Rashmi Shaarvi, an employee of TCS, did not imagine her song on the coronavirus, recorded a few weeks ago to create awareness on Instagram, would catch the attention of so many people including the Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra.
“I cannot believe I got 15,000 likes and so many re-tweets,” says Rashmi. “It is like a dream, I keep checking my Insta page to see if it is real. My colleagues and seniors have appreciated the song.”
Rashmi says the song came to her when she was chilling at home. “I was humming Camila Cabello’s song, ‘Havana.’ I realised Havana rhymed with Corona, and I started singing replacing Havana with Corona. Using the same tune, I developed simple lyrics to spread awareness about coronavirus and posted it online. I have had responses to my song from UK, US, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. I am thankful to Anand Mahindra who uploaded the song on twitter.”
The singer says she switches genres according to the mood of the song. “I have a multi-genre exposure and I mix Rock, Pop and Funk depending on the tune. I would call my music experimental.”
Rashmi released two originals last year. “In January 2019 I released ‘Namma Tumakuru,’ a light rock number. It did very well online. In fact, the whole of Tumakuru knows me by this song. My second release was ‘The IT Song’ released in August 2019. The song, with funk guitar riffs, spoke of the highs and lows of the IT world and was well received.”
Rashmi, who also did playback for the 2018 Kannada movie MMCH, has two remixes to her credit. “The musical medley attracts younger listeners,” says Rashmi who has done a remix of Maroon 5’s ‘Girls Like You’ with the Kannada song ‘Hoovina Baanadante,’ and another with Christina Perri’s ‘A Thousand Years’ and two Kannada songs by Raghu Dixit — ‘Munjane Manjalli’ and ‘Preetiya Hesaralli.’
Born and brought up in Tumakuru, Rashmi moved to Bengaluru after completing her engineering from SIT in 2012. Her parents are music connoisseurs and Rashmi learnt Carnatic music under Tumkur Vidwan Shivakumar for more than a decade from the age of seven. “I was part of my college band, Nishaad in engineering college and we were exposed to all genres. We took part in inter-collegiate competitions.”
Future plans for Rashmi include experimenting with different Kannada dialects. “I love Kannada, and would like to savour the flavour of the language from different parts of Karnataka. I am working on a love song in Kundapura Kannada and another song in Kannada from Hubli Uttara Karnataka describing the life of people there.”