Kolkata-based vocalist Kaushiki Chakrabarty captivated an audience of 55,000 on Sunday night at the Bengal Classical Music Festival.
The lifelong musician is the daughter of vocalist Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, who also performed on the first day of the festival. But with her honeyed voice, angelic face and incredible stage presence, she is certainly a celebrity in her own right.
She sat down with the Dhaka Tribune for an interview the morning after her triumphant performance.
You have performed many different styles of music in your career.
Yes, I started with only raag sangeet, which I was trained in as a child. But over the years I’ve done collaborations, playbacks in different languages, and mainstream contemporary music also.
These broaden my mindset. Beyond the music itself, the process that musicians go through is very interesting to me. I think knowing what’s going on in the mind of the musician during a song helps people connect to it on a deeper level.
Music is who I am. Music cannot lie. It is the most genuine expression of myself, so having different styles gives me a path to access different aspects of myself: some bring out the brightness in me, some bring out my mellowness.
How do you feel about singing in Bangla? You’ve recorded Rabindrasangeet.
I love poetry, and I love writing and literature. No one on earth who loves literature wouldn’t love Rabindranath Tagore. Studying him has been a part of my life, introduced to me by my mother. I sing it for myself more than anything else.
Rabindrasangeet teaches you to tell a story, give a message through the song. As a singer you can get carried away by the melody. But when you sing Rabindrasangeet, a part of your mind must always be soaked in the lyrics, or you can’t sing it properly. There is such deep thought and philosophy being conveyed.
You also sang ‘Golap Sari’ at the festival, which was a huge hit with the crowd. Did you plan to sing that when you decided to wear a pink sari?
Not at all. I just love having fun. That’s who I am. I don’t think playing classical music forces you to become someone else. Music is the truest me that I am. So when singing, I have to be myself.
You were very playful with the audience, and they really seemd to respond to that.
I love to interact with the audience. My gestures and everything I do is the expression of what is going on in my mind. That is precisely why an audience comes to a live performance – for the entire experience. Otherwise they would just put on a CD.
As a musician, I have a responsibility to make them a part of the entire process. I try to bring them as close as possible to the process I am going through while creating.
How was your own experience on stage?
Very good, apart from the fact that I was a little rushed.
Just before I went on they came told me we were short on time. It’s better idea to tell a musician after they’re on stage, maybe after the first piece. Because that’s the time when you want to get into the mood of the music. So it's not great to mention a time factor then, because you’re not in a very practical place.
Right before getting on stage seems to be a sacred time for musicians.
It is a very lonely time.
That’s when the journey within starts. Any creative art is done in a lonely space. We create a pseudo-space on stage, a pseudo-reality.
The really lonely space is when we practice, when we do our riyaz. That’s where the actual journey happens, and that’s what we try to go back to. That space of emptiness and loneliness is what the music stems out of.
Regarding that loneliness, does it help coming from a family of musicians?
It helps because the environment you get is one of music, and I have been fortunate to learn from my father. He is always constantly monitoring me, rectifying mistakes at once, which keeps me from wasting time. I had been goin on stage with him and experiencing being on a dais from a young age. These help.
But my father did not come from a musical family, and for him, that is what made him a musician. It’s something that comes from within.
You’ve performed in the Bengal festival all three years. How did you feel about Sunday night’s massive crowd?
It was the largest audience I’ve ever performed to. When I was told afterwards it was that big, I was shocked.
I think the best compliment to an audience is when a 55,000-person group feels very cozy. People were so much with me, and trying to connect to the process. Blessed are those days when you can actually connect to an audience.
It’s no easy task to connect to 55,000 different hearts thinking different things. But it makes it so easy and spontaneous and free-flowing when everyone is reciprocating the vibes that you want to give them. That makes it something very special.