Dolores and (right) Winta

Showcasing the best of Calcutta’s spreading underground rock scene and being buoyant about Baul. A sliced and diced catalogue for ease of shopping and digital download access to its mammoth repertoire of over 300,000 tracks recorded by 23,000 artistes. Serving up the second-coming of smouldering songstress Dolores ’Riordan, the crystalline voice of The Cranberries, alongside home-grown all-women folk band Madol…

Saregama India Ltd, recording the “best of India’s music” since 1902, and owning content in over 26 languages and genres, is exploring new frontiers in terms of both product-mix and marketing instruments to reach out to a larger audience.

“There’s a concerted effort to broadbase our appeal by not only focusing more on non-film music, but also promoting individual artistes and albums, and moving into new areas that would give the Saregama brand a more contemporary identity,” says Sandip Chaudhuri, business unit controller, east, RPG Enterprise (entertainment sector).

One of the most maverick initiatives the company has embarked on is the Calcutta underground music album project, which promises to give the city’s English rock bands writing original music a platform through a compilation CD for Puja release.

“The idea originated from our search for fresh sounds across genres and also from a stark realisation that the Bangla bands were stagnating,” declares Chaudhuri. Subsequently, Saregama shortlisted 20-odd English-language rock bands in the city writing and composing their own music and auditioned them at a city pub over three days.

The bands that made the cut are recording some of their original numbers. “Our technical team is providing them with all the support and inputs they need to deliver a seamless soundscape,” explains Chaudhuri.

A landmark initiative for non-film contemporary music in India, the pan-India project comprises four albums of original recordings by upcoming artistes, bands and DJs who are currently playing the live circuit in the four metros, according to Emmanuelle de Decker, who manages events and international collaborations for Saregama.

“To add to our international repertoire, we will also bring in some foreign labels and give them a platform to launch their products in India,” Chaudhuri explains. Dolores’s first solo album Are You Listening? is among the first of such offerings.

Saregama believes it has another winner in the “uncompromisingly tough R’’B and hip-hop beats” of Winta. Of Eritrean origin, but born and bred in Oslo, Winta is “an African princess with the talent to set the R’’B world on fire” and is already being spoken of in the same breath by the British media as Mary J. Blige and Beyonce.

In regional music, veering away from the beaten Puja path skewed in favour of Rabindrasangeet, Saregama plans to roll out “an eclectic spread” in the lead-up to and during this festive season. While Baul Rathin Kisku’s album has already been released, the company is also offering two “rare house recordings” of late Debabrata Biswas.

With elocutionist Bratati Bandopadhyay, the company recently did a talent-spotting project in collaboration with the IG, prisons and West Bengal Police. Convicts were driven to the Dum Dum studio in high-security vans for recording as part of the Saregama Cares programme.

“Even as we are looking at catalogue exploitation to the fullest, we realise the need to market our products more aggressively in the West. In this, the Internet could be the strongest selling plank. Our complete digital download site, saregama.com, is being readied to also offer movies in future,” says Chaudhuri.