I feel tempted to write a few lines about how it all started...
In the late 60's when a group of highly motivated intellectual rebels questioned the socio-economic fabric of the times and gave birth to the Naxal movement on the streets of Calcutta, the youth turned to the writings of firebrand poets like Shakti Chattopadhay and to Che Guevera for inspiration, but when it came to musical inspiration, age old Rabindra Sangeet did not satisfy the soul. Inspired by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and the Beatles a group of young boys educated at the Presidency college and Bengal Engineering college took up the guitar and gave birth to a lengendary group called Mohiner Ghoraguli. The first Rock Band of Iindia.
In the late 60's when a group of highly motivated intellectual rebels questioned the socio-economic fabric of the times and gave birth to the Naxal movement on the streets of Calcutta, the youth turned to the writings of firebrand poets like Shakti Chattopadhay and to Che Guevera for inspiration, but when it came to musical inspiration, age old Rabindra Sangeet did not satisfy the soul. Inspired by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and the Beatles a group of young boys educated at the Presidency college and Bengal Engineering college took up the guitar and gave birth to a lengendary group called Mohiner Ghoraguli. The first Rock Band of Iindia.
Mohiner Ghoraguli (literal translation- Mohin's horses), named after an alluring poem called "Ghora" written by an urban modernist poet called Jibananda Das, whom many believe was a greater poet than Rabindranath Tagore.
They took up urban topics and wrote songs about what they saw around them in their hectic city life..the pain, the frustartion, urban love found and lost and ofcourse Hope. Seamlessly merging Spanish tunes and beats with Bengali folk tunes and percussions they were way ahead of their time and were naturally not accepted by the mainsteam orthodox Bengali Babu's at the time. Three LPs , a few concerts , a handful of fans and print-runs of criticim/ridicule later the group died a pre mature death. The band members (Ghoras) disbanded and went on their individual lifes becomming successful arcitects, academicians etc. Most of them left Calcutta for good and settled on the far shores of Houston, California, London and some like Gauttam Chattopadhay stayed on in Calcutta. Gauttam later went on to try his hands in film making and lo! made three films, the first being Nagmoti for which he won the National award in directing from the govt. of India. The other two never got released for reasons unknown to the writer.
Mohiner Ghoraguli was not merely a band but a project a movement which brought together a few of the most rebellious creative minds, poets, philosopher (Deepak Majumdar) painter(Hiran Mitra) and of course musicians. Every aspect…be it their LP cover design, their stage layout, their on-stage antics, their concert tickets , concert announcements, lyrics and rendition of songs reeked of extremely high levels of creativity.
Their songs resurfaced once again in the 90's and became an instant success. They have been and continue to be the inspiring force behind a niche group of individual including this writer and also all the hundreds of bengali rock band that we today see and hear in Calcutta and Bangladesh.
Gautam Chattopadhay is no more but his legacy lives on, he is and will remain the Che Guevera of Bengali urban songs…
"…mohin's horses graze lazily on a full-moon autumn night "
Neelav
Mohiner Ghoraguli was not merely a band but a project a movement which brought together a few of the most rebellious creative minds, poets, philosopher (Deepak Majumdar) painter(Hiran Mitra) and of course musicians. Every aspect…be it their LP cover design, their stage layout, their on-stage antics, their concert tickets , concert announcements, lyrics and rendition of songs reeked of extremely high levels of creativity.
Their songs resurfaced once again in the 90's and became an instant success. They have been and continue to be the inspiring force behind a niche group of individual including this writer and also all the hundreds of bengali rock band that we today see and hear in Calcutta and Bangladesh.
Gautam Chattopadhay is no more but his legacy lives on, he is and will remain the Che Guevera of Bengali urban songs…
"…mohin's horses graze lazily on a full-moon autumn night "
Neelav
1 comment:
Who cares about Bengali or Tamil rock as long as the music is good and original...!
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