Songs of NOW: Theatre Adda June 2025 session

Alliance française du Bengale & Culture Monks present Theatre Adda June 2025 session titled

Songs of NOW

Celebrating Fête de la Musique (World Music Day) 2025 with a session of adda on how music affected us in Calcutta – Kolkata. We touch upon the music in films of the great masters, the phenomenal impact of the iconic Bangla rock band – Mohiner Ghoraguli, the identity of Park Street which is so closely associated with music and the role played by SPARK (Society for Park Street  rejuvenation) in reviving this identity and the journey of the iconic jazz fest on Kolkata in the last decade. It is also about those songs of NOW yet unwritten, waiting to be sung.

June 19, 2025 from 7 pm – 9 pm
Alliance française du Bengale, Park Mansions, Park Street, Kolkata

The City & it’s Music

Growing up in (central) Kolkata had it’s perks. One of them was getting drenched in music from around the world. The music perpetually flowed through those loud speakers of almost every para (neighborhood) so singing of a thousand revolts, drenched in the romanticism and idealism like no where else. Then there was Park Street and Free School street with it’s ever flowing stocks of LPS, pirated tapes and later on CDs and the old copies of Rolling stone mags. The magic of Park Street was closely knit with the regular performances of the legendary Anglo Indians musicians in the pubs, bars and nightclubs. Then there was Mohiner Ghoraguli – that concept who morphed into music movement and gave the Bengali youth a different kind of musical identity. The coming of electronic music and a thriving night club culture added to he experience of music in Kolkata and opened the city to a contemporary global music culture, thus widening it’s musical horizons. Home to many a masters in music be it in Indian classical, Bombay film music, Modern Bengali songs, Robindro Songeet, English music, jazz and western classical, the city, also always had a thriving live music scene. Among the innumerable venues which hosted musical performances by international and Indian artists, one remembers fondly places like the The Calcutta School of Music, The Dalhousie Institute, Nazrul Mancha, The Max Mulleller Bhawan, Alliance francaise du Bengale , The British Council as regularly hosting live performances by international artists. And so, we come together on the World Music Day 2025 to reflect on the city and it’s music and hope that the vibrancy and originality which Calcutta/ Kolkata fostered will remain.

Sudipto

Speakers

Ashoke Viswanathan & Rajaditya Banerjee on music 

Music Culture of Park Street with Supriyo Nandy (SPARK)

Kolkata Jazz Fest (2014- 2025) by Varun Desai

The times of Mohiner Ghoraguli by Ujjwal Bandyopadhyay, Sajjad Hussain, Santanu Roy & Pradip Chattopadhyay

Performances by Sayantan & Abhik Podder

Moderated by Sudipto Dawn

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