I recently posted a challenge of sorts over at a site we just found, IndiaMike. It went along these lines: In any city I have ever visited, I can find the underground arts and music scene right away but Kolkata has me stumped. I can find several Tagore song recitals per week (Actually they are setting up a weekend-long Tagore song festival outside my window right now!) and lots of Indian classical, all of which is great, mind you, but where is the dub sitar electronic bhangra beat trip hop music? Where is the mixed up, alternative, edgy, inauthentic stuff?
I got some good responses pointing me inexorably toward the downtown clubs catering to the well to do and tourists, as well as a pile of neo-colonial stereotypes and misinformation packaged as wisdom from one of the list “elders,” RPG, whom I suspect is also a moderator of the list because my response, which politely pointed out the misinformation and general missing of the point, was somehow never posted and when I pointed this out and said I’d move the discussion over here, they rejected that too. (turns out RPG was not a moderator, and the site owner finally agreed to remove the thread -rr, 12/16/09) It seems some sahib over there doesn’t like anyone to point out when he’s wrong. Come on guy, its arrogance combined with cluelessness like that that gave colonialism such a bad rap. So enough with IndiaMike for now and on with the quest over here, where at least if I write something I know it won’t disappear. I’ve found more interesting music than I can keep up with on a daily basis, and I’ll try to tell you about it as we go along. Metalish hard rock with Sufi ecstatic singing, Kolkata death metal, Bauls, Sitar Dub and Slide guitar, marching bands that sound like the Contortions, Monsoon music, and and andâ¦.