JOIN USCouple making songs in Prakrit
The ancient Jain pilgrimage town where Emperor Chandragupta Maurya underwent the ritual of ‘Sallekhana’ along with this mentor Jain Muni Bhadrabahu atop a hill is now called Chandragiri.
The town, in the melee of modernity, did not lose sight of the great and ancient language ‘Prakrit’.
Two young music composers are making sure that the Prakrit language is being practised at least by those who love music. In fact, this town hosts the only Prakrit research centre in South India.
Sarwesh Jain, a former teacher at an engineering college, and his wife Sowmya Sarwesh have taken music-composing as their mainstay.
“We have composed 7 songs in Prakrit language and all of them are doing well on Youtube. Why Prakrit, you may wonder, especially when there is only a minuscule minority in the world who will understand the language, but that is not the objective -- keeping the full functionality of the language is. There are many others who in this job; our job was to keep it alive in the world of music,” Sarwesh says.
We are not scholars in Prakrit, but our mentor Swastisri Charukirthi Bhattaraka Swamiji of Shravanabelagola Jain Mutt, who saw the spark in us, gave us a few insights into Prakrit and got us enthusiastic about composing music in Prakrit.
It was tough but with his guidance and help, we could compose our first song in Prakrit, called ‘Visetta Kandotta Dalanuyaram’, which means 'This is a song describing Bahubali’s persona'. Sarwesh is modest about the popularity of his work, but the song has become a 'Suprabhatham' for almost every Jain in India and abroad.
The ‘varnane’ (description) has been taken from the composition of Nemichandra Siddhanta Chakravarthy, who was the guru of Chavundaraya, the king who had the Bahubali statue erected atop the ‘Doddabetta’ in Shravanabelagola.
This song changed the lives of Sarwesh and Sowmya as it helped them move from teaching to composing music for livelihood.
“We do not see much difference in teaching and music. But after composing 6 other songs in Prakrit, we found that it is true that historical and legendary themes are best composed and choreographed with traditional musical instruments, especially when it is composed in an ancient language such as Prakrit” says Sarwesh.
The song ‘Pasaha, Pasaha, Padamavam Padavammaha Maha Jinam’ became an anthem of the 'Mahamastakabhisham' at Shravanabelagola in 2018.
With the new-found popularity, they have launched themselves in the film music industry. “We have five films coming up. These are all in Kannada, but due to Covid-19, the films are now on the backburner, but chances are that they will revive by September end. We also did an ode to Puneet Rajkumar called ‘Appu fans’ which he appreciated very much,” Sarwesh told Showtime.
Sowmya was a homemaker before and after Sarwesh, she went full-steam into music composing. She also put her talents together to compose film songs. “So far, we have 200 songs composed for Kannada film industry. I leveraged the postgraduate-level studies in Kannada to compose songs and I found ideas and words coming effortlessly, which definitely was due to my education in Kannada”.