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The human race is facing a collective disaster, the earth is hurting and by now that comes as no surprise. In fact, in 2019, NDTV said that 40 percent of India’s population will have no access to drinking water by 2030, according to a report by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog). If all the warnings from scientists are any clue, we are headed towards dangerous times and now more than ever there is a need for us to ensure collective human effort and action. It is within this context that urban ecologist, a vocal campaigner of climate change, and conscientious music artist Aditi Veena aka Ditty along with David Raddish from Austria and Keno Langbein from Germany in collaboration with Viva con Agua (an NGO promoting the human right to water) started their first project Rain Is Coming as Faraway Friends. The record Rain Is Coming released today, on World Water Day - 22 March 2021. An extremely special project for the collective, it explores many stories, and all the funds will be going towards water harvesting projects in India and Africa. Ahead of the records release, we had a conversation with Ditty and Keno from Faraway Friends.
Q. Could you tell me a little about the record and how it came about?
Keno: The three of us first met in Varanasi. David and I were on a project trip through India, with the German NGO Viva con Agua, visiting water conservation projects that they have been funding. VCA’s approach is to bring artists with them to use the universal language of music to connect on eye level with the communities. We were looking to meet Indian artists who were also interested in these social issues. We met Ditty at a concert in Varanasi. Instead of quickly making a song together as planned, we spent the whole night discussing ideas and became friends.
Ditty: We knew that we wanted to work together and make socially inspired art to create space for such conversations in the music world. We spent the next year working over endless skype sessions and creating the record–Rain is Coming. Here we are today! More than 20 artists from all over the world– filmmakers, dancers, illustrators, visual artists have joined us in this quest.
Q. Where did you find inspiration for the album and what was the creative process like?
Ditty: We found inspiration in our conversations. We are all artists who feel passionately about writing on society. We spoke about things we had just witnessed on the trip– inequality, poverty, hunger, community empowerment and the climate crisis. We wanted to find ways of including voices of people on the record. On some tracks David built music around actual interviews that were recorded during the trip. These are the parts of the record that have a documentary dimension. In other cases real persons inspired fictional stories as in “The Legend of Drops”.
Keno: The groundwork for the record was done by David. He is a producer and recorded most of the samples on the trip. He loves field recordings. He turns crickets into instruments and drops into beats. Ditty and I wrote most of the lyrics and melodies for the music and directed the visual language and video work from the collective. Together, all three of us envisioned the various conceptual layers of the album– from stories to the presentation. We’ve been trying to reach out to like minded artists around us to help us with videos and visual artwork.
Q. How would you define your musical sensibility?
Keno: The Album became a mix of all our influences and diverse musical backgrounds. It is electronic Pop music with influences from Hip Hop, Spoken word and Indie music.
Ditty: The record has a very specific sound of it’s own because of the way it was created. It is very recognisable and doesn’t fit into a box really. A lot comes from how David sampled various sounds and turned them into beats and music. People should listen to this record in its entirety. It’s a multi layered conceptual artwork that will take them on a trip through the world that we’ve created together through the sounds and experiences.
Q. Since Faraway Friends friends is a diverse collaborative project, how do each of you find a space for self-expression?
Keno: The three of us have different skill sets and forms of expression. We tried to figure out together, which elements would fit best into a certain song or story. We discussed a lot, formed concepts together, and then allowed each other the freedom to express.
Q. There are samples of water that run throughout the singles released so far, which seems like a conscious decision, in your opinion, how does water weave the narrative within the context of the song as well as within the larger world context (which you wish to address)?
Ditty: We are in the midst of the biggest ecological crisis today. Evolutionary resources like underground aquifers, rivers, forests and mountains are fragile ecosystems being lost to human greed, everyday. India is going through the worst water crisis. All these problems are complex and intertwined. We really want to take a stand. We are for conserving our last remaining natural resources. We must protect what is left with our lives and find a way to not just ‘not do less harm’ but to be positive forces on this planet. Find ways to augment life and ways to live in harmony with the Earth.
Keno: We brought the sounds of water into the music, but also there are voices on the record that we wanted to be heard. Like Pooja Chowdhary, an activist working on the ground. She was one of the experts from Welhungerhilfe leading us on the project trip. On the track titled Pooja Says, we sampled her from an Interview she gave us. She has a clear message: “It is now or never, when it comes to water conservation!” The sounds of water are like a thread that runs through the whole record, it is a steady reminder of the underlying topic. We hope that we bridged the gap between conveying an important message and making an artwork that stands for itself too. Proceeds from the record go back to the projects that inspired it. We hope that many people will enjoy this music as much as we did making it.
Q. What can we expect next from you in the coming year?
We want to expand the collective. We’re looking at forming more beautiful partnerships. We are grateful to Viva con Agua x Chimperator for helping us release the first record. We hope to make more– perhaps the next one talks of blood and society.
Of course we hope to play some of our music live someday… But who knows when it is going to be possible for the faraway friends to meet in one place?
Q. What’s on each of your playlist at the moment?
Ditty: Lapsley, Julia Jacklin, Moses Sumney
Keno: Little Simz, Tobe Nwigwe, Damon Albarn
Q. Your parting insights.
Love thy neighbour and all creatures faraway.
To know more about Faraway Friends, checkout their Instagram here.
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