For a generation growing up with heatwaves, disappearing green spaces and water shortages, climate change isn’t some far-off future. It is already here — in the air they breathe, the water they struggle to find and the landscapes they watch disappear. Now, six young Indian artistes are putting that reality to a beat.
Because i made this song and I’m reading more about it,” he says, i’m able to have more conversations.
“We believe art is political, and art is powerful,” says Abisha of Sollisai Sistahs. For her, that is where a song can go beyond awareness — “to question, connect and push people towards action”. That growing awareness connects with what Abisha describes as noticing “things we might have otherwise taken for granted” — the heat, disappearing water bodies, changing weather and the ways people are adapting.
Knowing about the climate crisis is one thing; feeling connected enough to respond is another. “Music can take an issue that feels distant or overwhelming and make it personal and emotional. Making the songs has also changed the way the artistes look at the world around them. For Kali, some of the practices were already part of everyday life, but the song gave those choices a deeper context. “Now I’m also looking at it from a much deeper level and seeing it through a different lens, which has opened up more conversations for me, including about AI, its water consumption and its impact on heat.
So I’ve changed my approach to how I make songs now and am keeping it simple,” he says. For Kali, reaching people also means changing how the message is delivered. “I feel not a lot of people take climate change seriously. A song with a little bit of humour, a little bit of reality in it might make people think. My music is for the working-class people. Gamak sees emotional connection as the real power of music. “I don’t think one song can solve a problem as large as climate change. Tamil Nadu’s all-women rap collective Sollisai Sistahs brings Tamil and Kannada folk with rap in Veppa Marathadiyila, or ‘under the neem tree’. The neem tree becomes a symbol of shade, community and a shared natural space that is increasingly disappearing. The track explores urban heat, water scarcity, disappearing lakes and trees, floods and the unequal impact of climate change, asking who gets affected first — and who is left to deal with the consequences. The song also connects the climate crisis with caste, class, gender and labour, foregrounding marginalised communities that have contributed least to the crisis but often bear its heaviest costs. Mitti, Gamak Sinha’s Hindi track, gives the soil a voice. Instead of looking at climate change purely through its impact on humans, the song imagines the ground beneath us as a silent witness to discovery, creation, exploitation and destruction. Soil becomes more than a resource: it holds memories, supports life and carries the consequences of human choices. By allowing the land to tell its own story, Gamak turns an often-overlooked part of the climate conversation into something intimate and personal.