About Amarabha BaNERJEE
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Born and Brought up in Shyamnagar, some 30 kilometres away from the main city of Kolkata, Amarabha didn’t have a musical background. Though Amarabha’s mother used to sing classical music and was an upcoming performer from Jamshedpur during the late 70’s, the patriarchal Indian civil marriage system had successfully nipped her dreams in the nascent stage. Bogged down by a ruthless domestic “Housewife Schedule” and other “Homely” activities, Amarabha’s mother Jayanti Banerjee passed on her skills and enthusiasm for music to Amarabha. But the reality of a typical education minded bengali family had kept Amarabha busy with his studies till his late 20’s, by which time he had stood 5th in Calcutta University, 2006 Physics Hons batch, completed his B.Tech from the respected rajabazar science college in Radiophysics and Electronics, and got himself enrolled to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Nuclear & Atomic Physics PhD program. Till this time all Amarabha had learnt about music was from the initial inspiration from his mother and afterwards a 3 year crash course from Shri Subir Bhattacharya, who is a renowned music teacher from Shyamnagar.
The theatrics and hardcore dedicateion needed to pursue a PhD seemed to turn into the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. Unable to cope with the desire of singing and making music, Amarabha took an early exit from the PhD program, but completed his M.S (Master of Science) from TIFR Mumbai. From there on began a journey that is still unremarkable in a truly professional way.
Amarabha had formed a band called “Band Ehsaas” with fellow musicians in Mumbai, released a few covers here and there, but he was still without any direction as per what kind of music he wanted to pursue and what would be the preferred medium for it. Bollywood composers did not seem to have a liking for a middle aged man with the onset of male pattern balding and with more educational degrees than perhaps their whole family’s degrees combined. During this time Amarabha’s “perfect singing” was noticed in the advertisement industry, where Late Mr. Raj Kaushal had selected Amarabha for many of his advertisement projects involving big brands. Composer, friend and mentor Sebastian Andrade had given Amarabha this precious break along with another composer Roshan Machado.
Amarabha’s musical journey started gathering some steam after he invested in his YouTube channel, composing some original songs and singing some covers of difficult but popular songs like “Kyun main Jaagoon” sung by Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan from the movie Patiala House. This song went Viral from Amarabha’s Own channel, crossing over a million views in a month’s time, that too during the middle of the pandemic. Perhaps the desperate claustrophobia and sadness associated with being locked up in your own house indefinitely made the audience sympathise with Amarabha.
During this period, another cover song called “Dil Laga Liya” released by tips Music also went viral crossing more than a million views. This gave Amarabha the necessary confidence that trained singers who don’t need pitch corrections and monkey moves on the stage to hold a crowd together, still can have a decent audience. Amarabha then released an original from the now defunct channel Surmai called ‘Majhi’.
This original was produced in collaboration with his Band Ehsaas. Although the song was appreciated, the video quite expectedly didn’t have enough views in it to make it to the big league. But later when released across audio platforms, it was selected as one of the top songs of “December” by an independent reviewer and was also selected in the “Indian Folk” editorial playlist by Spotify.
During this time, Amarabha’s musician friend Anoar Munu Hossain had helped him to reach out to bollywood singer and king of mousique ‘Papon”. Papon had liked two of Amarabha’s songs, and his generosity and love had made those two tracks named “khidki” and “tera Mera” go viral from “Sony Music India” and “Sufiscore” channels respectively. During this period, Amarabha was blessed with the guidance of Sitar Maestro Purbayan Chatterjee and singer Gayatri Asokan. They both collaborated with amarabha on multiple projects, “Choti Si Baat '' and “Yaad Piya Ki Aaye - Reprise version” was among some of them. Amarabha then released a few singles from “Zee Music Company'' and “Times Music” as well. Another important break came in Amarabha’s life when bollywood composer and king of meloy “Anurag Saikia” had given Amarabha a prestigious ghazal song, written by Shakeel Azmi and produced by the master film maker “Anubhav Sinha”. The song was released from T-Series label, but without any proper promotion from the label’s side, the song fell flat and had no takers. Amarabha still considers that song as one of his best renditions, but thinks that the time for that song will come, sometime in near future. But as all hopes know that their existence is only in the minds of the conjurer, similarly Amarabha knows that the dopamine driven Indian Music Industry is like a Chakravyuha, which is difficult to penetrate, since Amarabha doesn’t have any inner connections with any of them. That’s why Amarabha still maintains a daily job, does music at his own pace and leisure, and has literally stopped giving a fuck to the so called commercialization of the Indian Music Industry.
Akashdeep Gogoi is like an oasis in this desert full of vultures, his music is a treat to the soul. Amarabha was a fan of Akashdeep’s playing since he had performed once with him during the “Garo Festivals” in Meghalaya along with friend and guitarist Silman Marak. After that Amarabha had collaborated with Akash on multiple occasions on some of his unreleased original songs. But the true beauty of Akash’s musical genius became clear to Amarabha when Akash had shared the concept of Joibik Swar with him. Although the songs were in Assamese language, still Akash had shown enough faith and confidence in Amarabha for these songs. In addition to that, the beautiful compositions, meaningful lyrics, the organic production and the clarity of Akash’s thoughts had made Amarabha a permanent fan of Akashdeep Gogoi. Amarabha hopes and prays that Joibik Swar project would organically reach to millions and inspire them to listen to tracks with some form of musicality in them and not just a beat pumping machine with some random words stuffed in them like any kid would do. But then all hopes are merely unfulfilled dreams till it really happens, and the success of Joibik Swar would do a huge favour for Amarabha to materialise these dreams, with the help of music loving people of the world, who he still believes do exist, although in separate silos, but they exist.
