It was great to see Baisakhi Choudhury not lose her chirruping ability with which she held an anxious audience in thrall at the revival of the A Mori Bangla Bhasha concert in Kala Mandir. It goes to Choudhury’s credit that she resuscitated the dream project of her late husband and singer, Pratik Choudhury, with the help of Bengal Web Solutions and, together, they pulled off a near-flawless event. Baisakhi Choudhury, who is an accomplished singer but heard less often in public fora, proved she has lost none of her sheen. Opening the evening with “Tumi abaar elei”, she infused the song with freshness that was elevated by a brilliant flute intervention. This she followed up with her husband’s popular song, “Man bawra”, weaving into it a line from his cult jingle, “Paaye paaye poth chola”. As an able organiser, she also showed poise when a section of the crowd protested about the filtering noise from a basement auditorium.
The performers who followed sustained the spirit of the evening with pure Bangla music across genres. Ambarish Bhattacharya put his own stamp on Akhil Bandhu Ghosh’s “Sedin chander alo” and Suman Chattopadhyay’s “Sara raat joleche”. Kharaj Mukherjee brought an air of joie de vivre with his sharp-edged, synth-folk rendition of “Chitol macher muithya” before segueing into the Manna Dey classic, “Aami sri sri bhojohori manna”.
Raghab Chatterjee brought in the familiar strains of the tappa, “Tomari tulona tumi”, in collaboration with the percussionist, Aarchik Banerjee. Chatterjee’s other performance, “Tomar kotha bhebe”, had a self-possessed pace and familiar notes. Sampa Kundu’s experimental “Chena chena shure” had its pockets of warmth and was better than her presentation of “Abhimane chole jeo na” (Manna Dey).
The young band, Naiyor, had a set of two songs — “Bhalobhasar salam” (with an organic harmonic invention) and “Kothaye haraye”— that demonstrated how soft
melody, without any dramatic crescendos, can move listeners. The last song had a Joy Sarkar guitar input that weaved into the performance seamlessly.