Once the Bengali bands made a splash with new albums and signature shows but now it’s all whispers with no new bands making any impact. Is this about the short shelf life endemic to bands globally or have Bangla bands lost their way?

Mohiner Ghoraguli was the Frantz Kafka of Bengali rock scene — avant-garde and discovered to high critical acclaim only much after its death in 1981. Kafka’s literary executor Max Brod brought Kafka to the world. In case of Mohin’s Restless Horses, the job, unwittingly, was done by balladeers Kabir Suman and Anjan Dutta, who in the early Nineties arrived on the scene armed with their own modernity. 

Suman is connected to Mohiner Ghoraguli as the forerunner of this new modernity which not only brought back a generation to Bengali music in recorded and live formats but also forced them to reach back and rediscover Gautam Chattopadhyay’s iconic band. But they are also connected by being the best of their ilk. What Suman (and also Anjan) was to the Dylanesqe ballad form was what Mohiner Ghoraguli was to Beatles-bred rock scene. Their collective musical genius gave their genres an exposition that was at the same time climactic. Shakespeare’s talented contemporaries, the University Wits, were said to be unfortunate just to have been born under Shakespeare. Do the myriad other singer-composers and rock bands who have populated the genres in the last decade suffer from a similar ‘anxiety of influence’?

Have, in terms of appeal and foundational logic, Bengali bands moved beyond MG? More established bands like Bhoomi, Chandrabindoo, Fossils, Cactus, Krosswindz, Lakkhichara and Dohar have over the years been able to create music of their own. And they continue to so do with varying success. Mention must be made of Krosswindz’s nomination for Best Indian album at the Just Plain Folks Music Awards in America this year. Also, noted London-based producer Miti Adhikari, whose discography includes Radiohead and Coldplay, is producing the debut album of Bengali band Jackrabbit. This shows that Bengali bands can still draw blood if they want to. On the other hand, a motley group of other bands — Kaya, Abhilasha, Prachir, Richter Scale — seems to be searching for its soul. And there has been a profusion of new bands who are lost even before they are found. 

In fact, there have been efforts to give the bands a larger scope of exposure – beyond the digital revolution — from competitions to composing for films (Kaya for Houseful, Chandrabindoo for 033). Anjan Dutta has more than once loaned his sympathies and sensibilities to films chronicling the ‘inner life’ of a band (Half Chocolate, Madly Bangalee). Some bands have also found commerce and compliment from the large pool of non-resident Bengalis in the UK and the US. 

But have they evolved musically? 

In fact, in recent years most activity in this city has been around emerging English bands: The Supersonics, Hobos, Five Little Indians, Insomnia, Span, Hip Pocket, Cassini’s Division. English bands have never had it so good since Park Street was sent on premature superannuation in the mid-70s. The same cannot be said of Bangla bands anymore. 

Cultural commentator Rangan Chakraborty says that bands are by definition effervescent because they are always about boys, their sexual fears and misogyny, their unformed views and pent-up energy. “Youth energy always wants a channel for giving vent and getting involved in a huff. In arts, writing poetry was once edgy, now it’s band music. It will also pass because it’s unsustainable,” muses Rangan. 

Musician-filmmaker Anjan Dutta blames it on the lack of quality songwriting. “World over, rock music has been sustained by edgy songwriting and a God-be-damned attitude. But where is that writer here who could write that cult song? Chandrabindoo may be an exception. Otherwise, it’s all about headbanging and disjunctive guitars, which never adds up to great music. Something very fake is happening in the Bangla band scene,” rues Dutta. 

Chandrabindoo’s Anindya concedes that the Bangla band scene has reached a plateau but not before, he says, their music has reached corners of the globe. He sees the entry of Bangla bands into composing for Bengali cinema as a major outlay. “The last mainstream barrier has been broken,” says Anindya. His insistence that Bangla bands have come a full circle to attain mainstream nirvana has found an echo in bassist Allan Ao, who plays both for Cactus and English band Five Little Indians. “FLI is niche and plays in pubs and clubs. Cactus often plays at forlorn places to very urban responses. This mainstreamisation is unique to Bengal.”

But isn’t that its doom too? Bangla band music was one of the better children of Bengali culture’s troubled relation with globalization. But now the child must reinvent itself to become a man. Or it has to be sent back to the incubator.