American blues singer Big Bill Morganfiled famously said, “My guitar is my torch, my soul carries the flame. Make no mistake, I’m a true blues man.” He might as well be speaking about Jayanta Dasgupta
Wearing a nondescript shirt over I-sleep-in-them jeans, sporting heavy stubble bordering on a beard, he’s not a showman. But when Jayanta Dasgupta plays the blues, it’s easy to lose yourself in music. As your beer sits there getting warm and people jostle around in the cramped pub, you simply smile that smile reserved for the best music you’ve ever heard. Once the gig is over, Dasgupta is affable enough to talk music with you, share a pint, and your perfect evening just gets better.
Dasgupta’s band, The Saturday Night Blues (The SNB), is one of the only mainstream blues bands in India, and has a prominent place in India’s live music scene. In Kolkata in particular, where the band is based, SNB’s popularity is legendary. Their artist list includes everyone from the Mississippi blues, jazz-y blues from New Orleans or contemporary blues – Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, Ray Charles, B B King, Robert Cray, Eric Clapton and so many others.
The band has also played in some of the most popular music venues in India. Dasgupta himself has been performing for the past 30 years and has played in the US, Germany and the UK. The man’s own fan boy moment: when he opened for the legendary Buddy Guy at the Mahindra Blues Festival in Mumbai in 2011, and when he took part in Bangalore’s Indigo and Blues music festival along with another living legend Bobby Whitlock, in 2012. “I remember listening to Bobby’s powerful voice in the song ‘I looked away’ and wondering how the man’s voice sounds as powerful as the sea,” he says with reverence in his voice.
Today Dasgupta is great friends with Whitlock and his wife CoCo Carmel, and says Whitlock doesn’t forget to wish him on his birthday. The two have even collaborated on a song. “He taught me more about singing in the six years that I have known him than I’ve learned in my entire life. Opening for him was a monumental thing for me,” he says.
A far cry from the growing up years, when he had no idea he would be a musician. “I had the most dissonant voice in the family – I couldn’t sing to save my life,” he says with a chuckle. But the exposure to music since his early years made a big impact on him. From growing up in a joint family where an elder cousin sister had some of the best music collection of records and cassettes, to “messing” with his friend’s mother’s guitar and hounding his father for an electric guitar that cost Rs 460 back then, Dasgupta did it all. His entire pocket money would go into getting songs recorded onto cassettes. The epiphany moment, however, came when he was in class nine. “A big shift happened inside me then and I realised I listen to music not as a listener but as a musician. I would lean in to know what was going on in the song, what the songscape was,” he says.
Blues entered his life gradually, however. It happened when he went visiting his uncle in Braunschweig, Germany, while taking a break from college. As he travelled to cities such as Hamburg and Frankfurt, he heard buskers on the streets, in music stores, parks, and it opened up a whole new world of music to him. “I was already playing a little bit in Kolkata by then but I had a definite idea of what I would want to play when I came back.”
He was also a constant fixture at music director Salil Chowdhury’s music studio called Sound on Sound, which produced jingles for ads. “I was one of the losers who played the guitar for all those jingles – from Yak Cigarettes to Nepali Coca-Cola,” he says with a laugh.
Clearly, it wasn’t enough – Dasgupta wanted to delve deeper and thus went to study music at the famous Musicians Institute at Hollywood, California; he is a guitar graduate from the Guitar Institute of Technology there. “It was the turning point in my life. It was like living my dream,” he reminisces, mentioning how he was a roadie at Paul McCartney’s Hollywood Bowl performance in 1993! Dasgupta still gets starry-eyed about seeing live performances of those such as B B King and meeting Chick Corea there. It was there that he learned the subtle nuances of the blues such as alternate tuning, what guitarists do when they play slides and so on.
His parents had initial reservations but later came around, especially his father. “My father had to build a new life in Kolkata after partition and he is a successful businessman, so he had his initial fears about me making a living from being a musician,” he defends. A sudden illness meant Dasgupta also had to shoulder the responsibility of his father’s business of lighting business. “I still take care of the company and I am not repentant – it is just another side of me,” he says.
So did taking care of business also teach him a little bit about marketing himself as a musician? “No, I’m a bad marketing person. But what I’m good at is that I’m a very thorough person. What I know, I know damn well.”
It is this quest for perfection that stood Dasgupta in good stead during testing times. “You just have to give and give, and when you think you can’t anymore, and are tired and hopeless, you will see results and music will start to give you back,” says the 47-yearold, “You need to surrender to music and when it surrenders back to you, it’s the most beautiful feeling.” The rock-bottom feeling also inspired him to play the kind of music that had inspired him to take up music in the first place.
He also gives credit to his band members who he says are some of the most talented musicians. A Fender endorsee and onstage India brand ambassador of the iconic guitar brand, Dasgupta is currently working on a number of new songs along with his wife and band vocalist Arunima Dasgupta. “We will take the first batch of originals of four or five songs to the studio in May-June,” reveals the blues man, adding “I’m lucky enough to be alive and playing the blues. It defines me.”