The Aahvaan Project Is A Folk Music Collective Redefining Modern Love & Resistance

The Aahvaan Project grew out of a restlessness — a need to find meaning in a world where life feels programmed, where time is rushed into money. Since 2016, the collective has been building a body of work that sits at the intersection of folk music, storytelling, and social critique. The project was founded by Vedi Sinha, a Delhi-born storyteller who first encountered the power of folk at the Kabir Yatra. Carrying an ektara, she began weaving poems and stories about what she saw around her: inequality, alienation, and also love. Over time, the collective brought in collaborators like percussionist Makrand Sanon and producer Sumant Balakrishnan, both long-time contributors to India’s independent music scene

Aahvaan draws from the Nirgun philosophy, the idea of a formless, borderless love that mystics like Kabir, Lalon Fakir, and Bulleh Shah wrote about. Their songs carry this spirit but translate it into the language of today: raw, questioning, and often political. Instead of romanticisng folk traditions, they use them as tools for reflection, asking what love and justice mean in contemporary society.

In an exclusive conversation with Homegrown, the band says, "One of the most important teachings of Nirgun is that one is on their own path. The main teacher is our own intuition. Not our untrained intuition but the one that is able to drown out the noise from the chaos that constantly surrounds us."

Each Aahvaan track is a commentary. 'Daud' critiques the endless race of modern life: running, earning, consuming, but never arriving at peace. 'Aadhi Gagri' challenges the myth of perfection, celebrating flaws and incompleteness as part of being human. The EP 'Mai Bhi Khadi Hoon' (2025) makes this stance explicit: it’s both a sonic treat and a declaration. It refuses the games and rules society imposes and insists on selfhood, even in chaos. Musically, the project has expanded from intimate storytelling circles to festival stages like Mahindra Kabira, the Jaipur Literature Festival, and Sama-Saya Maynila. Yet, they've managed to retain their distinctly homegrown sound, which is often comprised of just vocals, ektara, and percussion. This stripped-down style allows the words to take centre stage, keeping the focus on meaning rather than spectacle.

Aahvaan is about community. Performances feel like conversations rather than concerts, with audiences drawn into reflection rather than left as passive listeners. This collective ethos also informs their workshops in schools and collaborations with grassroots initiatives, where music becomes a tool for dialogue and self-expression. By choosing intimacy over scale, they preserve a sense of honesty that is often missing in larger productions.

While so much of the indie scene chases fusion trends or polished commercial aesthetics, Aahvaan insists on being rough-edged, rooted, and political. Their songs are cultural interventions: pieces that remind listeners of traditions while pushing them to reimagine the present. There is space for slower, more reflective art even in a crowded digital ecosystem. "It's the wider community around us that inspires and pushes us to create original thought and material to contextualise Nirgun with the challenges of the modern day. Through Main Bhi Khadi Hu we hope to convey our own learnings on this journey and hopefully help to shift the goalposts of the philosophy in general," they say.

Aahvaan cannot be categorised easily. They are not folk purists, nor are they indie fusion. Their work is closer to a cultural movement. It's an ongoing experiment in holding conversations through music. It’s homegrown in the truest sense: born in sabhas, schools, and small recording studios rather than polished industry spaces. Their songs are carried forward by community and by a loyal group of listeners who find themselves reflected in the stories themselves.

Follow The Aahvaan Project here.

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