Almost from its inception, the alternative music scene in Bengal has been tightly overseen by the bosses of Bengali tradition and culture. For eternity, music had been controlled by the so-called guardians of the institutionalized art form, and experimenting couldn’t be initiated until late 20th century. Even when it began, the musicians involved were branded as outcasts, anti-traditional and unrefined. Their music was rejected by the elites and the conventionalists alike. Traditional tastes clashed with the earthy music inspired by life. It contained no heavy bejeweled language, neither intricate compositions nor concealed truths. It exhibited only the simplest of humane expressions of feelings and emotions. And that was a huge blow to the established music forms.
Recognized as music of the lower-classes, it turned however to cater to the tunes of the masses. It sang songs of protest. Their poems spoke about their lives. Their instruments were uncomplicated and ingenious. And largely it was the evidence of mass appeal that was the unique attribute of this music. Quite like the rise of ‘Hip-Hop’ amongst the Blacks of America, alternative music rose in Bengal, which we later named as ‘Jibonmukhi Gaan’. The intercontinental elements had already started streaming into daily lives of common people, and it was everywhere and unavoidable. The inspirations were great men, who too spoke of life as it were, not just pen fantasies and unreal dreams. People like, Bob Dylan, Pete Seger, John Lennon, Joan Baez, have given us songs that we, perhaps, can never stop humming. Cult musicians like, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Keith Richards, Jim Morrison, have moved the world with their mind-blowing compositions. Western influences like these were inevitable, and have unabashedly done so.
Yes, it can be considered as a revolutionizing of Bengal, as this music was born out of protest and as pro-longed enduring of repression of general talent. Yes, it can be called a revolution, because it was a shout and not just another song…it needed to be cried out loud, for people to take notice, to look beyond the system, and through the thin line that separated music and what could be called as music. It was time for the average (or so considered by the customaries), to step out of the shackles of cultural domination and make their existence known.
(*Beatles: The most popular band ever, though not initially a rock band, it was first of its kind. The study of rock music starts with them.
** Led Zeppelin: A massively popular Rock Band known for its powerhouse live stage performances.)
Our few first brave men, like Gautam Chattopadhyay and Suman Chattopadhyay, faced inconceivable resistance and criticisms. And they had to fight, like all revolutionaries, to keep doing what they think is best, and to keep spreading the message they wanted. Their songs reflected strong criticisms as well on their parts against the political and reigning cultural systems. It was an effort to break the pre-determined pathways of what is good music and what is bad music. And so, the methods employed were radical as well. Amalgamation of traditional tunes with western inputs, created quite an uproar, both good and bad. As it meant, mixing the sounds of a Bangla ‘dhol’ with distortion guitar…or maybe an interior folk song with acoustic guitars…or maybe just a song that spoke the truth about things. The hypocrisy, remained till the potential of the masses became clearer. It was also partly a result of the global mass phenomena, and the coming of the consumerist culture, that this particular form of music was given its due recognition. And like a true revolution, it spread like a wild firestorm…and engulfed an entire generation, which made it mandatory to consider alternative music as a music form inside the mainstream.
ROCK MUSIC is the biggest chunk in this alternative body of music. It surfaced with the use of guitars (electric), percussions and acoustic drum sets (an array of drums and percussions in different set-ups), keyboards (electrical piano), and other unconventional musical instruments along with (in some cases) the usual. There was also a certain deviation in the presentation of the vocal pattern. Moving away from the traditional ways of singing, there was a creation of the natural; one that came most naturally to a person. Those were songs of joy, pain, relationships, man, his feelings dreams and actions, failures and achievements, they were songs of life and the world, and they needed no false dramatizations. And so they were sung with the simplicity of their creations. Also, this was when the unification of labour in the production of music happened. Like, the same person would write a song, put a tune to it and sing it…thus there was a lagging in the labour alienation, as presented my Karl Marx, an exponent of modern economy, labour and its associated problems. He was also the first to have predicted a revolution due to the bourgeois (Capitalist class) exploits over the proletariat (mass working class). The scene was rather similar on an average throughout the world, though Marx’s prophecy of a Socialist Revolution did not quite take shape in reality. However, revolution acquired myriad forms, bearing different facades of remonstration. Music formed an important and integral part of the movement.
In Bangla, a language considered so sweet, that its said that its rightly called ‘mother-tongue’, because it is sweet like a mother’s words that could heal any wound and melt the hardest of hearts, it was the toughest to punctuate this conception with the voice of protest. Mothers don’t protest, they can tolerate the entire world’s agony and yet not make a sound. Again, there was this struggle to prove that Bangla is not just a saccharine laden weepy all-enduring vernacular variety. It was also one of the strongest, to have provided the country with the best and the most influential war songs and poems during the freedom movement in India. Those were not sugary words; they were hard-hitting radical expressions that stimulated the youth of an entire nation to take up arms against foreign imperialism. The first blow on the mold was cast then, and the rest is history. It is yet another story of revolution that led a generation to believe in their faith and themselves. It was then a fight against the system, it is still a fight against the system, and it will forever be a fight against the system.
The bands of Kolkata, who do Rock Music nowadays, have a lot to say…but mostly through their compositions. The list has lengthened over the years from one or two rebellious young men. And some are hugely successful and ‘popular’. Some have been here in the alternative circuit for decades,experimenting with musical forms and expressions. Some have hit gold with commercial stage performances, and have made niches for themselves, and want to keep it that way. But their views are on a large scale the replicas of each other…they all talk about being different from the stream. They believe that they are a parallel and stronger force, and they are but explorers traveling to where no one has tread before, musically, philosophically, or physically (in context to Bangla Rock music, of course !). They feel that creating music is like giving birth, and the pain it involves can only be justified by Rock Music. The noise, the dark presentations, the screaming vocals…are all but parts of the same machine called Rock Music.
Without its revolutionary character, it is almost a paralyzed study of the alternative music in Bengal. It is next to impossible to do so in the first place, because the main cause behind its emergence is the continued subjugation of common man from the cultural aspects of society to a very large extent. And thus in a way, it is a prophecy fulfilled.
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