Sumanta Basu

This song was recorded a few years back for the album ‘Raater Pakhi’. This was an album where I recorded some compositions of Rabindranath Tagore on my Harmonica. After that, [as per my nature] I started disliking the album strongly. Neither the recording quality, nor my style of playing and/or techniques… I left nothing what could make me happy. I recorded them, because I felt a sense of satisfaction while playing the tunes. I feel satisfied whenever I play a Tagore number. I love them.

Today if I listen to them again, I consider most of them as nothings. I wonder, what made me continue to make the album possible at all, with such ‘trash quality’ performance… I wish someday I will record them again… Insha’Allah I will…

While writing this, don’t know why I remember a stage show, it was long ago. I went to a concert hall to perform. Those were the days when at least some people used to call me to perform my instrumental solo here and there. That day, I was waiting for one of my fellow artists to end her performance, so that my turn comes. In the greenroom I was passing time chatting with my accompanists. Some people from the organisers were also visiting the greenroom, and participating to our talks.

A middle aged gentleman, with silver hair, stranger to me, suddenly told me that he believes, a Tagore song CAN NOT be played on harmonica. He was pretty convinced in whatever he was saying. ‘Can not’ soon became ‘should not’. Well, the copyright on Tagore songs with ‘visva-bharati’ were still in place. And I used to follow notation books [swarabitan] published by ‘visva-bharati’ to learn a Tagore song. Still, his belief came to me as a threat, when he said; it is an offense even trying a Tagore number on the harmonica… A middle aged gentleman with gray hair… I found his face so violent… trying to safe guard the purity of ‘his Tagore’ [or ‘their Tagore’?].

Perhaps ‘my Tagore’ was smiling at me. I was seventeen, and was going on eighteen… I ended up with six or seven Tagore songs [with other Hindi and Bangla songs] on that very show…

Any way…

Still, some people say that there were two/three songs in the album ‘Rater Pakhi’… those were not ‘so’ bad… ‘Chhaya ghonaichhe bone bone’ was one of them.

After celebrating monsoon with Sudhin Dasgupta and Satinath Mukherjee in ‘Elo borosha je sohosa mone tai’, the thought of making a video on ‘Chhaya ghonaichhe bone bone’ came into my mind. This time I got my good old friend Avra, Avra Ghosh with me while shooting. In this song he took some of my shots standing behind the camera. We went out for a day to shoot. we got Ali Hassan with us too. Since the day I had to give up driving due to health, Ali is the one who I am depending up on.

So, thus… Rabindranath and ‘Chhaya ghonaichhe bone bone’.

I am trying to learn from my daily mistakes and failures…

Sumanta Basu
July 17, 2011
Dum Dum Cantonment