Amitava Bhattacharya led Banglanatak dot com which has revived many artisan practices and created a fusion of music besides taking Konkani and Bengali music internationally created an altogether different concept. A Swiss duo of musicians teamed up with Goan ghumot and aarthi musicians and jammed together for two days before playing live on stage at Ravindra Bhavan last week as part of the Directorate of Art and Culture organized Lokutsav Youth Festival.
Jopo and Ingeborg Poffet from Switzerland
have travelled the world as Duo Fatale. Both are composers, teachers and
producers as well as soloists for different projects. They play regularly on
international festival stages as well as in small club-concerts. The duo works
with electronics and creates nonstop new formations, compositions, concepts and
multimedia events. They have won several awards and have worked with different
musicians. They have also performed at The Kolkata International Film Festival
2016 and they were down in Goa.
“We got Jopo and
Ingeborg to jam up with our winning band of the usual ghumot and aarti
competition organised by us at Ravindra Bhavan and led by me, we jammed up and
came together and not just played to an audience but also gave these boys a new
avenue and to aspire higher and realise there is a stage for fusion music”
explained Vice Chairperson and musician Saiesh Poi Panandikar who explains how
Banglanatak dot com’s success in Bengal was emulated here in a special way.
While founder and
Chairman of Banglanatak dot com, Amitava explained how when he started this
movement a few years back never did he think that he could take hundreds of
Indian musicians to perform at international music fests globally.
“The success today is
that movements like this of getting together international musicians play with
local talent and mix music has got us to have Indian composed music play on the
radio in Greece and other parts of the world and given Indian traditional
musicians ideas and dreams,” explains Amitava.
“We thank Saiesh Poi
Panandikar for guiding the collaboration between Swiss musicians Ingeborg
Poffet Jopo Poffet and young folk musicians of Goa for presenting a fabulous
packed house show at Ravindra Bhavan Margao on January 20. This gives
encouragement to our musical team,” explains Amitava who reminds us that such international
music collaborations in Goa create opportunities for the youth to be exposed to
World Music and he tells us that the stage is now set for a bigger such event
in February namely Sur Jahan.
Collaborative music workshop between
traditional musicians of Goa and Swiss musicians and to watch what they could
put forward on stage and that too to hear the saxophone cut across the ghumot
and dhol is something unique for the year and I am glad that now our Goan boys
have new ideas ahead of them and won’t be discouraged and give up traditional
musical instruments unique to this state stated Prashant Naik, Ravindra Bhavan
Chairman.
The collaboration by the Swiss Duo and
the Goan musicians was part of an initiative at the Lokutsav Fest at Canacona
which is an annual Directorate of Art and Culture event that encourages youth
to participate and perform traditional and tribal dances unique to Goa. “ We
generally play the ghumat, shamel, dhol and harmonium at local fests and now
we’re jamming with Swiss musicians,” explains Nilesh Shirodker of ‘Madgaoche
Zagor’, who says before playing with the Swiss Duo at the fusion music fest as
part of Lokutsav, they only played at Ganesh Chaturthi and Shigmo and now, a
platform with foreign musicians is a massive experience for them.
While Jopo stated that, “ The experience to come to Goa
and play with these musicians of Goa is overwhelming. And we’re combining our
contemporary jazz with Goan folk to make something that sounds like
contemporary folky jazz.”