State of Music

Warning – This post is mostly oriented towards a genre of music (and vernacular too). I have not done any research or googling (maybe I SHOULD but I am lethargic), all the remarks are thus only from my observations :)

It was early eighties (to be little more fussy, maybe late seventies) when the bangla band wagon started rolling. The place was of course Bangladesh. Forget the intended puns in the long forgotten flick Bombay Boys (remember the utmost wish of the band to rock Bangladesh?); there is (and was) “something” about the rock music scenario (the generic form – rock) in BD. I remember in early nineties in Calcutta (before the planet-M era) searching frantically for some Tull tapes in streets; I still can vividly recall my hunt for “Thick as a Brick” for few days….comparing to Dhaka then they already had few hundred of strident hard working rock bands and thousand of devoted fans! We almost speak the same language and dialect in both sides of Bengal, but BD was always way ahead in this sense. My friend VB might explain this better (economic theory? BD always had a kind of free market, so rock albums were easily available than India?). I really don’t know and don’t delve much to dig out the reasons, but the ‘availability of rock music and listening’ (and thus learning to play in a tight band) must have catalyzed in this surge of band music.

There are a hundred of bangla rock bands you can name any day, I am not quantifying qualities but certainly many have a distinct sound. The bigger bands like Miles, LRB, Warfaze, Feedback, Nagar Baul etc. have really crossed a long way. And there is a really incredible change in their so-called “underground” music scene. As per listening to any form of music, I do try to keep an open mind but had a kind of firm believe that overall Bangla is a typical soft language. The vocabularies or the parlance is such that it is really tricky to do something in the language which you can mould or classify as “hard rock” or “alternative/grunge”. Well, many of the underground bands in BD (and also the band Fossils of Calcutta) have achieved this with their sheer experiements and proved me wrong. To name a few – Cryptic Fate, Aurthohin, Black, Artcell and Watson Brothers from BD. I simply like their sound.

I thought of writing more, but already feeling little lazy; will just mention one more BD band here (initially, my whole plan was to write a summary about Indian Bangla bands too -the West Bengal one, but not now). The band right now I am listening to is called them as “bangla” and they do a kind of folk-fusion-jazz. Their first album (King Kortobyo BimuR – means a state of undecided) hit the road in 2002 and their latest offer (Protyut Ponno Motittyo – means a state of fast action) was released a month ago. They sing mostly traditional folk (unlilke Bhoomi of Calcutta) with their style and signature. The new album is really a nice “concept” album; a kind of jamming with few Bauls and inspired by the songs and philosophy of Lalon Fokir.

Song of today:
Rong -Watson Brothers
Morile Kandis Na (don’t cry while you are dying) - Bangla

To my all non-bangla speaking friends – please try to listen; especially the lyrics of the second song is highly enriched by Urdu and Arabic words –needless to say I also don’t understand but love the vox :).