the fact that daily wage migrant workers who lived hand-to-mouth before the lockdown, suddenly found themselves devastated. “The government asked us to stay inside our homes, but where to get the food from?”, he questions. He continues, “I have seen people beg around me. I have seen people kill themselves out of hunger. Shame on us, I say, shame on us! If people are committing suicide due to hunger, then, really, shame on us!”
“I want to tell the government that we see India lovingly, but we know what’s going on inside. Other countries might be celebrating us, but if we see palpable issues, we need to talk about it.”
Duleswar, who wants to have an album of his own someday, says that he somewhere blames poverty for his father’s untimely death in 2016. “I swore that day that I will end the poverty that ended my father.”
“It’s not like we can’t end poverty. These rich politicians can end poverty, but they don’t. They use it to further their means,” he continues.
Verse III: Reflections
On being asked about who all did he used to listen to in the beginning, he said, “We all started with listening to Honey Singh, quite honestly, but we stopped because we had issues with his choice of subjects. He wrote about girls and commented on their body, and I don’t think rap should be about that.” He began looking for rappers who talked about things other than this, and then he chanced upon Raftaar. Duleswar excitedly says that if he gets the chance, he would love to collaborate with Divine. He says that he actively refuses offers to collaborate with artists that don’t go beyond the women/money trajectory.
Duleswar, already quite the star, kept getting calls from such artists even as we were talking. He was even approached by potential managers, to whom, all Duleswar had to say that he barely has anything for himself at the moment.
On being asked about the subjects that move him particularly, he said, “I want to talk about issues that affect people all over the world.” He distinguishes between nepotism and corruption saying that it’s usually nobody’s fault that they are born into a particular family. However, if their presence implies the blockade of someone else’s opportunity, then that’s corruption. About financial corruption itself, he writes about who does it and how it should not exist.
Inspired by his personal experiences of being cheated by a middle-man, he writes about fraud and people capitalising on poor people’s misery. A lot of times, people are not even able to speak up against their oppressors. Duleswar was not able to say much at that point, but he uses his music to talk about oppression of this nature.
Verse IV: Looking Back
Duleswar started his social media journey by creating his music and posting his videos on Facebook. He recalls how his rap on migrant workers had gone viral overnight in his area. He says, “I woke up to so many calls the next morning”. It then went viral in all of Odisha. He was featured on local news channel OTV.
“My mother was really surprised to see the row of news channels outside my house the next day.”
However, before the fame came around, there were quite a few roadblocks. Much like every lower-class boy, he was expected to get a good job and bring money home. Duleswar recalls that people used to call him ‘deranged’ for leaving everything to pursue music. Always a bright student, he had a lot of hopes pinned onto him. People used to hold him in high regard as if they knew that he was meant for a much grander future, that is, making ample money out of a well-paying job. “They used to think I am giving away my life, not earning, and only writing and singing all day,” he remembers.
“I kept moving along my own way. Didn’t pay heed to anyone.”
Towards the end of our interview, we could say nothing but that our art space needs creatives like Duleswar, who can generate conversations about subjects that affect real people. That, in reality, as he says, is the purpose of rap. Artists like Duleswar shift the hyper-global gaze that’s usually employed to look at rap. He presents an alternative to the gold-laden, Gucci-wearing image of rappers who seemingly only use their music to serve a limited demography’s aspirations.
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