Her voice, rippling with an otherworldly timbre, swirls around dreamy guitar chords, and it leaves listeners imagining her floating away to some cosmic nightscape at the end of a song. But Ditty (aka Aditi Veena) has her feet firmly planted on Earth, and the Goa-based musician and urban ecologist taps into the synergy between these two fields while living in tune with this planet’s rhythm. Verve has a heart to heart with the singer of ‘earthsongs’….
How do you see music and the Earth being connected?
In some ways, I think of the Earth as a beautiful piece of music. The natural cycles of water and nitrogen, the rhythms of the yearly revolutions around the sun and rotations around its axis are its punctuations in time.
The dance of our breaths, the rise and fall of the sun, tidal waves, the various patterns over time and space; these are rhythms that repeat indefinitely, just like a beautiful drum circle where foundational beats are laid and others can float off from there.
Is there an early experience or memory related to music/sound that has remained a consistent influence?
My family loved to travel. We were a big Indian family, with lots of us tiny tots, and we used to go up to the hills often. My earliest sonic memories are of crickets and flowing rivers — we would jump into the rivers with crates of warm mangoes, which we cooled off in the water and then feasted on.
I often like to shut myself up somewhere silent if I’m in the city while writing songs. Else, I am mesmerised by the sound of water. Rain, thunderstorms, rivers and trickling streams fascinate me. I love to write by the sea.
What is the most memorable concert/ live performance you’ve been to?
In my teenage years, a senior from school — Sneha Ravichandran — sang The Carpenters at the morning assembly. I was deeply moved, and I knew then that I wanted my voice to have the same effect as hers. So, I started singing.
How do you use your songs as tools for protest?
This story is from the April - May 2019 edition of Verve.
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This story is from the April - May 2019 edition of Verve.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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