Environmentalist by day, musician by night. That’s Aditi Veena aka Ditty. Known for her love for nature and her attempts at preserving the environment, last month Ditty organised a tour of seven cities, titled ‘Songs For Forests’. Throughout the tour she travelled by train as much as possible, hosted outdoor events in nature and requested her audience to carpool. The objective? She and her team calculated the carbon footprint of the entire tour with the help of Greenlane. With these carbon emissions, Ditty plans to offset them on a piece of land... a local food forest.
Here’s a chat with the young singer who is making waves of change.
How did you put the ‘Songs For Forests’ tour together?
It was really spontaneous. I was here in India (she is currently based in Berlin) and was working with a management until two months ago and they kind of pulled out. So I had to bring this together myself. I think we announced about two weeks before the tour and it took about a month to put it together.
You travelled mostly by train....
The idea came from previous tours that I did which were damaging to the environment, because you’re taking these flights and you’re staying outside. It’s also damaging to your body and your mental health. The idea was to slowdown and also to bring people together outdoors because a lot of my music is inspired by the natural world. To play in those settings... feel the wind, hear birds chirping and playing after sunset.... The idea was to create this atmosphere and also to invite local environmentalists and showcase my film, which is about my last tour. (It’s not released online but Ditty hopes to release it in the next few weeks). We spoke to environmentalists, spoke about conscious living and community.
How did your audience respond?
It was really cool because everywhere it turned out to be different; there were wonderful people. Each time it was different. In Hyderabad we had somebody who was working with waste management. In Mumbai we had someone who is an eco-feminist, a woman from the Himalayas; her name is Aqui Thami. She runs something called The Sister Library which is an eco-feminist project. In Baroda there was Avanee Jain, who is from Upaj Palm from where they have people, who lease plots and turn it into farms.
The audience during Ditty’s tour in Delhi
The tour is also set to be carbon neutral.
As an environmentalist, carbon neutrality is just one aspect. The reason I chose to be carbon neutral is because I feel it’s a step in the correct direction. We have to think about how to lead a more responsible life, how we can contribute to a non-fossil fuel economy and industry. Carbon is like a bridge between life forms and art. There is so much carbon in our houses as well. Wood, air, our bodies, the food we eat, the fuel we burn.... In this tour we are calculating carbon emissions and finding a way to offset them.
How did you coordinate this?
Since the plan is to reduce emissions, I took as many trains as I could. I took only two flights. We also requested the audience to use public transportation or use carpool and some of them agreed. We are excited to see what happens next and now we are working with environmentalists to see where we can find some land to offset this carbon and plant a forest.
Your goal is to set-up a charity/organisation titled WeWild. What is the objective?
It is already registered. I am going to do my work through that organisation and hopefully in the future it can help other artistes or people. By the end of the year we will plant the first layer... the understory. A forest is quite a complex ecosystem. To create a forest you can’t just plant trees, you have to plant many supporting species and work with the soil.
How can people help you in this journey?
I am an artiste at the end of the day, so I guess connecting and listening is wonderful. They can find my music online, if they want to support the forest they can make donations.
Coming to music, what forms ‘Songs For Forests’?
I sang a bunch of songs from my previous records and a lot of new material that I haven’t managed to release because of the pandemic but I’m hoping that next year is going to be busier and I am going to release a new record and also recording another new one, which will be in Hindi. It was heart-touching because I did all of this without any label or an event agency.
Can you share a bit more about the unreleased records?
The first one that is coming out is called Skin and it will be out early next year. Skin talks a lot about the skin of the earth and also our skin. It talks about the different layers of how we treat ourselves, which is similar to how we treat earth. It’s similar to a capitalist mindset. There is another song called Mama, which is like being the voice of the earth. It talks about coming home to ourselves, about forests being cut down. I have worked with talented musicians and dancers to put this record together and every song is an audio-visual record. I don’t have any videos, yet I am excited about this.