Gautam Chattopadhyay

Gautam Chattopadhyay (born 1 Jun 1948 - 20 Jun 1999) was an Indian musician, singer who rose to worldwide fame as a founder and inspirational leader of the band Moheener Ghoraguli, which was formed in the 1975, arguably Bengal's and India's first band.^[1] He was also a theatre person, filmmaker and ethnographer.

He played many Indian and Western instruments with flair.During his college days he used to play the lead guitar in a band called The Urge, whose members were mostly Anglo Indians, in pubs like Trincas and Moulin Rouge at Park Street of Kolkata during the 1960s.

Moheener Ghoraguli in concert at Rabindra Sadan, 1979, left to right: Raja Banerjee, Pradip Chattopadhyay, Tapas Das, Pranab Sengupta, Gautam Chattopadhyay and Ranjon Ghoshal.

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 then moved to Jabalpur and stayed there for almost a year and worked as a Medical representative job in Jabalpur and then in Bhopal . However, 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 (or Bishu) 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. He worked with the 'Bauls'Fakirs creating a new genre of music-'Baul-Jazz' It was a mixture of Baul and jazz.

The band came with new energy, sound, and stagecraft, 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.

Moheener Ghoraguli wasn't commercially successful at first, and the band disintegrated in 1981, but it inspired a whole generation of Bengali youth.During the mid-nineties, he revived Mohiner Ghoraguli by releasing the albums: Abar bachhor kuri pore (1995) Jhara shomoyer gaan(1996) Maya(1997) Khepar gaan(1998) with fresh voices, his own compositions as well as songs composed by others 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,composing music for his own films and working as music directorfor other film-makers too. He made films like Nagmoti (which won the President's Medal at the National Film Awards in 1983). His second feature film was Somoy (which was never released) A Letter to Mom, an English film on the life of the Anglo Indian community.

His first documentary was about the dhakis (drummers) of Bengal called The Primal Call 'After that he made several documentaries on subjects as varied as 'The Dinosaurs,The sun temple of konarak to Mr Habib Tanvir. He made a short film for an American community television To Love is to Paint..., He went to Karbi-Anglong in mid-nineties to work with the Karbi people and their music. With them he did an opera, on their folklore called"Hai-mu". Around three hundred karbi youth performed in this opera.People from far and wide came to see the opera, and every one was spell bound.This was his inspiration in making his last feature film(in karbi language) which remained incomplete due to his sudden death in 1999. He returned to Kolkata after completing his shooting on the 19th of June 1999. He died the next morning.

Bibliography

• Gautam (2000)

References

External links

• Gautam Chattopadhyay Official Website
• Moheener Ghoraguli homepage