Deep Blue She
A music video by Tanuja Desai Hidier, featuring:
ANOUSHKA SHANKAR on Sitar
JON FADDIS on Trumpet
AMITA SWADHIN on Testimony
VALARIE KAUR on Watch Night Service
TANUJA DESAI HIDIER on Vox
& The We
A note from Tanuja: Happy Women’s History Month—Every Month!
The “Deep Blue She” music video-remix PSA is a grassroots/DIY/collective project featuring 100+ activist artists, musicians and writers, mostly women of color. The video was filmed over the course of a year, mostly on cellphones, by us, all over the world, the idea being that we choose the frame, the angle, the light. We tell our stories ourselves.
Please join the #mergrrrlmovement and dive in. We’re hoping to get eyes and ears on this, and concrete help to the causes: Proceeds from sales of the remix on Bandcamp go to rotating charities—pick your price—beginning with the Mahendra Singh Foundation (founder, activist and acid attack survivor MoniCa Singh is in the video, too).
We’re open to what the next charity to receive funds will be. If this video can be a useful tool for you, please email me at ABCreativeD@ThisIsTanuja.com.
Thank you,
Tanuja
Those involved in the production’s creation include:
- Anoushka Shankar (six-time Grammy nominated sitar player/composer)
- Elizabeth Acevedo (writer/Poetry Slam Champion)
- Priyanka Bose (activist/actor from the film Lion)
- Reshma Gajjar (artist/actor/dancer; The Girl in the Yellow Dress La La Land)
- Shenaz Treasury (actor/TV host/writer/travel vlogger Travel With Shenaz; in The Big Sick)
- Fawzia Mirza (actor/writer/producer/creator; cowrote, produced, stars in Signature Move with Shabana Azmi)
- Abhijeet Rane (model/drag queen/artist/activist)
- Leslee Udwin (filmmaker/human rights activist; director of India’s Daughter)
- Ivy Meeropol (documentary filmmaker; Indian Point, The Hill, Heir to an Execution)
- Kayhan Irani (storyteller/community engagement strategist/ 2016 White House Champion of Change)
- MoniCa Singh (influencer/international philanthropist and president and founder of The Mahendra Singh Foundation to aid girls/women who, like her, are acid attack survivors/ have survived such kinds of trauma)
- Mercedes Terrance (an Akwesasne Mohawk member of The Rolling Resistance)
- Smriti Mundhra (filmmaker; Best Director with Sarita Khurana at the Tribeca Film Fest for their doc Suitable Girl!)
And award-winning writers Marina Budhos, Gemma Weekes, Kat Beyer, Uma Krishnaswami, Elizabeth Acevedo, Cynthia Leitich-Smith, Paula Yoo, Sharbari Ahmed, Mitali Desai, Eliot Schrefer, Mira Kamdar, Nico Medina, Billy Merrell sand Bill Konigsberg.