High Culture in Kolkata

From the mass culture of Dabangg to the decidedly more high-brow realm of Bengali classical music: that was the journey that Jenna and I and our new friends took this week. A day after seeing Bollywood's biggest masala hit--Dabanng--we made a short walk to the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture to see a group of studious men play sitars and tablas and harmoniums.

The concert was free and was held in a dimly lit auditorium that smelled of old wood and incense. The Ramakrishna Institute bills itself as a cross-cultural organization--a kind of apolitical think tank--dedicated to the teachings and philosophies of the great 19th Century mystic Ramakrishna (a man many followers believe was actually a god in man form). For more about the Institute, check out its website. In essence, though, the saint himself taught that all humankind was of one faith and one ambition. Secular and religious difference needlessly divided people and created conflict.

The crowd at the concert appeared sedate and intellectual: well-dressed men in collared shirts with a scholarly air, women in fashionable saris, a few younger people with backpacks and notepads. This was clearly a concert for the well-informed, the lovers of Bengali classical music. The entire thing--including the introductions and the short spoken digressions between songs--was in Bengali, so we understood none of it at the time. I had the good fortune of emailing the primary singer after the show. More on that in a bit.

The music itself was vastly different from what our Western ears were attuned to. Each song started off with the singer Sugata Marjit playing on his harmonium (which is like small organ that lies on the floor) and chanting a single phrase. As he repeated the phrase he would add baroque flourishes to each word or line and change it subtly, adding vocal embellishments and diving into pitch intonations I had never heard before. After a short time, he would nod slightly to his tabla player--the tabla is similar to a set of bongo drums but with a higher resonance--and the tabla player would start beating out a rhythm. The song would pick up. Another harmonium player would add his drone. And underneath all of it was the vibrating, twittering picks of the sitar player. To get a good idea what it sounded like, watch this video of Sugata Marjit performing. (This video is not the concert we went to, but the man singing is Sugata Marjit, the singer we watched. To the right in the video is a harmonium. And the woman in the background is playing a sitar.)

Some songs were slow and darkly melodic with a clear conveyance of sadness and longing. Others were more quickly paced with brighter chord structures that left the listener feeling ebullient. Overall, it appeared to be a fairly theoretical exercise. The singer Sugata would stop every so often after a song had started and explain something in Bengali. He would lead the band through a few musical phrases and continue his explanation. Heads in the audience nodded in agreement. A few audience members even raised their hands and asked questions or made comments.

After we left, I felt I needed some more information. I wanted to know what the songs were about and where they had come from. I emailed the Ramakrishna Institute the next day and they eventually forwarded the message to Sugata himself. The artist responded with a well-spoken email. He said at the concert from the previous night he had played some of his own compositions as well as some "legendary" songs that had been "wildly popular" in the 1940s and 1950s. He said most of them were devotional in nature--songs about God, nature and love. Like classical music the world over, he said, Bengali classical music was running into the boundaries of modern culture. These are his words, quoted from the email:

Bengali classical still holds its ground , but talents capable of performiong both pure classical type and Bengali Versions (popular music) have become really really rare. Markets are also looking for quick successes, parents are looking for quick fame. Original renditions of Bengali Classical music are taking a backseat. But at the end of the day , it is dearth of talent. Raw talent that mimics popular songs will be ineffective . It requires the same training and practice as in pure classical music. Talents who will endure hardship for years are rare.

But there is a huge pile of listeners, just waiting for that good
voice, well trained and pleasing.

Its a genre that never dies but wait for the right catalysts for a flare up.

I felt after this, that I had visited the two extremes of Indian culture--the Bollywood glitz of a mega-hit movie and the patient intellectualism of a classical music concert--and had come out all the better for it.