Bickram Ghosh’s nomination to the Oscar award for best original score forJal is another feather in the percussionist’s cap, who has already won wide acclaim for his work in pure Hindustani music as well as the new-age fusion beats
Bickram Ghosh is a busy man. First it was shuttling between his hometown Kolkata and Mumbai for the composition of soundtrack for director Girish Malik’s Jal. Now it is trips to the US to campaign for his Oscar nomination for the best original score for the same. Ghosh, along with musician and singer Sonu Nigam, has been nominated for the big award along with those such as A R Rehman and Hans Zimmer. “The nomination has catapulted me as a composer on a global scale and I am really excited about the whole thing,” he says, hours before boarding a flight to the US.
But international recognition is not something Ghosh is not used to. After all, one of the most talented percussion players in current times, he started his music career with Pandit Ravi Shankar and played for him for more than a decade. He has also performed with some of the best names in Hindustani classical music as well as Carnatic music. Not just that, Ghosh’s performances with ex-Beatles’ George Harrison, Khaled Kouen, Yosi Levi and Mstilav Rostropovich are also welldocumented. “For me, music means not being restricted to a genre. As a result, here I am, playing pure Hindustani classical, composing music for movies, recording for my fusion band Rhythmscape and so on,” he says, smiling.
Considered one of the fastest percussionists in India, Ghosh’s current focus is on composing music and concerts. “I love my concerts. Essentially, my mainstay is as a concerts performer and that is something that will always be my priority,” he says, adding how his Bickram Ghosh Academy of Performing Arts, a school with three branches in Kolkata, which teaches students in vocals, tabla, Western drums, sarod, sitar, keyboards, guitar and dance, is his dream-come-true. “I have to give back to society and teaching is a way for me to do that,” he says, saying how he’d like to teach a lot more at the academy, although that may be a challenge considering his present commitments.
For the artist, music wasn’t something that happened by chance. The son of Pandit Shankar Ghosh, a renowned tabla player, and Sanjukta Ghosh, a classical Indian singer from Patiala gharana, Ghosh’s childhood was one surrounded with musical riffs and daily riyaz. “I remember walking to where my mother used to learn – at Munawwar Ali Khan sahab’s house, after my school got over. I didn’t even know the names of the people there, but I’d be playing around with the likes of ghazal singer Ghulam Ali, playback singer Sandhya Mukherjee and others,” says Ghosh, reminiscing.
Other influences came during his school and college-going days, which exposed him to a lot of Western music. Other influences came in the form of books, too. “For me, Calcutta is the seat of my creativity, which is why I haven’t shifted to the US, when I used to perform with Pandit Ravi Shankar, or even London, which I consider the world’s biggest melting pot,” he says. “In present times, you can be anywhere and do anything. If you look at my career graph, you will realise that I have done so much work from Calcutta. It is arguable if I could have done it from Mumbai.”
Music composition is a relatively new direction for Ghosh’s musical journey, but composing music has been on Ghosh’s radar for many years. For him, composing music grew out of a degree of dissatisfaction. Having played with renowned Indian musicians all over the world, Ghosh was faced with a feeling of – what else? “I felt I needed to come out with a sound of my own and I did just that in 2000. For lack of a better word, people called it fusion.” The journey thereon meant a lot of concerts. It also gave birth to his fusion band, Rhythmscape. The music was so well appreciated by music lovers that not only did the shows and CDs do well, people from the film fraternity started coming to him asking for the sounds of Rhythmscape. The result: soundtracks and music for Bengali movies such as Piyalir Password Devaki, Iti Srikanta and Hindi movies such as Jal, Sooper se ooper, Gumshuda and Mira Nair’s Little Zizou.
His inspirations: “Books, music, people and life in general,” he replies, adding how many of his compositions are biographical. Thus, the composition Song of Innocencefrom Rhythmscape is about a child waiting for the children in his neighbourhood to call out to him to play. “That is me, back in Calcutta from the US, when I was just five-and-a-half, not knowing the language, not having friends and looking wistfully at the kids in the locality who played among themselves.” Ghosh is definitely tuned in to life.