Kolkata Street Music Festival S5: Street musicians pay homage to Salil Chowdhury

Music is a universal language of mankind. The chirping of birds, ‘Ajaan’ from the mosque and morning prayer songs by ‘boul’ are all present in various forms of music. Even the performances by the band party musicians can also be considered ‘Street Music’.

Kolkata has witnessed four seasons of this music festival earlier under the baton of Sudipta Chanda, a noted cultural activist cum public relations officer. This year, the fifth season of the festival was held at Craft Coffee (Infinity Think Tank).

‘Shyam Sundar Co Jewellers’ presented the ‘Kolkata Street Music Festival’ Season 5 with the support of ‘Craft Coffee’, ‘Infinity’, ‘Flixbag Music’, Soma Das, Kingshuk Das and others. The inaugural ceremony was graced by Antara Chowdhury, Soumya Dasgupta, Rocket Mandal, Rupak Saha, Director of ‘Shyam Sundar Co Jewellers’ and others. Aninda Das, on behalf of ‘Infinity’, was also present at the do.

Sourojyoti-Krishnendu a violinist-singer duo well-known as ‘Third Stage’, sang a melodious song ‘Saraswati Nadi Teere’. Riddhi Bandyopadhyay Music Academy’s students presented ‘Prantarer Gaan Amar’. Madhurjo Mukherjee sang ‘Shono Kono Ekdin’. Chandrima Bhattacharya and Manu performed on ‘Ami Cholte Cholte Theme Gachhi’. Jaya Nag sang ‘Duranta Ghurnir’. Shouvik Mukherjee performed a tune on the sitar (‘Surer Jharna’).

Legendary music composer Sudhin Dasgupta’s son Soumya Dasgupta played a tune on the guitar ‘Dur Noy Beshi Dur’, while Antara Chowdhury sang ‘Se Gaan Ami Jai Je Bhule’. Noted actress-singer Ruman Guhathakurta’s very own ‘Calcutta Youth Choir’ performed ‘Pothe Ebar Namo Sathi’, a choir song. Noted guitarist-composer Rocket Mandal performed ‘Salil Sangeet’ (‘Chole Je Jay Din’). Two special names from the Bengali bands circuit are ‘Cactus’ and ‘Shahar’. The lead vocalists of these two bands - Sidhu (‘Dil Tadap Ke’) and Anindya (‘Pagal Hawa’) - paid tribute to the legendary composer through songs. Tarun Goswami (‘Mon Matal’) paid homage to Salil Chowdhury while singing and whistling. The musical evening was anchored by Debashish Basu.

Sudipta Chanda, the organiser of the Kolkata Street Music Festival, said, “Of course, this is a different kind of music festival; it can be considered as a celebration of life through music. This year, we celebrated musical genius Salil Chowdhury on his birth centenary year. It’s to promote street music and support street musicians.”