'Bangla Rock Compendium' is a multi-part series examining the self-sustaining vernacular and cultural phenomenon of Bangla rock music unfolding in Bengal since the 1970s, and the pioneering ideas and figures that continue to drive the movement. Read more from the series here.
This is part 4 of the series.
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One of the most striking incidents in Bangla rock’s history was the launch of Fossils’ video album Aupodartho. So many people turned up that the venue — Music World store in Park Street, Kolkata — had to be closed and the police called in for crowd control. Finally, frontman Rupam Islam hoisted himself on a stool outside and addressed the crowd.
This was in 2007 — a time when fans scaled venue walls to catch their favourite band’s performance. This fever had spread across Bengal with bands popping up in small towns in the mofussil too, challenging cultural norms.
The former French colony Chandannagar had developed a small scene, with soft rockers Missing Link paving the way. In fact, they won the second edition of Band-e-Mataram, a state-level band competition. This was followed by the album Kaaktarua in 2008, earning them accolades and fame. Today, a glowing ember of that scene is young band Crossroads, whose debut album Aayna (2017) shows promise in the blues rock tradition. Moving further north to Nabadwip, heavyweight metal music found a home in melodic deathcore act D’Errors.
On the other hand, Bengal’s western fringe town Asansol was the cradle of folk rock thanks to two bands — Muzik Street and Desh, formed in the mid-2000s. “Beginnings of alternative movements are never easy, but gradually more bands came up, strengthening the scene. But the problem was that there wasn’t a proper studio or standard equipment, so there wasn’t much scope of recording quality music,” says Chayan Chakraborty, Desh’s guitarist. Much later, individual members of both these bands came together in Kolkata to form Fakira, a much lauded act.
Two other now-defunct bands were MO2 (Music Oxide) from Siliguri and Berhampore-based Escape Velocity. Both played soft rock, though MO2 later shifted gears to hard rock Hindi compositions.
Winds of change
While band music had become Bengal’s defining voice, there was a gradual decline after 2010. This was in part due to digitisation, which transformed the music industry worldwide. Streaming and downloads began taking precedence over the sales of cassettes and CDs. A visual clue came in 2013 when the iconic Music World store, where fans would give the police a disconcerting evening six years back, downed its shutters permanently.
This had a direct impact on the economics of the music profession. The earnings from album sales had now practically vanished. “Buying an album is tangible — you see the inlay, artwork and know who wrote, composed, played. So even though digitisation democratised music in a certain way, the listener lost out on the emotional attachment of buying a physical record,” says journalist Shamik Bag, reflecting on why Bangla rock music isn’t as personal to the youth as it used to be.
The bigger blow came with the waning of TV and radio’s support. Film music began dominating the airwaves and only old Bangla band hits found space occasionally. Virtually no new compositions saw the light of day. By 2015, Bangla rock, which was used to 24X7 broadcast on the radio, was reduced to a daily one-hour slot on only Power FM. That same year, a week-long survey of 10 private radio stations in Kolkata revealed that less than one percent of aired songs were non-film Bengali music.
“Radio and TV stations began asking obscene amounts of money, amounting to over a lakh per month, to broadcast our songs. That was impossible for us,” says Gaurab Chattopadhyay of Lakkhichhara. However, Roopsha Dasgupta, an alumnus of Radio Mirchi, Power FM and Aamar FM, counters that “a conscious decision was taken at the headquarters, based in Mumbai or Delhi, to not air independent Bengali music. So we did not have a choice. As for film music, only the soundtracks of big-budget films got airtime.”
The survey further reveals that 95 percent of songs broadcast were Hindi film songs — pointing to a rather disturbing takeover by Bollywood in a land of Bengali speakers. This bombardment resulted in new generations growing up listening to film songs and not independent Bengali music.
Parallely, the staggering rise of singing competitions on TV, which mostly thrive on popular film tunes, further alienated the masses from Bangla band music. These reality show singers also became competitors for concerts across the state, even edging out bands for neighbourhood shows. Deep pocketed corporates began demanding Bollywood music and the bands which catered kept their cashboxes rolling, while the rest flunked out.
Chattopadhyay further tells me that an established band like Lakkhichhara saw a 70-80 percent decline in the number of shows. Then what about the newer bands, already suffering from a lack of exposure? Just doing Bangla rock music was not economically sustainable anymore. Musicians now had to hustle side projects as music directors and session musicians to keep food on the table.
Only Fossils carved an empire for itself. They are a regular feature at national music festivals and have the most number of shows, despite their high charge. They are also the only band to have a dedicated fan base numbering in lakhs.
Cinema’s over-arching shadow
Band music had crept into films thanks to music directors like Neel Dutt and Jeet Ganguly, and members of popular bands began lending their songwriting talents as well. The biggest contribution came from Chandrabindoo as music director for films like Jiyo Kaka and 033 while two members also contributed lyrics to prestigious features like Antaheen.
Vocalist Anindya Chatterjee himself went into direction with Open Tee Bioscope (2015). But Chandrabindoo’s own output suffered: their last album Noy came in 2012. “Films became a different avenue to express ourselves musically. Look at my score for Haami — that kind of unusual soundscape has not been heard before,” says Chatterjee.
But the stars aligned for film music when a quiet engineer named Anupam Roy debuted as music director for the film Autograph (2010). His soulful, melodious compositions melted the hearts of Bengalis and brought back the musical spark to cinema. Roy’s band-based compositional approach further muddled the lines between independent band music and commercial film scores.
Today, a lot of talents from the Bangla rock scene like lyricist-composer Prasen of the band El Dorado and Missing Link’s founder Rudraneel Chowdhury are powerful pillars of film music. Consequently, its quality grew by leaps and bounds, providing space and resources for experimentation.
The pitfalls of becoming mainstream
The generation which formed the hardcore fan base during Bangla rock movement’s nascent days were now middle-aged. A major chunk had migrated to other cities in search of jobs. The only target audience left was adolescent students, who were not as exposed to this music as previous generations. Bands had to rely on the internet to get the word out, but there they had to compete with artists from around the world.
Musically too, a saturation point had been reached. There were hundreds of inferior bands which mostly fell under two schools of Bangla rock: the Parash Pathar-Abhilasha route of soft, melodious rock or the hard-rocking path of Cactus and Fossils. By blindly aping, these bands created nothing original or remarkable, and withered away.
The mainstream tag of Bangla rock invited stray tourists who cashed in on the movement’s hype. For them, attitude was more important than expression and head-banging became a style statement as opposed to feeling the groove.
As for the biggies, there was a subtle kowtowing to audience demands. Lakkhichhara reverted back to the classic rock sound on their hit album Kemon Acho Shohor (2012) after the dismal reception of their previous progressive rock venture. Cactus, which oiled modern, experimental notions on Blah Blah Blah (2013), was still performing well-loved songs from their first albums. So by being hung up on the glorious past, these bands could not shake a conformist audience out of the nostalgic reverie.
“Musically, Bangla bands didn’t evolve beyond a point. It sat on its laurels and decided the past is the future. Where is the punk sound, or fusion of ska and baul music, or electronic experimentation? For me, Bangla rock is a still-born baby. There was potential to become a huge movement but somewhere, it fell short,” says Bag.
Producer and former BBC sound engineer Miti Adhikari, who worked with international acts like Radiohead, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, goes further to say that the little Bangla rock he heard didn't really impress him, except Fossils. “Whatever identity these bands had, I didn’t like it. It was just too ’70s and ’80s long-hair rock for me,” he remarks.
Besides Fossils, Adhikari had mixed Jack Rabbit’s singular album Ananya (2010). The album’s modern arrangements and poetic songwriting showed potential to become a new frontier for the movement, but the band split up. However, songwriter-vocalist Sayatya Mallick has kept the spark alive, in a toned down manner, with his acoustic projects Sayatya & Friends and the urban folk act Bemanan.
But that’s not to say that Bangla bands are not producing quality songs anymore. Thematically, Sayatya and Tamal n’ Trip would give famed troubadours a run for their money when it comes to dissecting current societal problems. On the musical front, projects like A Dot in the Sky are exploring post rock soundscapes, a first for Bangla rock, while metal act The Prophesor have gone all guns ablaze with unhinged experimentation.
There are promising bands like pop outfit Shnuopoka, hard rockers Blood, Bad Trip and Bhaaratvarsh, but the scene, as a whole, is scattered. The problem lies in its limited reach. The cream of contemporary Bangla rock can only be found only if the listener studiously searches for new music.
But there’s hope. Veteran musicians are pitching in to revive the scene - Chattopadhyay curates weekly nights of Bangla band music at two pubs; Chandrabindoo’s Upal Sengupta hosts an annual concert on his own rooftop while Bhoomi’s Soumitra Ray has been organising the government sponsored four-day Sangeet Mela at Deshapriya Park for several years now. Fossils’ frontman Rupam Islam even started Bangla Rock Magazine in 2013 to lend it a voice.
While these efforts are playing small roles in putting this music back on the map, one might wonder about Bangla rock’s future? “Bangla rock is an entity that shakes society through its ingrained rebellion. So, it is eternal. Its medium might change, but its spirit cannot be killed,” says Islam.
As I try to grasp the weight of his words, my mind races back to an all-night concert at Nazrul Mancha in 2017, featuring eight Bangla bands. The audience, slowly cooked on riffs, guitar solos and evergreen songs, was at its energetic peak when the last band took the stage at 6 am. They kicked down barriers and rushed past bouncers in a desperate bid to reach the front of the stage. And I also ran along with a thousand others, my fist raised and lungs screaming, to answer the undeniable call of Bangla rock emanating from the smoky stage.
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