You get to hear her voice for the first time, about a minute into the song that coaxes you to tap your feet, if not hit the floor immediately, the stage having been set by an affectionate blending of the sarod, electric guitar, bass, drums and a distinctive percussive impetus driven by tablas. Aaj Shanibar (Saturday Today), she croons, “cholo nachbi cholo aaj (let’s all dance today) …” Smooth and melodious, she’s effortless in her rendition that’s rather soft for what is an infectious track representing a time in India when Hindi films had appropriated disco into its groove.
The song is the showpiece of Rupa Biswas’s long-lost, found and rediscovered album, Disco Jazz, recorded in Canada on a lark and released in 1982 by Megaphone Company without the strobe lights that defined the dance music era in the West. Now, Rupa, about 70 years young, is all set to perform live, with a little help from a band of Kolkata musicians and a singer who is stirring up the performance scene globally. Reason enough for music lovers to head to Dalhousie Institute this weekend for Jazzfest 2023.
Rupa (now Rupa Sen) is a Kolkatan and her enthusiasm for her forthcoming performance was palpable on the rusty phone line. “I am extremely excited that this opportunity has come my way,” she bursts out, retaining much of the delicate intonation we hear on the record. Nervous to be on stage after so long? “Not at all… Ja hobe dekhe nebo (will tackle whatever happens),” she adds with the confidence of a seasoned performer.
Now for the back story. By the time Rupa moved to the city in 1976, from Berhampur, Murshidabad, she was already into the music of Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey and had a general familiarity with the songs of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Her mother was her first musical mentor. Around 1981, after Rupa had completed her MA in music, she went to Canada for a holiday to see her brother. There, she was coaxed into appearing for a concert at Calgary University, and ended up singing 27 songs, geet and ghazals. Sarod exponent Aashis Khan, a friend of her brother, was at the concert and he convinced her to record an album. And in two weeks Disco Jazz was ready.
“At the Jazzfest I will be singing with Tritha, a member of the new generation. What can be better than this,” she says laughing. Clearly she is relishing her moment in the spotlight. Something she so missed after the record came out. Crestfallen that her Bangla song (it has verses in Hindi too) failed to make an impact in India, nudged out as it was by a certain Nazia Hassan’s Disco Deewane and Aap Jaisa Koi (produced by Biddu), she returned from her Canada sojourn and settled back into her life, continuing riyaaz and doing her duties as Senior Artiste at All India Radio.
Rupa with Aashis Khan (extreme left) and their band. Courtesy Debayan Sen
But Disco Jazz had other plans and charted out a life of its own, thanks to well-meaning music fiends and YouTube algorithms that came into play once a bootleg version was uploaded. Even her son, Debayan, didn’t know. He chanced upon the cassette in a trunk of discards at home sometime in 2014 and confronted “Ma” about her past life. Throw it away, she apparently told him. It is just pointless, she said.
Today, Aaj Shanibar has over two million views on YouTube, enjoying a second life after it was reissued by Numero Group, an established archival record label. And Rupa is a grandmother, still sporting the same hairstyle as on the album cover. “You may spot a few grey strands though,” she says, evidently bemused by all the fuss around her now.
It took about two years for music evangelist-archivist Varun Desai to track down Rupa, and over time build a relationship of trust, with the result that she’s agreed to sing publicly again. So, come Shukrabar (Friday) and we’ll see the re-unveiling of Aaj Shanibar. That’ll be on Day One of the three-day annual music festival that Desai has been curating with his heart, mind and soul for years now.
Rupa (Biswas) Sen. Picture courtesy Debayan Sen
Given that Rupa has had little stage presence after the 1980s, Desai came up with the idea of hand-holding her. How about a woman, younger than Biswas, who can chaperone her through the song? Enter Tritha, another Kolkatan and a friend, who describes herself as music activist singing her own songs that mix the classical with the contemporary, at times fused with electronics too. Tritha lives and believes the world is her stage. “Rupadi finds resonance with me and my musical journey. I am also a Kolkata girl, and like her, collaborated with a number of rock and jazz musicians from abroad,” she says, explaining how and why Rupa agreed to appear at the Jazzfest.
Desai got the two together, realising that the connect between two singers actually went beyond the obvious geographical coincidence of Kolkata. “Both are classically trained singers, and Tritha helping Rupadi get back on stage to sing also symbolises the kinship today’s youngsters feel for Disco Jazz, an album that this generation has re-discovered and celebrated,” he says.
“Rupadi has always been rooted, singing in Bengali and without trying to put on an accent. There’s nothing put on about her,” says Tritha, who has also embraced that philosophy throughout her musical journey. A video of one of her performances in Paris has her in a sari, strumming an electric guitar and singing, in Bengali, about Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah.
At Jazzfest, Tritha will be performing a set of her own songs with a band of established Kolkata musicians, some of them old friends from her days at St. Xavier’s College. And somewhere during their gig, Rupa will be on stage with Aaj Shanibar.
This year’s music celebration is sure beginning on a high with a sideshow that showcases the coming together of these two women from different eras with a song from an album that has come full circle, even though Aaj Shanibar got off to an elliptical start surrounded by uncertainty followed by total obscurity. Yet it got resurrected, and decades later, aided by technology, saw itself being catapulted to the heights its creators had hoped and yearned for.
Songstress Tritha. Rupa will be joining her on stage at Dalhousie Institute. Courtesy Tritha
But how is the song as a piece of music? Any appraisal must begin with the understanding that its value lies in its unabashed kinship with nostalgia. Disco Jazz’s very existence matters more than its quality. Having said that Aaj Shanibar is able to transcend some of the genre tropes it uses, like a funky rhythm guitar hinged to a neat bass line, a repetitive hook and a beat with metronomic precision. After all, it was the India of the ’80s when it was conceived of — a time when Bappi Lahiri ruled Bombay’s film music world. Yet the inclusion of the sarod and tabla is the song’s, and the album’s, trump card. The extended interludes of the sarod and guitar, at times in synth mode, along with some neat bass accents, make Aaj Shanibar much more than the sum of its myriad parts.
Come Friday at the Jazz Fest, many would be serenading a Saturday night fever from the past.
Aaj shanibar, aaj shanibar
Ei naachbi cholo aaj
Ghure, phire chhonde, chhonde tai phelo pa
Jazzfest 2023 has a lot more to offer this year, with bands and musicians from Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Japan, Austria, Portugal, Russia and of course India. ‘Not to be missed’, says festival director Varun Desai
Tickets for Jazzfest 2023 available here.
