Indian Singer Joi Barua Takes Indian Music to the Stars in NASA-Linked Cosmic Project

Indian singer-composer Joi Barua has joined an international performing arts project that brings together music, animation and astrophysics, with his work becoming part of Cosmic Rhapsody, a multimedia production linked to NASA’s COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) mission.

The Assam-born artiste has composed the melodies for two key songs, “Star Among the Cosmic Clouds” and “Confetti Storm”, and co-composed “Confetti Star-Ion” with French composer, orchestrator and arranger Manu Martin.

Created by storytelling and songwriting duo Susan Lim and Christina Teenz Tan, Cosmic Rhapsody combines live symphonic music, cinematic animation and pop songs. Its fictional narrative follows a human and an AI travelling into space in search of solutions to Earth’s environmental crisis.

The connection with NASA’s COSI mission emerged when Lim and Tan visited the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, where the mission is being developed. They found a scientific link between the project's climax, which depicts a dying star exploding and scattering stardust, and COSI's study of soft gamma rays produced by cosmic events.

COSI is designed to investigate how elements such as iron and aluminium are created in stellar explosions, offering scientists a way to study the origins of elements that eventually become part of stars, planets and other matter.

For Barua, the project also has a personal history. His association with Lim began after she saw him perform in Singapore, where he presented a song about Assamese cultural figure Bishnu Prasad Rabha. Barua recalled that the work involved animator-director Samudra Kajal Saikia, writer Ibson and saxophonist George Brooks. That creative connection later developed into his involvement with Cosmic Rhapsody.

Barua said the project reflects the possibility of bringing scientific ideas and artistic imagination together. He also highlighted his collaboration with Saikia, another artist from Assam who is creating the project's visuals.

The production is scheduled for its US premiere at the Hollywood Bowl on July 27, 2027, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and acclaimed pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. The performance will be followed by the planned orbital launch of NASA's COSI mission from Cape Canaveral.

Barua has previously worked as a playback singer, vocal arranger and background singer on films including Agent Vinod, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, DevD, Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. and Lage Raho Munna Bhai. He also sang “O Meri Laila” from Laila Majnu and composed a song for Shonali Bose's Margarita with a Straw.

For the musician, the idea of a supernova is not simply about destruction. He has described the scattering of stardust as an act of creation, providing the emotional foundation for the melodies he contributed to the project.