One of Falguni Shah’s earliest memories is hiding in a bull-drawn cart full of wheat and millets, watching farmers bring in the harvest on her grandfather’s land in Gujarat in northwest India.
It was the 1980s, and three-year-old Falu, as she’s professionally known today, had no notion yet of the Grammy Award that lay in her future, or the musical collaborations with artists like Ustad Sultan Khan, Jon Batiste, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Every summer, she would witness the choreography of sowing and harvesting, and the anxiety in between.
“If there was no rain, the farmers were tensed. But because they had millets, they could get by.”
This ability to provide a harvest even in poor conditions is part of why Falu loved the idea to record a song about millets, in collaboration with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
‘Abundance in Millets’ was conceived after the Prime Minister tweeted about Falu’s Grammy win for best children’s album in 2022 and later invited her to meet him. They discussed the power of music to reach people worldwide and he encouraged her to write a song about the role millets can play in ending hunger. Falu, in turn, invited the Prime Minister to contribute to the lyrics, which he did.
Fusing Eastern and Western influences, the song in Hindi and English is based on a traditional Indian raga, a melody structure that – like millets – is thousands of years old.
“This song again represents that when cultures come together musically and food wise, magical things can happen.”
Her family has always cooked with millets, she says. “In winter, my mother would feed us Bajra (pearl millet) roti, because it warms the body.” In summer, it was Ragi (finger millet) with rice and lentils. “We didn't think, ‘Oh my God, it has nutritional value.’ These dishes were a way of living for us.”
But today, Falu wants everybody to know how nutritious they are. “It's gluten free and high in protein. And it can be grown in low-rainfall regions around the world,” she says from her current home in New York. “So farmers with little resources can grow it, feed their children and sell it to keep their families going.”
“We’re going to need more of that”, she says, “especially in light of global warming. Even in societies of abundance.”
Her goal is to get more farmers and consumers to give millets a try.
“If with this song a single family does not go hungry, I think my music has done a fabulous job.”
