Batohi
Traveler
Batohi is my folk band, where I blend traditional folk tunes from Bihar with modern music production, creating my own narrative style. With Batohi, I want to bring a fresh approach to Bhojpuri pop culture and remove existing perceptions that plague the image around it.
I self released my first folk single - Mope Daar Gayo on 7th March 2020 across all global streaming platforms.
I have a line up of songs being readied up for an album release. Watch this space or more musical goodness
Mope Daar Gayo
"Mope Daar Gayo” is a contemporary rendition of an Indian classical thumri in Raga Pilu.
Through a naughty discourse, this song quintessentially depicts the playful and affectionate bond that Radha and Krishna share and their nonk-jhonk while playing Holi.
Experimenting with additional lyrics, organic sounds, rhythm patterns and mouth percussion maintained its original rawness while making a traditional slow moving thumri sound upbeat but yet romantic.
“Peet Chunariya… aayil phaguni bayaar” signals the arrival of spring—Basant Ritu—through the language of folk memory. The yellow dupatta becomes a metaphor for the season itself: warmth, bloom, and quiet anticipation. The basanti bayaar, the soft spring breeze, carries with it not just fragrance and color, but an emotional shift—towards love, playfulness, and creative renewal, much like the spirit of Holi.From an ethnographic lens, such songs are not merely lyrical expressions; they are lived archives. In my own town, the blooming of Amaltas—its cascading yellow flowers like chandeliers—visually echoes the imagery embedded in these verses. The landscape and the song mirror each other.Folk traditions across regions like Bihar encode ecological knowledge—of seasons, crops, flowering cycles—within poetic forms. References to winds, trees, and colors are not incidental; they map local topography and vegetation. In this sense, folk songs and lores function as an original knowledge system—an oral encyclopedia—preserving and transmitting environmental awareness, cultural memory, and emotional life across generations.