Singer-songwriter Aditi Veena said her song and the title of her latest album, 'Kali', is an ode to her breaking the shackles of the belief that bound her for most of her growing up years: because she is dark, she is ugly. The musician, now based out of Berlin, is back in Europe after touring India, promoting her album.

"Kali is a love letter to the earth and a beacon of hope in the times that we live in," said Aditi to PTI, over voice notes exchanged via WhatsApp.

Last December, when she performed at Freedom Park in Bengaluru, as part of Kantha, a flagship sub-festival at BLR Hubba 2024 that organised 16 days of music at the historic park, it became clear that the song went beyond personal.

Even in the acoustic version of 'Kali' that she sang at the festival, accompanied by hand-picked guitar, double bass and keyboards, the song was clearly a celebration she was drumming up for the countless women who stood their ground despite societal pressures.

Quite naturally, Delhi-born Aditi, aka Ditty , her on-stage moniker, chose International Women's Day to release her 10-song album, 'Kali', globally.

Those who have been following Aditi's work know that she may ground her song with her personal experiences, but she always connects them to a bigger picture.

A genre that she calls ' Earth songs ', which she has been bookmarking as her own since her very first song, 'Daddy's Little Girl'. Her first song is not only a eulogy to her father but also nature.

In fact, in her debut album, 'Poetry Ceylon', a very personal observation of her days in Sri Lanka, which also pushed her into the spotlight thanks to the breakout hit, 'Death Cab', she deftly interweaved personal with politics. The album talked about disappearing sparrows and forests, obnoxiously developing cities and polluted oceans.

"I wrote 'Poetry Ceylon' while I was working as an architect in Sri Lanka. I thought it was a paradise. But reality started to seep in. As an urban ecologist and architect, I saw a lot of things that shook me. For example, I saw that there was a huge amount of fishing. I saw forests were being cleared for rapid urbanisation," added Aditi.

'Kali' is no different either. For instance, her song 'Dunya (For Our Children)', draws our attention to how the geo-political atrocities of the world, like the genocide in Palestine, is destroying our world.

"For me, I think music blurs the boundaries. I am usually always starting with a personal experience, which gives me the opportunity to then connect it to the larger ongoing events in the world, or comment on the state of the world," said Aditi.

Giving an example from her latest album, Aditi talked about how the song 'Money' came to her when she went home after two weeks of tour to find a forest in her backyard gone.

"I was living in Goa at that time. In just two weeks, I could no longer gaze at the forest from my windows anymore," said Aditi.

That extremely frustrating experience, she said, translated into a song that defiantly declares "...there will be things money cannot buy".

With 'Kali' she also embraces the power of mother tongue, where words could convey emotions more convincingly. Ironically, the album produced by German record label Clouds Hill Records, is in Hindi and English.

"It was really exciting for me as an artist to explore a language that is so close yet so new. Much of our language is intertwined with our culture and the feeling is quite marvelous. I also think the traditional Eastern languages have a lot more depth than European languages," said Aditi.

Only when she started writing in Hindi, said Aditi, she realised how certain words hit differently when said in it.

"Writing 'Azadi' in Hindi came as a really big surprise. Writing about the mountains in English versus writing about 'parvat', you know, is a totally different feeling, because the word itself embodies the culture that we are a part of," said Aditi.

Back in Berlin, Aditi is now preparing for her 'big Germany tour', starting from March 28, which will see her performing in 13 German big cities and the Czech Republic's Prague.

She hopes this tour too will spark more conversations around climate change, sacred ecology, communal regeneration and transformation.

"I find it really beautiful that music becomes a tool to speak about these topics and to say things which are otherwise not easy to express. To speak of geopolitical injustices, for example, is challenging in day-to-day life. But through writing, through poetry, through music, it's easier to touch people and make them feel something," said Aditi.