BENGALURU: At the age of 26, Bickram Ghosh started playing tabla with Pandit Ravi Shankar for his performances, which led him to collaborate with artistes like George Harrison from Beatles.
One of the popular names in the world of fusion music, Ghosh was in the city for a gig at India Inclusion Summit 2019 at Radisson Blu, Outer Ring Road. He jammed with Bengaluru-based drummer Arun Kumar, Suresh Vaidyanathan, popularly known as Ghatam Suresh, and Kolkata-based Abhishek Mallick played electric sitar.
Although known for his experimental beats, Ghosh has been into classical music during the earlier part of his music career. He believes it’s ironic that many people consider Bollywood music as Indian music, whereas Indian classical music is the one with which the “West was first blown away”.
“If we consider the Grammy award as the top-standard, we find that there is nobody who has won one from the Indian movie industry, except AR Rahman. But so many classical musicians have won Grammys. Classical musicians have catered to a global audience, which has created tremendous curiosity about Indian beats,” said the 53-year-old musician.
Born to tabla maestro Pandit Shankar Ghosh and classical vocalist Sanjukta Ghosh, Ghosh considers himself lucky to have been born into a musical household.
“I have spent a few years of my childhood in the United States and later, my education in institutes like La Martiniere and St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata, partly exposed me to western music. I have played tabla with Pandit Ravi Shankar for more than a decade and that turned out to be my formative years in classical music. By travelling and meeting so many musicians from musically exquisite countries like South Africa and Japan, I got exposed to world music, so collaboration came naturally to me,” says Ghosh, who could not escape comparison with his father when he started off his musical career. Ghosh has been in the profession for the last 30 years now.
Ghosh claims he was one of the first people to come up with Indian classical-based fusion. His band, Rhythmscape, which is a neo-fusion band, was formed in 2001 and is known for its new-age experimental music. “My band has been in action for almost two decades now and is still doing pretty well. That clearly shows there is a market for fusion music now, ” says Ghosh, who incorporates a lot of carnatic influence in his music.
With two Bollywood projects in the pipeline, he is currently composing music for Torbaaz. The movie, directed by Girish Malik, stars Sanjay Dutt and Nargis Fakri, and will be released by January 2020. The second one is Band of Maharajas, which is again by Girish Malik. He will be giving the music score of the movie as well as play a role of Afghan percussionist.