About
Chinmayi Tripathi is a Mumbai-based singer, songwriter, composer and poet, originally from Sagar in Madhya Pradesh. She works at the intersection of literary text and contemporary sound, and is the founder of Kavyaraag, a platform she established in 2018 to present Hindi and Urdu poetry through musical composition. She is also a co-founder of Songdew, a digital platform supporting independent musicians.
Through Kavyaraag, Tripathi reinterprets the works of poets such as Mahadevi Verma, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar', Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Bashir Badr in modern melodic frameworks, drawing on classical and semi-classical influences. She has sung for cinema, including the title track of Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari, and released independent songs such as Dasht-e-Tanhayi and Khaali Samay Mein, contributing to India's independent music ecosystem.
The artistry
Tripathi's practice sits at the intersection of classical Hindustani training and contemporary independent music production. She began formal vocal training at age six under Dr Alakh Nanda Palnitkar, head of the Department of Music at Sagar University, studying ragas through her school years before developing her own compositional voice in college. Her approach to composition is text-first: she selects a poem based on personal resonance and emotional register, then finds the melodic and rhythmic framework that allows the poem's meaning and cadence to carry without ornamentation obscuring it. The result is music that borrows the warmth of semi-classical Hindustani tonality while sitting in an accessible contemporary idiom rather than the formal concert-classical tradition. Her vocal timbre is warm and conversational, deliberately non-operatic, so that the words of the poets remain foregrounded. Under the Kavyaraag banner, she and composer Joell Mukherjii have produced hundreds of songs spanning the Chhayavad canon (Mahadevi Verma, Nirala, Dinkar, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Dharamvir Bharati), classical saint-poets (Kabir, Meera, Bulle Shah, Amir Khusrau), Urdu poets (Faiz, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Nida Fazli, Parveen Shakir, Bashir Badr) and new-age Hindi poets (Anamika, Vinod Kumar Shukla, Naresh Saxena, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena). She also writes her own poetry and has integrated original verse into Kavyaraag's output alongside the canonical texts. Earlier in her career she fronted a fusion band called Spice Route, which played 80 per cent original compositions and a small number of classical numbers, providing her with a live-ensemble foundation before Kavyaraag's duo format with Mukherjii became the primary vehicle.
Repertoire
Performance
Publications & productions
Career & milestones
Festivals & appearances
Lineage & training
Recognition
In the press
Affiliations
Beyond the stage
Co-founding Songdew - Co-founded Songdew, a digital platform for independent musicians in India, and served as Co-Founder and Director of Marketing and Business Development. The platform helped launch and distribute music by a large number of independent artists before Tripathi transitioned full-time to Kavyaraag.
Original poetry - Writes and publishes her own Hindi poetry under the Kavyaraag collective alongside the canonical poets she sets to music. The Kavyaraag Instagram also features her original verse (e.g. Chaah ki Pyaali).
Literary family heritage - Her father Dr Radha Vallabh Tripathi is an eminent Sanskrit scholar known for pioneering work on Natya Shastra; her mother taught Hindi literature. This literary household was the direct origin of her relationship with Hindi and Urdu poetry, which she describes as a homecoming rather than a discovery.
Tripathi offers a host a distinctive poetry-in-music recital, setting classic and modern verse to contemporary melody. Ideal for literary, semi-classical and independent-music programmes. [Atlas Assessment]
Tripathi's significance lies in a specific and under-occupied position: the practitioner who treats the Hindi and Urdu literary canon not as archive material for scholars but as living lyric source for contemporary listeners. The Kavyaraag project, which she launched in 2018 through a crowdfunding campaign on Wishberry, was built on the observation that vast bodies of great Hindi poetry by the Chhayavad generation (Nirala, Mahadevi Verma, Dinkar, Bachchan) and by major Urdu poets (Faiz, Firaq, Parveen Shakir) were circulating largely unseen among younger audiences, despite their emotional and literary potency. By setting this poetry to melody, she created a distribution mechanism: the song reaches listeners who would not seek out the poem in a book or a mushaira. The Scroll.in feature on her work (November 2017) captured the foundational insight that motivated the project: a friend's genuine ignorance of 'who is Nirala?' Her response was not condescension but production. The Vishnu Prabhakar Puraskar, awarded for her work in music and poetry, represents formal recognition of this bridging function from within the Hindi literary establishment. Her parallel work as co-founder of Songdew, an independent music platform that has supported hundreds of artists, places her also in the music-infrastructure layer of the Indian independent music ecosystem. The first Kavyaraag album featured musicians including Baiju Dharmajan, Sharat Chandra Shrivastav (Mrigya), Susmit Sen and Shujaat Khan, and actor-singer Piyush Mishra, indicating the cultural credibility the project attracted from its earliest phase. Her family background is unusual and worth noting: her father, Dr Radha Vallabh Tripathi, is an eminent Sanskrit scholar and writer whose pioneering work on Natya Shastra shaped her early relationship with literary text; her mother taught Hindi literature. The poetry was not a discovery for her but a homecoming.