In many ways, Aswekeepsearching’s new single Ovotaar, made in collaboration with Shankuraj Konwar, marks a key moment in Indian music. It brings together a cosmopolitan band that has made its mark on the global stage, with a musician who has found immense fame focussed entirely in his home state of Assam.
At a time when artists carefully choose collaborations that suit their vision of image and styles, here is an experimental band setting aside these norms to appreciate the undeniable power of a people’s voice. Having shared the stage for the first time at No Binary’s multi genre festival, FUSEFEST, aswekeepsearching and Shankuraj are all set to smash barriers of genre and region with Ovotaar, a beautiful song calling upon the almighty to open our minds beyond boundaries.
Lyrically, Ovotaar speaks of a protagonist, praying to the almighty to revisit the human realm in the form of an "avatar" and purge all darkness and chaos therein. This conceptually spoke to all the members of the band, who spent the following months in a constant effort to get it to sound just the way they all wanted it to.
In keeping with the premise of the track, the artwork beautifully depicts the transformative process of a man into a tree, making him the Ovotaar. "Humans today are losing their very essence of life: humanity, letting their souls fall into darkness. On the other hand, nature goes berserk just to purge this darkness. We humans seek the light to guide us in this journey and as we learn the insignificance of human life when viewed through the grand lens of the universe, we pray to the avatar to show us the solution to this darkness residing within us. Unknown to us, the key fact that we have forgotten is that the light is within us and all the answers lie at the feet of nature. We are nature, we are the earth, we are the universe and if you want, you can be the Ovotaar to put everything at peace." says Tanaya Sharma, the artist behind the artwork.