In 1992, Anand Bazaar Patrika, the very popular Bengali daily came up with an article titled “Kinte Paro Kontho Amar, Amake Noi” (You can buy my tunes, not my voice) 1. The article heralded a new voice and a new wave in Bengali music that was brought in by the music of Kabir Suman (then Suman Chattopadhyay). ABP called this music as the fresh breeze blowing through the city filling the musical void that had existed before. It was a void a new voice had now dared to fill. It was also an urban city figure not seen before; a singer songwriter who became immediately popular amongst both the young as well as the educated Bhadralok. This article asks some important questions: What was the pre-history that led to the acceptance of Kabir Suman, a singer songwriter who sang in Bengali and the subsequent music scene?
 What were the conditions that led to the youth’s need to find a star or icon that was to sing in their vernacular language? What was it that separated the folk rock and yet urban musical style of Kabir Suman from the musicians before and after his time?

 To understand the popularity of a Bengali urban musician in the nineties using guitar and singing about the everyday of the city one must go back a few years. Kabir Suman was not the first youth rock icon. But he was certainly the first one to sing in a regional language and be perceived as a star. To contextualize the rhetorical comment in the ABP article about the arrival of new wave music, one can say that Kabir Suman’s arrival was the result of a sub-culture that was created around the youth back in the sixties, back in the time when Radio Ceylon would be awaited on III megahertz.
Siddharth Bhatia in his book India Psychedelic writes about the year 1967 as an important year for the “fledgling pop- rock business in India”. 2 It was the time where beat culture had already seeped in the cities. In 1967 groups moved from playing in restaurants and college parties to getting offers from recording companies. 1967, Bhatia writes was also the year of two institutions associated with the development of pop music in India, ‘Simla Beat Concert’ and Junior Statesman magazine. (Bhatia 48) Simla Beat contest was started by Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) as the biggest battle of bands contest in India to promote its menthol tipped cigarette brand ‘Simla’.

For three years from 1968 to 1972 Simla Beat sponsored the battle of bands contest. Calcutta was at the center of this, where in 1970 and 1971 the contest winners had to go to Calcutta to record a compilation of songs on vinyl. It was a coveted deal for the early Indian bands that existed even though the record cover gave little information about them except the city the bands came from. The title of the 45-rpm record was ‘Simla Beat’ followed by the year and it had contestant bands singing covers of well-known rock and pop songs. 3. The contest became very popular and created an actual youth musical culture in India, one that was set apart from mainstream musical tastes like Hindi film music. This musical scene was to continue and thrive in niche circles for the English-speaking youth of India right up to the eighties.4 While the Simla Beat did not create a singular star or idol, it was an impetus for musicians to practice rock music and be recorded by the Gramophone Company of India whose headquarters were in Dumdum, Calcutta. It is also to be noted that 1968 was the year the Beatles had their stint at Rishikesh and 1972 was the year rock band Led Zeppelin were stated to have come to Bombay and even performed an impromptu concert at a Colaba pub called Slip Disc.5 Both the events created a sense of anticipation among the musicians singing and listening to rock music especially as JS or Junior Statesman (the first youth magazine in India published between 1967 to 1976 under the aegis of The Statesman) was the only magazine to cover the Led Zeppelin concert.

While this music scene seemed promising it was primarily oriented towards English music and that too covers of artists like CCR, The Beatles, Rolling Stones and others. It remained popular in elite circles, as rock culture was not yet the predominant youth culture in India. It leads one to the question as to who was to be an indigenous rock star and what was their language? What would fulfill the void of original music in Calcutta? What was the kind of music that was awaited by the audiences who had been exposed to the Simla Beat and JS? This essay tries to understand the void that is filled with the advent of vernacular bands and singer songwriters. It sees this strain of music and public discourse around it as subversion of the larger national taste of ‘film music’ and the more local dominant of non-classical popular Bengali music.

The Myriad Sounds of Park Street and Calcutta: The Sixties to The Early Nineties

The geographical center of the city, Park Street and Chowringhee housed the clubs and their elite culture left behind by the British. The Anglo-Indian community had the best vocalists, pianists, violinists schooled in Western Classical music. The ballroom lights of Grand Hotel and The Great Eastern hotel shimmered with the sound of live bands playing classic Jazz like most big cities of the world. Even till this day when the Grand Hotel only has memories of its old glory, there is Carlton Kitto, legendary Bebop Jazz guitarist who can be found holding forth the live act on Saturday evenings. Park Street in Calcutta was unlike any other city dotted with nightclubs and restaurants, the musical notes of jazz and Bebop floating down the street with its distinct urban experience. At the other end of the street close to the Asiatic Society where archives and documents of Indian history and Indology were stocked was the popular pub Trincas. By the time the sixties arrived, the ownership of Trincas had changed hands and new music promised to add to the soundscape of the city. In 1969 Usha Iyer started performing, a Sari clad woman with an unfeminine voice, a baritone that could draw even the most disinterested passerby into the high-ceilinged world of Trincas. The music had changed, pop and the swinging sixties had arrived. But it arrived only in Park Street and the elite clubs amongst the English educated.
Outside in the streets and the narrow decrepit lines the turmoil of the seventies was gathering, and Calcutta was never to be the same. The Naxalite Movement and ideas of an equal society based on radical left politics had flooded the dim hostel rooms and smoke lit cafeterias of Presidency College in North Calcutta and it was spreading among University students across Bengal and to colleges like St Stephens in Delhi. After the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the geography of the city changed. With the massive flux of refugees, Calcutta spread further south along with camps with hurriedly made shanties, new buildings that rose to keep up with the new settlers. The erstwhile colonial city of the Sahibs, the Anglo Indians, the Jews, the Parsis and the post-partition city of both Bengals were all hustling for space.

The aural and visual landscape of the city was changing, refashioning itself following large-scale migration from East Bengal. The music of the sixties was relegated to the clubs now. The old colonial architecture of the city was also witnessing a new emerging cosmopolitan city. Where urbanity was milling with real stories of lack, political disenchantment, unemployment and migration. When entertainment tax levied by the Left Front Government in the seventies muffled the sound of live jazz, many of the legendary jazz players left for better work opportunities in the Bombay film industry.

In Calcutta, the listenership was inclined towards ‘A_d_h_u_n_i_k_’ or modern non-film music that had flooded the market. ‘A_d_h_u_n_i_k_’ or modern songs were about love, nostalgia and the glorious past of Bengal and followed a similar melody structure as film songs. Musically Calcutta was no longer what it was with Park Street losing its vibrancy and the audiences becoming invisible and disinterested. Calcutta needed to sing a different tune, a tune woven with volatility and violence. It was a society where the young were subdued and betrayed by the State and needed music that could represent this crisis. This is what led to the beginnings of new wave music.

The song “The runway lies empty spreading only nothingness” released on EP 45 rpm by Mohiner Ghoraguli captured the desolate city of that time, the city that was being nudged towards hopelessness.10 Inspired by the sixties protest music of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, in 1977 the first Bengali band from Calcutta, Mohiner Ghoraguli (Sea’s horses; a phrase from modernist poet Jibanananda Das’s poem) worded their revolution in music. Performing between 1976-81 in Calcutta (they were said to be active during the time the Naxabadi uprising) they came out with 3 records. The release of their record Sambigna Pakhikul o Kolkata Bishayak (About Calcutta and anxious flights) in 1977 was accompanied with a pamphlet about who and what Mohiner Ghoraguli was. The pamphlet was a manifesto that established the kind of music they were set to stand for; music that was going to represent the time they were living through. The lyrics and the music were a radical refashioning of urban sound that spoke of existentialism, alienation, disenchantment with communist politics and non-belonging to the city that they inhabited. Images of the anxious city crisscrossed by tramlines and misty uncertain mornings were evoked in their songs. The band released two records neither of which was commercially successful at all.The band with that line up dissolved leaving behind a mythology around their music kept live through bootlegged records, personal recordings of their live concerts, which was to later influence the next generations of Bengali music. Most importantly they gave a sense of what a band or a singer songwriter was for the new audiences.

The predominant band of the eighties was High, who sang in English and retained a cult following amongst English music listening audience. Founded in the early 1974 by Dilip Balakrishnan, High brought together Nondon Bagchi, Adi Irani and Lew Hilt, all veterans of Calcutta’s rich musical scene, the band distinguished itself by also playing original compositions including an opera. The band drew its inspiration from western rock bands like The Band, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead and Cream. The band had its precedents in a band called Great Bear who have been unofficially eulogized as one of the first Indian bands. Before High and Great Bear, Dilip Balakrishnan played guitar for another band called The Cavaliers in 1967 that was known as the first ‘beat’ group or The Beatles inspired band in India. After The Cavaliers split in 1968, Balakirshnan formed the band Great Bear in 1969.  Great Bear was known for experimental rock and became a legend established through word of mouth amongst the rock music fans across the cities of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. While the band dissolved and its members left the city, both Dilip Balakrishnan and Nondon Bagchi stayed back in Calcutta formed a new line up that was going to High.  Junior Statesman the youth magazine that caught the pulse of the fifteen- to twenty-five-year-olds also held several concerts in Calcutta with the help of corporate sponsorship. High was a regular in these concerts forming their own audience. It held the promise of the creation of a music scene and a new audience except that was not meant to be at that time. The life of the band High, ended prematurely as their lead man who had brought them together Dilip Balakrishnan died in the early nineties. Whereas High’s tenure ended with Balakrishnan’s death in 1990, the city seemed to open up to this youth culture. The sound of the city was soon to be transformed in the years to come that would eventually pave the way for new wave music of the nineties.

The year 1991 introduced Suman Chatterjee’s (who later calls himself Kabir Suman) music to the live music scene. Kabir Suman’s style was different from band music; it was one-man show, it was vernacular and familiar to the audiences with resonances of the style of a folk singer.

I am a city minstrel
I follow the dharma of the song
They think Sumon writes this song
I say it is Lalon
(Kabir Suman, Nagorik Kobiyal HMV 2001) 6

With the music of Kabir Suman, a singer songwriter writing in what came to be popularly categorized as Jibonmukhi Gaan, or songs of everyday modern existence, the voice of the alternative came into the semi popular listening domain. Already performing at local colony functions, his first album (Tomake Chai / Want You) released by HMV in 1992 with sufficient publicity and media coverage. The singer songwriter had captured the public imagination even in local concerts in a way that no early bands or musicians singing in vernacular had. The primary reason of this was the simplicity of the tune and the poetic Bengali language that was used.

On the walk to a forgotten Calcutta 7
Old new faces buildings homes monuments
In the tired procession of the crowd of humanity
Your touch like an unfamiliar holiday
In the fatigue of the city I want you
In a drop of peace I want you
At the other end of my walk I want you
(Chattopadhyay, Tomake Chai, HMV 1992) 8

The locality of the city merged with a global modernity as Kabir Suman wrote about everything around him. “Dus foot by Dus foot” (Ten feet by Teen feet) from the same album (Tomake Chai HMV 1992) was about the teeming millions in the urban tangle and the tiny houses where dreams were crushed. The lyrical world made the mundane everyday that people had been living with, bearable. It sang of nostalgia about the rapidly changing geography. Kabir Suman taught one thing that over the years Calcutta inhabitants had forgotten; to desire the city like a ‘flaneur’ walking and finding their selves as another character in a large canvas. As if the city was elsewhere and yet within them. Within months Kabir Suman’s albums sold as cassettes was everywhere. His voice and his personality filled the city like the minstrel he promised to be. He also brought or rather renewed an interest in urban folk even though folk were always present in the soundscape through IPTA songs and Salil Choudhury’s music. And with this first album and Kabir Suman’s subsequent albums, a music scene was created where songs were not only about romantic love but also about the city and its citizens.

It is to be also noted that language was at the seat of struggle during the Bhasha Andolan where the primary demand of East Pakistan (once East Bengal) was recognition of Bangla as the language of the people. The assertion of a Bengali linguistic and cultural identity was one of the factors that informed the Bangladesh Liberation War. Bengali was not merely a language of instruction but one associated with home and belonging. Consequently in Bangladesh, 21st February (Ekushe February) is still celebrated as Language Movement day, a national holiday. This political struggle for the recognition of a language also led to cultural and artistic movements in Bangla by writers, poets and artists from Bangladesh. And it is to be said here that the Bangla folk and bands had their predecessors in Dhaka more than Calcutta. The earliest bands were formed in Dhaka in the eighties and the folk poets were heard and sung in folk festivals in Dhaka as well as Calcutta as part of cultural exchanges. This period of music in Dhaka was an influence for the singer songwriters singing in the vernacular in Calcutta.

The period between 1992 and 2002 was also a critical point in the way nation and nationalism was seeping into individual choices like music. Music in Bengal was also a form of protest against the prevalent systems even as it sought to capture the angst of late modernity. It was a time where consumption of music was becoming more dynamic with cassettes, mike culture and concerts being a part of public life. Hence in Bengal it also leads to a re-definition of popular with the widespread dissemination of cassettes of alternative new wave music. Like the early twentieth century, two years after HMV released its first film song recording, cultural dynamics among film and music industries and their audience changed significantly, the same was to happen around 1992 with the album Tomake Chai.

The definition of popular itself changes clothes when it is put in the category of regions and their music. Popular in Mumbai or Delhi is distinctly different from popular in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka or Bengal. In Calcutta Rabindrasangeet is popular, co-existing with Bengali film songs. Urban music in Calcutta, too, had a rich cultural history dating back to the nineteenth toppa and kobigaan, the poet’s song that migrant communities brought into city. Toppa was a semi classical music form with cheerful lyrics set to variations of light Hindustani Classical tunes.

Baithaki or Kobigaan became spaces where urban music would thrive under patronage and congregations during festivities. (Banerjee 1998) 8. Bengali folk tunes were brought to mainstream Bombay cinema by Anil Biswas in the 1930’s and 40’s who incorporated them in Hindi film music during the nationalistic enterprise of cinema. In twentieth century Bengal, along with mainstream renditions and versions of Rabindrasangeet, Dwijendrageet and folk was a part of the public songs, Ganasangeet, IPTA songs of protest brought in by Salil Chowdhury until the advent of alternative music of urban alienation in the seventies and the emergence of the singer songwriter.

Despite the prevalence and circulation of Bengali film song, Rabindrasangeet, Folk/ IPTA songsand Hindi film song, the songs of city found a category in itself; that of a singer songwriter adapting the dual identities of folk singer and rock star. It is a category that is popular owing to its sale and distribution at par with a Rabindrasangeet album. It is to be noted that Kabir Suman’s first album Tomake Chai in 1992 sold over thirty thousand cassettes, which was the average sale figure of a popular film song album.

The Bengali new wave urban songs themselves become popular like the Hindi film songs, evoking images of the city, the nostalgic past of the country and creating a modern postcolonial identity. More than individual contribution, urban music of this decade is a musical awakening of sorts, a breaking out from already existent musical strains. The use of Bengali and specific streams of urban music created a listening culture, wherein it was in the vernacular where the city was found on song. This music scene that followed lasts for the next two decades with new voices like Anjan Dutta, Nachiketa Chakravarty, Silajit, Bhoomi, Fossils, Paraspather. 

By the millennium the soundscape brought changes in technology with cassettes being replaced by the compact disc. Radio channels had dedicated slots for alternative music, Internet, Digital technology, home studios, Internet, you tube and the return of the film song. Cassette technology was outdated and nobody bought music leading to MP3 being circulated. The audience heard everything that was easily available. Film songs that pretended to be like Hindi music was heard everywhere. There were bands everywhere. Jazz, Funk, Bangla Rock, Rap, Baul Jazz. Basements had live acts; pubs had live music, literature fests, reunions, music videos, promotional activities, Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud. There was choice across technology and media. But the city had disappeared. The sound of the city could only be found in nostalgia. Since then to the present day many bands have been formed, forgotten, loved, hated, sold cassettes, given concerts across Bengal. The aural narrative of Calcutta rushed along breaking into many stories with its characters and its own audiences. The period after 2002 leads to fast technological changes owing to the boom of private radio stations and the absorption of band music into Bengali film songs. But the question remains why the music scene lost the distinct character and imagery that the singer songwriters evoked in the nineties.

Works Cited

1. Sumitabha Ghosal “Kinte Paro Kontho Amar, Amake Noi” Ananda Bazaar Patrika, October 28,1992. Translation mine
2. Bhatia, Sidharth. India Psychedelic: The Story of a Rocking Generation, Harper Collins, 2014
3. Various. Simla Beat 70, Indian Tobbaco Company Limited, Gramophone Company of India Limited, 1970
4.  Various. Simla Beat 71, Indian Tobbaco Company Limited, Gramophone Company of India Limited, 1971
5. Bhatia, Sidharth. India Psychedelic: The Story of a Rocking Generation, Harper Collins, 2014
6. Chattopadhyay, Suman. Nagorik Kobiyal, HMV, 2001
7. Chattopadhyay, Suman. Tomake Chai, HMV, 1992
8.  Banerjee, Sumanta. The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Seagull Books, 1998