The earliest rock bands in Calcutta originated around the same time when rock music was taking a concrete shape worldwide as contemporary popular music. Live bands in 60s, playing across uptown clubs like Mad House (Park Hotel), Trincas, Moulin Rouge, Macambos and Ferrazinis, started incorporating elements of contemporary music in their performances and rock music was slowly beginning to penetrate the music listening habits of uptown youth of the city.
In 1967, The Flintstones were among the most admired band to play on Park Street. It had Steven Booth, Clayton Saunders, …

In 2003, BBC World Service conducted an international poll to choose ten most famous songs of all time to mark the 70th anniversary of the BBC World Service. According to BBC, people from 155 countries/islands voted, around 7000 songs were selected and almost 150,000 votes were cast. The song “Dil Dil Pakistan” was third in top 10 songs. The second song on this list was India’s National song – “Vande Matram”. As a result, for some “Dil Dil Pakistan” was equivalent to the National song of Pakistan.
Recorded as a single …

By 1996, Junoon had released four albums and had a leading cult following from across the country. Yet the best was still to come. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why Junoon clicked with a mass audience — they weren’t as pop oriented as Vital Signs or earlier bands and of all the Pakistani’s bands in early 90s, their sound owed the greatest debt to hard rock. With their riff based sound, sufi- urdu poetry laden lyrics and expansive masterful vocals, Junoon became the forerunner of south Asia’s rock loving …

With Indian economy seeing massive growth, last decade saw heavy influx of International acts into the country with sponsors putting in money and effort to nurture this segment. There was definitely a magnitude of large commercial possibilities and rock music with decades of alternative presence in urban India was bound to catch early attention from industry practitioners. Lucrative as it may seem, all is not well with this sector of music industry.

Delhi based fusion band Mrigya releases their debut album “The Composition of World Harmony 2010″. In an interview with us, the band discusses the motivation behind this fabulous offering.

One of the regulars at Park street and avid fans of 60s underground culture, Gautam Chattopadhyay later went on to form Moheener Ghoraguli (Moheen’s Horse) and in the process sowed the seeds of Calcutta’s most personal form of cultural expression – Bangla Rock.

Two relatively unknown albums in the much storied and prolific career of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; both released by the illustrious world music label “Real World”. These set the gold standard for fusion music beyond the regular Qawaali and Classical styles of Nusrat along with touching fine nuances of his singing that by and large go unnoticed in his regular Qawaali setup. Must haves for the aficionados of high grade polished singing.

Being the fastest bassist is a rare tag to carry. Jayen Varma talks about his unique slap style and his music in an interview with us.

Published on April 28, 2006 for All About Jazz.

2009 was a great year for film music. Though there were no earth shattering hits that may be called as milestones, yet the list suggests that finally a much needed maturity has arrived that washes away much of crudeness and mediocrity off the industry.