Bengali fusion singer Isheeta Ganguly launched her new album
Saturday, August 4, 2007 | AY

The noted Bengali fusion singer Isheeta Ganguly launched her new album in New York. Titled "Nutan Joubaneri Duth" (Call of the Young), it includes some popular, inspirational Tagore songs about rejuvenation, courage and reinvention. The album is Ganguly's interpretation of Rabindrasangeet through her influences in jazz, gospel and pop. Eleven of the 12 numbers in the album have been sung by Ganguly and one by her guru, Suchitra Mitra, a veteran Rabindrasangeet exponent. The album was launched by the Indo-American Arts Council at Sundaram Tagore Gallery. Ganguly sang three numbers to the delight of an audience of about 50. This is Ganguly's fifth album and first with Saregama, which is distributing it in India as well as internationally. It was earlier launched in Kolkata.

 

Chashi Nazrul Islam (left), With Sabina Yasmeen (ritht)

During the mid 1960s, Chashi Nazrul Islam went with his friend Mohammad Hafiz, a singer, to meet Subal Das. ‘In fact, my plan was to introduce Hafiz to Subal da so that he would get the opportunity to sing in front of him. Subal da was then working on the Urdu film, Kajol.

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   Chashi was working at that time as an assistant director in other films when Das came to know about him. ‘Subal da was a very well known musician of that time. It was at a recording studio in Motijheel that Hafiz and I met him. Dada cordially received us,’ he said.

   According to Chashi, Subal Das always searched for the right kind of tune in his songs. ‘He did not believe in rushing while composing a song; he always requested that we help prevent the prevailing slide in the quality of our music.

   He was pained seeing the misuse of music, as a medium of mere entertainment. He loved the

‘I came closer to Subal da while I was making the film, Bhalo Manush, based on Prafulla Roy’s novel, Nijer Sathe Dekha in 1979. I went to his house with lyricist Masud Karim and asked him to work as a music director in my film. I told him I had no idea about what type of music I wanted, but did suggest that the lyrics could be something like “I am Sumon, and if I get a sweetheart I will love her”. Subal da loved the idea, and instructed Karim to write a lyric; the end product was the song, Amar nam Sumon, emon ekta mon ajo mileni bhalo base ni, tai ami ekela ekhon — it was a big hit after the film’s release.’

   ‘Subal da once told me something that I will never forget,’ says Nazrul, ‘he said, “if you wish to cry, bring some melody into it.” He was always modest about his own achievements, often exclaiming that he had not really achieved anything at all.

   ‘Subal da was very devoted to music. He was very honest in his works and did not allow any superficiality to interfere with composing a song. He was man of a great heart,’ says Chashi.

The Indian Idol finalists: Amit Paul and Prashant Tamang

As I vouched for Amit Paul, the other finalist, my initial denial of Prashant’s victory in the contest resulted into final acceptance of reality. Anyhow, I was happy for both of them as they have come a long way from being young, naive boys from small towns of North-east to confident winners in their own right. In Usha Uthup’s words ‘they are truly the humble sons of the soil’. I feel they deserve every bit of attention garnered over them by the media. These two youngsters have become the faces of North-east, a region much neglected in the country since decades.

Though I do not belong to North-east ethnically, I was delighted that finally it has woken up from its deep and long slumber of neglect, indifference and apathy. The frenzy generated in this particular region was never seen before.

The identity of North-east was at stake and its people left no stone unturned to make their favourite contestant the victor.

In general, there is a stereotypical view of this region being backward and primitive due its innumerable and culturally rich tribes. Ironically, literacy and education are more prevalent in these parts than many other so called ‘developed’ states of our country. Though being a legitimate part of the mainland, sadly the seven sisters are not considered as part of mainstream modern India.

The predicament of people from North- east has been excellently depicted in the movie ‘Chakde India’ in which the girls feel that they are treated like guests in their own country.

On its face value it may look like a humorous scene but at the same time thought-provoking too. There is no dearth of talent and merit in this region as it has produced stalwarts in various fields like musical maestro Bhupen Hazarika, super-cop Sangliana, parliamentarian P.A. Sangma and former C.E.C, J.M. Lyngdoh.

How can we forget the latest singing sensation Zubeen Garg from Assam? The North-east has always been associated with the famous Assam tea gardens and Manipuri dance.

These states are the unexplored parts of our nation and as Indians we need to realise that India exists not only from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari but also from Kutch to Kohima.

It is high time for the North-east to realise its true potential and assert its distinct identity.

The dark powers of insurgency and violence should wane away for the total resurgence of North-east.

In the present day world situation, films should be perceived more in the context of the spectator’s decoding of the text than from an emphasis on the film text or the machinery of the cinema itself. Film critics are constantly demanding an autonomy for cinema from the clutches of literature. The question of cinematic specificity is always being attached with the artistic status of the medium in a context, where the art/ and commercial division in Indian film culture is being formulated with a perception of the high and the low.

The spectator is determined by a range of factors, and, any deterministic theory can never be rigidly accommodated with the spectator’s mind. The postmodern era, for instance, exposes a series of simulations, governed by models, codes, and cinematic images, often close to hyper-reality.

The present crisis in Bengali cinema, which has had commercial success, but has majorly failed to draw the attention of the intellect should be traced long back, in the different popular diasporas, related with Bengal’s common audio-visual culture. Theoretically, the Bengali/ Indian cinema cannot be equated with the so–called ‘Hollywood mode of production’ – which represents a particular economy of narration, that has worldwide applicability. On the other had, in its own situation, a Bengali film like Beder Meye Jyotsna is watched and discussed, with a degree of attachment and animatedness, that indicates larger paradigms of popular culture. Spectators’ demands, as they see a film, for self–actualisation and their interaction with the categories of ‘who the film is meant for’, and ‘how to see’ manual, i.e., in all films inscribed into the category of the narrator or narrative agency, is related to the commoner’s cultural phenomenon. Cinema functions as a sort of supplementary, shadow structure of representation in cultures, where the sadharon lok’s identity is produced in the 19^th century and is continued even today.

To the sadharon loks of Calcutta therefore, cinematic expressions are mostly close the hyper–reality. Hyper–reality blurs the distinction between the real and the unreal and retains the spectator in his own world of myths, and realities. His own ideal of mythical heroism, value judgements of an ideal joint family with few villain retractors, the ideal mother and boisterous female agencies, and also the concept of jati and desh are self-actualised in the popular films. In his sense perception, the prefix ‘hyper’ comes as more real than real. At the same time, the real is according to a typical model with explosions of melodrama of a popular level. The supernatural, the pervert, the sexual, the violent – are inextricably linked to the popular, narrative structures of these films.

The postmodern cinematic world has failed to cross the gap between high and popular culture. The technicality, essence, and expressionism of postmodernity have not been accommodated within the emotional shocks and fabrication of sequence in a commoner’s mind. As part of the peculiar nostalgia for the popular thinking of the 19^th century, the people constantly are opting for literary and musical productions for the preceding century. This culture of nostalgia is mobilised differently among the middle class and the so–clalled chotoloks. To the latter, films with mythological heroes like Krishna, social stories with a female personification of Ghor Koli (black age) like Chotobou and gorgeous semi-feudal sets bring greater satisfaction, greater security and better wish-fulfilment. The film directors making films like Baba Keno Chakar also deploy the situation to construct a cultural platform with hegemony of their own. The global cultural economy and the consumerist market values of the contemporary period are also intelligently diluted with these films

The common people recapitulates in these cinematic expressions, the nostalgic charisma of the Jatra of the 19^th century. It appears that the folk culture of Bengal could never be marginalised by the Victorian set-patterns of a colonised world. The sadharon loks were neither willing nor able to adopt the language or culture of the bhadraloks. In spite of a constant denigration of the popular forms of entertainment, the common people created a world of their own, and retained their own genre of cultural productions even in the 20^th century. The romantic stories of the 19^th century, the satire, caricature, parody, tragedy are all popular and accepted in cinematic forms. The audience at such performances looked for diversion rather than deviation from the uniform taste. Both in their understanding and appreciating of religious, and social subjects, the Calcutta commoners try to defy the gloomy seriousness that surrounded their economic existence. The folk culture of the 19^th century provided a popular base from which innovations began in the modern cinema. The same formula is predominant in the mass entertainments of the commercial media. The cinema artists also utilise the same stereotypes and formulae to simplify and popularise the experience. The folk forms are also appropriated in a bastard way in a consumerist world.

The entire problematic therefore highlights the failure of the so–called film movements or efforts of the progressive film societies to create an illustrious audience. The sadharan loks also suffer from a subconscious insecurity from the threat of an alienation from their original cultural forms of entertainment. The elite dominated film-media has appropriated rural entertainments with a tinge of commercialism for the market. Caught between this ambivalence the spectator has no choice except viewing Swami Keno Asami. They are far from the crowd of intellectual film textuality, neither are they close to their original village identity. The solutions for a broader field of film narration, where spectators are capable to appreciate both the mechanics of the cinema’s construction of them as audiences, as well as each judge the plot and the cinema’s mode of address are yet to come.

Dr. Mahua Sarkar is Reader and Head of the Department of History, Jadavpur University. She is presently doing her post–doctoral research on the social and cultural history of 20^th century Bengal. She teaches Life and Thought in 19^th and 20^th Century Bengal in the Post Graduate classes.

He could pass by as the man-next-door. It is only when he begins to speak that the genetic intensity immediately surfaces. His studio in Mumbai’s Oshiwara is spartan, except for the sanctum sanctorum of work, where a flurry of activity is taking place among his assistants.

And not without reason: Sanjoy is doing a huge quantum of the films being made as background music composer,a speciality in which his dad was considered among the finest among the master composers. “The coming year will see at least one film every month with my score. “Background music is an art that needs a lot of thought and application. My father always said that the art of background music scoring could be taught, but for that the composer had ot understand and get into the story, the screenplay, and each emotion expressed or hidden by every character. For that you also have to understand each and every instrument and the emotions it can heighten - what the oboe can do, what the shehnai, sarangi, different kinds of guitar and so on can come out with to bring out the mood of the scene.”

Sanjoy’s stunning debut came with John Matthew Matthan’s Sarfarosh (“John gave me both my film break and my break in ad films with Amulspray”) and some of the films he has done include Chocolate, Aksar, Zinda, Golmaal - Fun Unlimited, Dhamaal, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, Jab We Met and Sunday. The plethora of films to come also include Wednesday (for which he is also composing 5 songs), Kismat Connection (on which he is now working), Ek - The Power Of One, Golmaal Returns and the sequel of Goal.

But Sanjoy’s very charged about Amy Thanawala’s Suno Na..., which he hopes will be a major break as a song-composer for him after some recent false starts like Bekhabar (unreleased) and Eik Dastakk. “The film has 3 situational background songs and a lip-sync number and the scratches have been done for the shooting. But I have to yet the record the final versions that will have top-line singers like Kunal Ganjawala, Richa Sharma and others including his under-used and highly-talented sister Antara Chaudhary.

“I have faced a lot of politics in the industry as a song-composer. But I am trained in the old school and cannot do certain things. I do not have a bank of tunes, and isn’t a bank of compositions more suited to albums?” asks Sanjoy passionately. “A song is created out of a situation, not the other way round. I am not mentally adapted to making a song for which a situation is somehow created. That’s not how you get a good song that endures.”

He goes on, “I cannot also understand why I am needed if someone wants me to rework a song that is famous in some country or do something similar to a hit track. Why then do they need my expertise when all they actually can employ is an arranger? If you have signed me, I can give 10 original tunes for each situation, right?”

The word “arranger” sparks off another thought in Sanjoy. “I arrange all my music and do everything, not just make the melody. I only employ a conductor so that I am free to look after the other aspects of a song. Today a lot of music directors have common arrangers, which is why they simply cannot have a distinctive sound, unlike the older composers whose composition could be identified with just a few bars or the orchestration underlying the song.”

Sanjoy’s all-time idol apart from his father is Ilayaraja, though he considers every veteran composer a complete school in themselves. “Whether Shankar-Jaikishan, Madan Mohan or S.D.Burman or Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji and R.D.Burman from the next generation, every one of them was an institution diverse and completely distinct from each other. Today, I admire the background scores of A.R.Rahman, and rate those music directors who are completely original higher than the rest.”

Why did he take so long to come into films?

Sanjoy smiles, “Well, I have been learning music from the age of 6. I was 8 when I played some percussion pieces for my father in Anand. I then worked with him in all his films. There was his phase of six years when he was largely based in the South. Then he opened a studio in Kolkata when he began concentrating on Bengali films. I was with him all through. Then when I got married I had to shift to Mumbai in 1990.”

Besides learning some classical music from his father, Sanjoy also did a Correspondence Course from the famous Flushing Meadows institute in USA in Sound Engineering (“My brother Sukanto went there to do the same course and settled in the USA”) and began working in that capacity in Mumbai’s 4-D Studio. “I have done more than 300 ad films,” smiles Sanjoy.

Another old-school trait that Sanjoy is very particular about even in his background is the organised, passionate way they made music. “Every piece in the song or background was original and composed, and that si what I do. I cannot do cut-paste jobs or use samplers. I put my heart and soul into my work and keep very strong melody as the base. I cannot get into a rat-race of assembled sounds and music.”

And paradoxically, Sanjoy opines that this is the reason why his music is ahead and has a broader canvas than the current school. “I will be making albums in New York where my brother has started a music label. There will be vocal albums as well as instrumentals on themes and moods. The sound will be international and we will be releasing them online on I-Tunes.”

Sanjoy has already released Generations, a Bengali CD of lyrics penned by his father. Side A has his songs tuned by Sanjoy while Side B is composed by Salilda himself. “These songs were all done when my father was alive. He had approved my tunes.”

Sanjoy has chosen veteran Yogesh, whose association with his father lasted over two decades, as the lyricist of Suno Na.... “It’s very obvious. Yogeshji is an amazing poet - he understands everything and even understands how a composer works and records. He has never got his due, but is very cool about it. I hope that Suno Na... is noticed. I guess good work is not enough here, your time has to come!”