Gautam Chattopadhyay

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gautam Chattopadhyay was a musician, singer, and one of the founding members and inspirational leader of the band Moheener Ghoraguli, which was formed in the 1970s. He was also a theatre person, filmmaker and ethnographer.

He played many instruments with flair. He used to play the saxophone and especially lead guitar in a band called The Urge, whose members were mostly Anglo Indians, in pubs like Trinca's and Moulin Rouge on the famous Park Street of Kolkata during the 60s.

While a student at the Presidency College in Kolkata, he was sucked into the political movement of the late 60s and early 70s in Bengali campuses also known as the Naxal Movement.He wandered around India spending time in Bhopal and Jabalpur as a medical representative. But he continued composing music even during this phase of his life and was just biding his time to get back to the city he so much loved - Kolkata.

After he came back to Kolkata, he formed a band called Saptarshi with his brothers Pradip Chattopadhyay, Biswanath Chattopadhyay, first cousin Ranjon Ghoshal, Biswanath's friend Abraham Mazumder, and family friends Tapesh Bandopadhyay and Tapash Das. Later they went on to christen themselves as Moheener Ghoraguli and made music as was unheard of in Bengal at that time. It was a mixture of Baul and jazz, with a liberal sprinkling of English words in between.

The band came with new energy, sound, stagecraft, and dress code, jolting Bengalis. Chattopadhyay introduced new lyrics and musical instruments like the guitar, saxophone and drum set. He made Bengalis aware that any song can be sung accompanied by just the guitar.^{[citation needed]}

Moheener Ghoraguli wasn't commercially successful, and disintegrated in 1981, but it inspired a whole generation of Bengali youth. By the time Gautam returned with the reincarnation of Moheener Ghoraguli in the 90s, he became an icon.

After the disintegration of the band Goutam continued his musical journey alone, composing new songs, making films like Nagmoti (which won the President's Medal at the National Film Awards in 1983), a tele-film A Letter to Mom, a documentary film about dhakis (drummers) of Bengal called The Primal Call , a short film for an American community television To Love is to Paint..., a musical video series for Kolkata Doordarshan Video Gaan, another film Somoy (which was never released) and Rong-bin, which remained incomplete due to his sudden death in 1999.