Swarathma leads from the front at a musical cleanathon

Their songs hold a mirror to the society, and Swarathma often goes beyond the confines of a recording studio and uses its music as a mode of activism and motivation. A recent example of this was on Sunday morning, when bandmates Vasu Dixit, Jishnu Dasgupta, Sanjeev Nayak and Joel Milan Baptist were up bright and early to be present at a ‘musical cleanathon’ at Gautham Nagar, where NGO Let’s Be The Change was cleaning up and beautifying a stretch of land near the RMC Yard.
Jishnu has known Anirudh Dutt of Let’s Be The Change for a few years, and he says that the band chose to perform for them as a way to say thanks from the city. “For the last 3-4 years, there have been young people who have been taking time off on Sundays to clean up and beautify dark, ugly, stinky places in the city that we all pretend to not notice. We, as a band, wanted to give music back to these kids, who are literally getting their hands dirty and doing something for the city. I got in touch with Anirudh and learnt about the cleanup of the 150-metre stretch at Gautham Nagar, which used to be a garbage dump. They put a system in place for the garbage to be cleared. On Sunday, they painted the wall red, which is when we went there and did an acoustic jam for them,” says Jishnu.
Anirudh couldn’t be happier with the collaboration. “The event was a success,” he tells us, adding, “Jishnu sir was interested in what we were doing and wanted do an event together. I came up with the concept of a musical cleanathon, wherein we could motivate people in a different way to keep their locality clean. It was just something we were trying and the result was amazing. Everyone is looking for something new and this collaboration has encouraged a lot of people to do similar spot fixes in their wards. We will continue to do similar events in the future.”