SHASWATA KUNDU CHAUDHURI
Living on in Songs
A posthumous album was salvaged
from old and nearly lost recordings of
a bohemian poet from Kolkata
“Now you’re gone forever,
Things will never be the same,
Now you’re gone forever,
Will I see you again?”
The haunting last lines of Rajarshi (Babu) Ghosh’s song
‘Departed’ seems like it was written for himself. The singer-
songwriter passed away on 16 December 2015 due to heart
attack, in the midst of recording an album. His friends have
managed to salvage some recordings and make it into a 14 track
album ‘Every Moment’ available on SoundCloud. Plans are
being made to digitally distribute it through label Amuse.
Babu worked at Wall Street after completing his studies in
Austin, USA. But at heart, he was a bohemian who travelled
a lot and sang, played guitar, keyboard and harmonica.
His music has feels of acoustic Mississippi blues and West
Coast jazz peppered with bossa nova. “I loved the fact that
he never lost his Bengali-English accent,” said Adil Rashid
(Underground Authority) who played in Babu Band with
bassist Soumyadeep Bhattacharya from 2012 till Babu’s death.
Princeton Club was the meeting point of two important
friendships for Babu. One was Mainak Nag Chowdhury
(Kendraka) and the other was Subho Md. Dali, a former
musician.
Babu Band released three EPs – Get Used To It (2008), Take One
(2007) and Sampler (2011), the last two being live recordings.
‘Project Nova Fusion’ had parallely unfurled as Babu had a
variety of compositions and some needed different treatment.
Both lineups have contributed to ‘Every Moment’ besides vocal
harmony by Anita Basu Mallick.
While most songs are romantic blues ballads, ‘Poison Love’
is harder hitting. ‘Did I Tell You’ and ‘Words’ reflect Dylan’s
importance in Babu’s life while ‘Golden Flames’ reminisces
of Simon & Garfunkel. ‘Spanish Dancer’ is pure Latin while
‘Never Again’ is funk rock personified. The darker ‘Mystified’
and ‘Spirits of the Night’ belie the ominous side of his
imagination.
Babu may not have been a technically brilliant musician but
his songs have soul. They grow on you. His words touch hearts.
Some tracks have a grainy quality, giving off a nostalgic vibe
- a throwback to the sounds of his generation, which could
romanticize, having the luxury of time. Certain songs might
set you off on a melancholic trip into your own memories but a
lilting melodica breaks through the stupor to lift you up into a
smile.
“The upcoming generation should listen to meaningful music
such as his. Hence, the efforts to concretize the memory of a
good man,” remarked Subho.
When Babu’s mother remarked to Subho that his songs were
lying about, he decided to recover them and make an album
out of Babu’s original material, including some old recordings.
“Most were home recordings, some quite dirty and all mixed.
Scales were haywire in some acoustic songs. It was a very big
challenge. We had to break down the tracks, isolate vocals,
adjust volumes, tempos, scales and re-forge them to balance it
out. The work wasn’t perfect as we did not have raw tracks,”
said Subho, who along with colleague Arpit Vyas, mixed and
mastered the album.
“Most difficult was trying to match a twenty year younger
Babu Da’s voice on the old open-mic recordings made in New
York to the deep baritone in his sixties.” Some guitar parts
were overdubbed by Subho where he felt it necessary to fill out
the sound.
Mainak played bass in the band for some years after Babu
moved back to Kolkata in 2006. The constant through both
lineups was drummer Jay Bhattacharya. “Babu Da understood
the importance of a fantasy world. He was writing songs
because he had to. We lost a true musician,” said Mainak.
The
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