Amrapali Shindhe is a musician, singer; composer from the city has created quite a fan following of her in the music scene. At the tender age of 15 she was the first person to convert 12th century philosopher Basavanna’s poems into music that a strong meaning to it. In chat with this artiste we find about her musical journey. A resident of UK for over eight years, Amrapali sang in the church as well the choir. She says, “I realised that I wanted to be a musician when turned 12. Music was something that I loved doing and wanted to do it for the rest of my life”.
Some times inspiration strikes you quite close to home and in Amrapali’s case, her grandfather. “My family is very artistic. I have one grandfather who is a folk singer and the other is an international portrait painter who has paintings hanging in the rashtrpathi Bhavan. These two men in my life have always believed in me and supported me through and through,” she adds. Amarpali also draws inspiration from popular artiste like Adele who has a huge role in her music career and her style, Whitney Houston, BB King, Buddy Guy. She also finds Asha Bhosle has lot of versatility as she sings both classic as well as disco songs. “My type of music can be classified into soul and pop but my song-writing is prominently soul and rnB.
Amrapali will be releasing her single sometime next month which is titled Someday she has written and composed. Video for the same are in the makings.
She took over the music scene when she released her first album Basava In You that is inspired by the poems of philosopher Basavanna. “Basava was the first person who introduced the idea of Parliament. But the sad fact is that even though he is known worldwide, people in India do not know about him. His four line poems called Vachanas are very simple and it is a universal thing. His poem talks about being a good human first which I think teens and millennial need to learn,” she explains. Her grandfather translated these poems into Hindi and sang them. He also encouraged Amrapali to sing them in Kannada with a westernised twist so that it appeals to the young crowd.Song-writing for her did not come naturally and had to be developed over a period of time. An alumni of Jyoti Nivas Pre-university College she says, “While writing songs there are three things that I keep in mind — emotions, words and pattern. The music that I compose need to connect to people on a emotional level.” Amrapali writes about the simple things like love, struggle and depression and generally this that happen in her day-to-day life. On the response she has gotten for her music she adds, “I have received different responses from different places. I have managed to make an identity for myself and people are able to differentiate what I sing, my style and how I sing. They appreciate the fact that I have my own identity”. When she is not busy composing or work on her music, Amrapali love reading poems, books as well as playing basketball. If she were given a choice to collaborate with one artiste, Masego is the first name she comes up with. She further adds, “I love his music and his works. He is diversely talented and the things he does are very groovy and catchy."
