'It’s important to keep creating art, without questioning'
“The Bodhisattwa Trio is like an unwanted love child to us – uncompromised and personal. We all do various kinds of work as musicians to pay our bills, but the reason the three of us got together and decided to do this project is to just be artistes. So that we had an answer to the question ‘What are we doing with our lives?’ to ourselves,” said Bodhisattwa Ghosh, guitarist and leading man of The Bodhisattwa Trio, an experimental jazz-rock group from Kolkata, India. The trip were at the Daily Star-Bengal Arts Precinct on Sunday in an Art Talk session titled “Artistes in a Material World”, that also featured performance of a few tracks.
The trio opened with their musical backgrounds and inspirations, and essentially why they do music. “Perception, passion, love, sensitivity – these are things that make an artiste. Money and success cannot drive an artiste. That could drive them to be professionally and financially successful musicians, but not artistes,” Premjit Dutta, the drummer of the band, weighed in. The soft-spoken bassist Bijit, meanwhile, pointed out that one essential factor in the making of a musician is listening to a lot of music of different kinds that inspires an artiste and helps them find their calling.
The band’s first performed piece, “Cronos”, was inspired from a Guillermo Del Toro vampire horror film of the same name, and was dedicated to him. The eerie piece started off slow and grungy, and developed into a chaotic, intricate and expressive piece, aptly evoking the theme. In the discussion that followed, the band discussed how an artiste can draw inspiration from, and interprets a work of art in another form, and then attempt to express that interpretation through their work.
Bodhi then went on to discuss the trio’s struggle to release their album, speaking of how there’s absolutely no funding for any music other than the adhunik and so-called ‘Bangla Rock’ in Kolkata, and the members had to other work individually – including session work, jingles, and live shows, until they had enough money to afford recording the songs. The band had to go to a label owned by a friend, and initiate a tour themselves, first of Europe, and now to Bangladesh, to promote their music. In the bigger picture, it spoke of the hurdles faced by any musician to get their music across to audiences, especially if they’re doing work experimental work. The issue of how musicians also need to find out their audience and then tap into that demographic, within their artistic freedom also came up in a lively open discussion, triggering the ‘underground-mainstream’ subject, to which Bijit responded well, saying “The artiste can, and needs to push the boundary of what is termed underground.”
The issue of an artiste’s initiative, and how the support from other parties – be it the musical community, other musicians, record labels, venues and patrons – can and should play, were also on discussion. “You can’t sit at home and play music, and then complain ‘it’s not happening’,” observed Bodhi. Blues guitarist Seth Panduranga Blumberg, organiser of the discussion, also weighed in on how the dynamics of the scenario in respect to avant-garde work, in Bangladesh. With the advent of the Internet, methods and strategies of sharing and reaching out to audiences were also talked about.
In between, the band played a tribute to jazz legend Herbie Hancock, doing a guitar version of his jazz standard Cantaloupe Island, and closed with another original track, titled “0305”.
Bodhisattwa brought the evening to a fitting end with his closing observations: “We have the gift of connecting to a higher form, and thus, we have a responsibility: to create art because it’s worth it. After a session, we feel enlightened, because we have expressed something that only we could have. It’s important for artistes to keep creating art, without questioning.”
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