Some are corporate employees, some are music teachers, one is a physiotherapist and another a designer! The six-member Bangla band Ishtehaar recently met up at 5 Strings Studio in Ramgarh-Naktala, near Garia. There's a fully equipped music studio on the rooftop of a three-storey house. The quaint location was just perfect for a hearty conversation with the band members about their 14-year-long journey of doing only covers of Bangla and Bangladeshi artistes, their upcoming single Sondhye tara and their thoughts on working to support their music and craft.
Tell us about your journey…
Subha: The band started in 2010, and I’m one of the founder members along with Rakesh... there were other band members, who’ve changed over the years and currently, we play with this set-up. We’ve mainly done covers of Bangla band songs as well as artistes from Bangladesh. We’ve just begun recording our originals.
Abhinaba: We’ve covered Bangladeshi bands like L.R.B. (founded in 1991 by Ayub Bachchu), Warfaze, and Shunno.
Subha: We’ve focused on independent artistes of Bangladesh as well; Minar Rahman is our absolute favourite.
What connected the current members?
Subha: Rakesh and I were a constant and then Akash, our guitarist joined the band towards the end of 2018. After he joined, the pandemic hit us and we disintegrated again... after working for a bit we got involved with our professional work life. Post-Covid, we got back together as a proper band in 2022. So, the three of us (Subha, Akash and Rakesh) along with the then members of the band got a big opportunity to perform. We were one of the 30 bands to perform at Cactuss30 — a celebration of the band’s 30th anniversary and that was a breakthrough for us. We joined hands with Rishit, Sayan and Abhinaba and here we are.
Are you guys planning to come up with albums?
Rakesh: We consulted our seniors about the shift. They suggested that we work on singles instead of a full-blown album.
Akash: Yes, not a lot of people have the patience to wait for a full album. It’s the era of reels; people’s concentration has reduced and they don’t have the patience. In such a situation, thinking about our band’s growth, we decided to release singles.
Subha: We’re releasing Shondhye tara, our own composition.
How did you conceptualise Sondhye tara?
Subha: I wrote the song back in 2018, during a very bad phase of my life. I was confined to my apartment... the window opened to the clear sky, and I was lonely. All I saw were the varied changes in the sky with time. What fascinated me was the evening star, which appeared before the rest in the sky like gleaming hope. The evening star doesn’t appear every day, I used to eagerly wait for it. The evening star symbolises the break in mundane ongoings.
What else do you have in the pipeline?
Sayan: We have a lot of originals coming up, but we prefer single releases. To launch a full album will be time-consuming; we want to quickly bring our art to people’s notice.
Rakesh: We have had a long journey of 12 to 14 years, with endless struggles to make a space for ourselves in the industry. We wanted to do an album with the new members, but it requires a lot of funds, so our major focus is our singles, so that later we can launch an album.
What do you guys do apart from music?
Rishit: There was a time when every member had devoted their lives to only music, but that in the practical world doesn’t work out.
Rakesh: Instruments, recording, practising at studios, everything requires money and without it we cannot sustain our band, so we all work and the fund goes into our art.
Subha: We realised that instead of focusing just on music, we should have had another profession... maybe then we could have avoided the struggles and done better.
Abhinaba: We all wait for that one week to take a break from work and rehearse together.
Pictures: Rashbehari Das