Watch: This woman musician’s video for her song is a subversive nod to feminism
Musician Tarana Marwah terms it a ‘slap back to patriarchy’.
Komorebi is the musical love-child of 23-year-old Tarana Marwah from Delhi. The musical act combines her penchant for music, and her musical genius, with her love for Japanese anime and manga, which becomes blatantly clear in her moniker – “Komorebi” is a Japanese word for sunlight that filters through the leaves.
Komorebi’s music plays out electronica music textures and harmonies that are filtered through eccentric beats and synth work, to create beautiful, immersive sonic dreamscapes. Her new track Time, featuring Sohrab Nicholson, is no different.
The beautiful, dark video (above), animated by Siddhant Agarwal, is set in a dystopian-looking world, with a character greatly resembling Marwah walking through a series of covertly unsettling visuals.
She told Scroll.in that the video was inspired by anime and manga elements, and the works of directors like Satoshi Kon and Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki. “Elements nostalgic to Japanese culture continue to pop up in my art,” said Marwha.
She described Time as “..a slap back to patriarchy with a subversive, feminist video, which shows a sharp dichotomy between pleasant and the uncomfortable.” The video hints at themes of domestic violence, and capitalistic industries, where art tends to lose its meaning to money, and sexism often marks its presence.
The Indian music scene, said Marwha, is no different. “We (women) hit walls where we go. But the way to tackle that, in my opinion, is to talk less and do more. Speak with your actions and your brilliance.”
“All art exists in the realm of politics, though, so you can’t really escape,” Marwah added wistfully. “But at the same time I wanted to show that everyone escapes to their own world. This is mine.”
The song’s lyrics clearly portray the discomfort that Marwah speaks of:
“Don’t you tell me what to do
Pay the bills so you’ll see through
Money doesn’t rule the world
Too bad then that you’re a girl
...
Time to call the children home
Time to disconnect our phones
Time to pack up all our clothes
Time to record our woes
Call a Lawyer, get it signed
We don’t have reasons, we don’t have time.”
The single is part of her new album Soliloquy, which is slated for release on September 29. The experimental album, according to Komorebi, is “personal, political, depressive, obscene and honest” and, for the first time, includes her vocals on every single track.
