Moushumi Bhowmik, just like her music, defies easy classification. Her unbounded curiosity about music and the creation of an archive to make a reservoir of folk music available for generations to come has garnered admirers all over the globe. Her albums “Ekhono golpo lekho” and “Ami ghor bahir kori” herald a new aesthetics in contemporary Bengali music. Singer, songwriter, archivist, thinker Moushumi is a gharana by herself or perhaps not. Songs from 26H, her recently released album comes after a hiatus of sixteen years. Excerpts from an interview:
You do not have a so called structured training in music. Do you think that turned out to be an advantage in your case?
I cannot really see it as my advantage or disadvantage. There are circumstances in people's lives, those circumstances can be both limiting and liberating. I think it is more a question of what you make of your circumstances and where you go from there. 'Structured' training is something I did not have, sure, but if you map my trajectory, you will probably find some kind of a structure in it too. I walked a certain path because I did not/could not walk some other. I can only talk about the road that has been mine. What else could have happened had things been different, had I learned things properly, methodically, within a given system--it is only a matter of conjecture. If I knew how to recognise all the ragas, if I knew each and every mythological allusion I heard in a kirtan, if I had the vocal agility of greats like Ashwini Bhide Deshpande which would allow me to span octaves, if I had the finesse of Rajeswari Dutta or the virtuosity of Malati Ghoshal, or if I was able to distinguish Baroque from Romantic, just like that, would that not be nice? It sure would. But I can do none of those things. And that is my reality. That is all I can say. You see, 'structure' is also such a social and political thing.
You are a singer and songwriter. How is a song born? Also do the singer and songwriter often quarrel with each other and if so, how do you resolve the tussle?
This is hard to say. I began to write songs in the 1990s. That was a long time ago. Each song was born out of some lived experience or some felt emotion or both. I am still like that, although I write far fewer songs now. I was never very prolific anyway. Once a song begins to form, I cannot say what comes before and what after. The words and the melody flow--sometimes words and melody are born at the same time. Joshor Road for example, I wrote all sixteen verses and one look at them, I sang the whole song at one go. Don't know how. Sometimes a song is born from a word, just one word, sometimes a phrase. But I don't force myself to write anything. If a song comes to me, then it does. Then it is hard to explain the creative process. But of course a lot of chiselling and fine-tuning goes on after a song is born and it changes, evolves, and becomes something else as time goes by. It has a life of its own and because it has a life, so sometimes I also have to see it die.
For many listeners, you mark an epoch in Bengali music almost introducing a new kind of aesthetics with minimal instrumentation. Would you agree? Also what are you trying to achieve or address through your music?
I do not know about epochs. That is for the historian to say. I merely began to work in a certain time and will work for a certain number of years. Whether anything of my work will remain, I cannot say. I do not think of such things. I have not tried to achieve anything with my songs. I write and sing because I am moved to do so, that is all. Music is a part of my natural being.
Your songs are classified as the modern song (adhunik) type. How do you respond to such categorisation?
That is a Wiki classification. And I have long had in mind to edit that bit. But I am also too busy and lazy. What is Bangla adhunik gaan? I think of a certain sound when I think of adhunik gaan — 1950s, 60s, sweet, rich, sentimental, romantic. Things we heard as children, on 'Onurodher Ashor', things the cover artists, 'remake shilpi's as they are called in Bangla, tried to revive. And they were also pretty successful. In this post-adhunik time, why freeze a song and a singer in a certain musical era? Is my sound 'adhunik'?
Then again if you think of adhunik being also contemporary, I could also be seen as adhunik. I am of my time, after all. Again, say contemporary before a Western musician and that will immediately suggest a certain genre of Western music. Therefore labels are always problematic. But now our politics is all about defining one's identity. How to escape it?
What drew you to folk music and the eventual setting up of The Travelling Archive?
That is a big question and I think The Travelling Archive website (www.thetravellingarchive.org) has a lot about the genesis of the project. Suffice it to say that it began as a personal thing, and a singer’s journey into a world of song, and then one door opened to another and that to yet another and a map began to unfurl before my eyes. Sukanta Majumdar, who is a sound recordist, joined me on this journey and together what evolved over a period of more than ten years is what we have now as The Travelling Archive. I do want to add that I did not set out with any noble mission to record and preserve folk music or do anything like that. I needed to do something, I needed to go out, and slowly I got into listening. I hardly had a mission to start with. Of course, now that we have all these recordings, we have a certain responsibility towards them too, that is all. Hence the archive and our attempts to mould the 'archive' according to our own needs.
Do you think Indian classical music is elitist?
Elitist - of which time? The elite of a certain time might become irrelevant in another. A new class of people with money and power in a new time can begin to buy their ways into an old ‘elitism,’ transforming it in the process. I am wary of such labels. It would be great if more and more people could listen to Vivaldi but when Vivaldi becomes the sound in the hotel elevator, then the great pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim hates to think he will conduct Vivaldi at that evening's concert in some prestigious hall. Then music becomes muzak, he says.
There have been and there are continuing efforts to break the wall around classical music, and take it to more people. There is also a price to pay for it. Jeremy Corbyn's election promise was that every child will have a musical instrument to play. In Bangladesh, Bengal Foundation have been organising their gala classical music festival for a few years now. In the vast space of Dhaka Army Stadium, thousands upon thousands go to listen to greats like Pt. Jasraj and Ulhas Kashalkar. What is happening in the process? I am never quite sure. There is no reason to think that the same person who goes to listen to Kashalkar will not sit and watch some serial on his television the next evening. Does Kashalkar have an impact on him? Maybe yes. Maybe no. The content of classical music, its affective qualities — they are not elitist. By no means. There is something universal about the beauty of such highly refined art. I think that maybe the problem is one of denial of access as well as the commodification of access.
You are also a researcher and archivist. Why are most Indian musicians averse to critical questioning?
Firstly, I don't think most Indian musicians are averse to research and critical questioning. That is a wide and rather unfair generalisation. While I know many artistes whose work comes out of serious research, I also don't think that to be a great artiste, one has to engage in research. Self-questioning is part of an artiste’s process, one does not grow if they don't question. The questioning is not always outwardly evident. Besides, why single out Indian artistes? There are different ways of practice and various kinds of practitioners in every society and culture.
We often talk about artiste communities. Where do you see yourself? Do you belong to the larger Indian musician community or do you tend to be an individual, lone force?
I am both part of a flow as well as I stand alone. This is what I think, but others might think differently about me. They might see me as being part of something — singer of the now dead nineties; one of the new Bengali women singer-songwriters; singer of political songs; 'adhunik, 'jibonmukhi' labels are aplenty. I think people are more at peace when they can successfully slot you in; when they can define who you are. What can I say about myself?
Also how does one sustain your kind of music practice?
My question too! How to sustain? I once worked in a documentary where after the Calcutta riots of 1992, a man had asked, “Hhum kis tarah jiyen aur kaise rahen?” How to live and what to do with our lives?
You have released an album after sixteen years. Tell us about Songs from 26H.
Songs from 26H is an album of 'home-recordings'. It is an album made bit by bit over years, by friends, in the comfort of 'home', or homes in more than one continent. The four of us who have done the bulk of the work are me of course as the songs are mine, except for one of Rabindranath and one Atulprasadi; then Oliver or Olly Weeks, an English composer and multi-instrumentalist based in London with whom I have been collaborating since 2002; Satyaki Banerjee, who is a singer and dotara/oud player; and sound recordist Sukanta Majumdar, my partner in The Travelling Archive. Home and the search for it are the main themes of this album. It is released by our own record label, Travelling Archive Records (www.travellingarchiverecords.com). Like our other albums, this too is a set of a CD (with an exclusive mp3 downloads code) and a bilingual booklet of essays and lyrics and translation of the songs. The booklet also has some beautiful photographs by artists including Ronny Sen.
(Moushumi Bhowmik and Satyaki Banerjee are performing in Pune — today, Spetember 15 at SNDT 5 p.m. and tomorrow at Lalit Kala Kendra 6 p.m.)