Durga Puja and Bengali music have an inherent connection. From new album releases and singles to music tours, people of this industry are busiest around this time of the year. It is no different for singer Riddhi Bandyopadhyay. As she gears up for her Puja music tour this year, The Telegraph caught up with her to know more about her tour and her 22-year-journey in the industry.
What does your music calendar look like for this Puja?
For this Puja, we have released an Agomoni song called Shailaputri from Riddhi Bandyopadhyay Music Academy. Students from my academy and I have sung the song. In October, I will be visiting Delhi for a programme on Saptami and followed by that will be my USA tour, including Toronto and Montreal in Canada.
Can you give us a sneak peek of what you are planning to perform in this tour?
For the past 22 years in the industry I have been working towards my goal of reviving the pancha kobir gaan (songs of the five poets) — Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Dwijendralal Ray, Rajanikanta Sen and Atul Prasad Sen. Internationally also, I am known for the same and they call me to perform these songs only. This year, too, my performance will be based on the pancha kobir gaan and the tour will include some workshop sessions in Canada as well. My aim has been and is still to revive pancha kobir gaan and Bangla puratani gaan for the young generation and take these songs all around the world as much as I can. We can’t allow these to erase from our cultural heritage.
What kind of music did your musical journey start with? Was it pancha kobir gaan right from the beginning?
Growing up in a Bengali household we always start with Rabindrasangeet like Sara jibon dilo alo, Edin aji kon ghorey go and a few more. For me also, it started with these songs. (Laughs) I grew up in a small town in the Hooghly district and have been training in music since I was of age three. In my house everybody was into academics. So, music and academics had to go hand in hand for me. I studied history in college and later taught the subject in college, too. But left the job after a year to pursue music full-time.
What has your training in music been like?
My mother was a school headmistress and my father had a liking for music. So, my mother used to take me to some of the greatest teachers to learn music. Sailen Das, Maya Sen, Bani Thakur, Chandi Das Maal, Debi Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Sushil Chattopadhyay, Ajay Chakraborty, Naren Mukhopadhyay were my gurus apart from Manju Gupta and Krishna Chattopadhyay. Dwijendralal, Atul Prasad and Rajanikanta songs always attracted me more and my audience also always tells me that their songs suit my voice.And I don’t do it in the old style, I add a lot of freshness to it. The journey wasn’t easy for me, of course. I chose something difficult. It would have been probably easier to climb up the success ladder had I chosen something easier. But I felt these songs needed to be revived. And since I was a student of history, I knew the history behind these songs. I well-versed myself with the stories behind each of these songs through my interest in history. In my programmes, I sing and anchor the show as well. I explain the background of the songs I sing first like a story and then sing the song. First I was apprehensive of how people would accept it. But people always appreciate it. We say the audience won’t listen, but the audience listens if they get the right kind of presentation.
Shifting from a secured profession in academics to building a career in music, how has the journey been?
Now when I look back, I wonder how I came so far. But the journey was not easy of course. In Bengal to leave a secured job and pursue music entirely is not an easy choice. Without having someone to hold your hand through this journey, it is difficult to make it big. But for me, I had no one like that. My mother was with me but my mother comes from a different background. My husband supported me. But other than that I had no one to hold my hand through this journey. Now I tell my students to not leave their jobs to pursue music. To do it side by side.
How did playback singing happen?
I did not do much playback singing but when Satyajit Ray, Tarun Majumdar and Tapan Sinha were there in the industry, they loved my songs. Tarun Majumdar and Tapan Sinha adored me a lot. They were directors who understood cinema and music equally. The kind of songs I sing, they used to use it a lot in their films. Nowadays, the directors don’t use these songs as much. The ones I did, the directors personally liked my work, so they called me. I am doing one for Rituparna Sengupta’s upcoming film.
What was your thoughts behind building your academy?
Since I started reviving these songs I always thought that there will be a time when my voice won’t be the same and I have to give up. After me, there should be someone to practise these songs otherwise these songs will get lost again. I built the academy with that thought in my mind. I have about 750 students from all over the world learning and practising these songs, from Nairobi, Australia, Dubai, England. Since I found my listeners, it has been a blessed journey for me.
Social work has been a part of your musical journey too. Tell us something more about how you bring these two together in your work?
I have always had the heart and mentality to do something for the ones who are coming from backwards and underprivileged parts of society. I always feel there is a thing about giving back to society. With this thought, I started associating myself with the red light area communities. When I went to train them, I saw that pancha kobir gaan is a luxury for them when they are struggling to eat two square meals a day. But I also work with another segment of music, which is theatre music or music in Bengali plays and my main support in this segment is my husband Debojit Bandyopadhyay. I realised that this would be more appropriate for them. I have got a lot of support from my husband regarding this and I love working for women as I am a woman. I felt women who have contributed a lot to Bengal’s theatre like Indubala Debi, Binodini can be performed by my students of the red light areas as there are similarities in their struggles. I wanted to bring the different generations from the same community to create a production called Songstress on the singer actresses of Bengali theatre. The students from red light areas acted, sang and danced in this production.
Pancha kobir gaan brings together so many different styles in music and is a huge body of work. How did you master the different styles?
I learnt from so many different teachers and right from the beginning I was careful to not mix up the styles. A Rabindrasangeet should not sound like an Atul Prasad song. I kept in mind that I had to revive these by keeping their dignity intact. I knew I did not want to do fusion. I can’t do fusion. That would strip them of their dignified position that each of these classic genre has.