New Delhi-based singer-songwriter Sanjeeta Bhattacharya wants to clear the air. Admitting with a laugh that most articles on the Internet call her a jazz musician, the 24-year-old, who was in the city to perform at bFLAT last week, explains the origin of the misnomer. “After I got back from Berklee College of Music, which is very jazz oriented, my first gig was at Piano Man Jazz Club in Delhi where I sang several jazz standards. After that, I started getting gigs that were only jazz oriented. At the time, I was taking up anything and everything, and before I knew it, I was being called a jazz musician.”
It was after her friends asked her, ‘When are you going to put out your own music?’ that Sanjeeta realised she was becoming a cover artiste. “That is when I thought I should be more choosy about what I play and where I play. I played at NH7 Weekender last year, Orange Festival of Adventure and Music ( Arunachal Pradesh) and did a five-city tour last year. After that, I started getting recognition for my own music,” she adds. Though not born into a musical family (her father is well-known artiste Sanjay Bhattacharya), Sanjeeta started learning Kathak and Hindustani classical music when she was around five.
“I learnt both simultaneously and also took part in inter-school competitions (Western) and listened to a lot of Western music such as Led Zeppelin and Linkin Park (basically, my two older brothers’ playlists). In 2010, I went to Berklee for a five-week summer programme and loved it and so I went back in 2011. Then after I graduated from school in 2013, I got a degree from Berklee.”
With people around her always telling her she would definitely be a singer, there came a point where she had to choose between dancing or music. “I finally picked music when I had to choose where to graduate from. You can’t do both professionally as it requires an equal amount of dedication, practice and time.”
With just under 3,500 subscribers on YouTube and nearly 10,000 followers on Instagram, Sanjeeta is poised to only move forward with her undeniable talent. She has a clear, sweet tone that can also be powerful, evident in the three singles — ‘Shams’, ‘Natsukashii’, (which has 13,000 views) and ‘I Will ‘Wait’ (which has 24,000 views) — that have been officially released.
Her training in Hindustani music also played an important role, providing her with a solid foundation.
She says, “When I went to college, I was exposed to new horizons of music like Flamenco and Balkan folk music. These two have a lot of similarities with Indian classical music. Little murkis or inflections that resemble each other can be in all three types of music. People from other countries would have a hard time, but all the Indians were doing well in those genres because they had already studied all those forms!”
Adding that Indian classical music is also a lot of ear training, Sanjeeta says: “Whatever my teacher sang to me, I would sing back to her. It is not a syllabus, book kind of teaching. It is all by ear. So that really helped. Now, if you sing something to me, I will most likely be able to sing it back to you, no matter what genre it is.”
Stating that her training helped in terms of notes and also words, she says, “Hindi is a very phonetic language. If I have to sing a song in Portuguese or French, languages that I don’t know, I hear the song and the words, and write it down in Hindi. I have learnt Spanish though and you can find a couple of Spanish songs that I wrote on YouTube.”
As for the question of whether music comes first or the lyrics, Sanjeeta says, “For me, it is always the lyrics first because I think that is what sticks with people the most and is what connects. I sit with my guitar, mess around a little bit and a melody just kind of comes up; it is hard to explain.”
She adds that her songs are mostly self-reflective and talking about how things are. “But ‘Ode to You’ is about my mother and her life as a refugee because she came from Bangladesh after the 1971 war. Though the last few singles have all been love songs, I think as a musician, I have a responsibility to be the voice of people who don’t have a mic. So why not use it to try and make a difference.”
Something that she still gets recognised for is the tribute to AR Rahman by Berklee in 2014 featuring 109 performers from 32 countries. Even now, one can find comments like ‘Who is watching in 2019?’ under the video, which went viral, on YouTube.
“Oh my god! Everyone is watching. Everyone is texting me. I was on a trek in the Himalayas and a guy came up to me and said ‘You are from Berklee, right? You are Sanjeeta, right? Even on the metro, I get recognised because of that one video. I still get messages on social media with people appreciating that particular concert. I appreciate the love, but also wish that when people Google the artiste, they also Google their music.”
Sanjeeta Bhattacharya’s future plans include releasing another single and after that, a EP comprising three or four songs.