Bengal based rock band Cactus completes thirty years

The 90’s saw a sudden influx of Bengali bands in the city and a chunk of them like Cactus and Fossils brought in a major change in the regional musicscape. While people were very much used to certain genres and styles, Cactus was one of the very firsts to introduce rock music in Bengal. Thirty years down the line, Cactus is considered to have reached a milestone as a rock band that faced resistance in and out when they began. From not being categorised as either Eastern or Western music in college fests, Cactus has definitely grown to be one of the most revered ensembles of the city with countless evergreen, hummable originals. Vocalist Sidhu from Cactus shares with us his journey of growth alongside his brainchild, the role of media in popularising non film songs and his thoughts on 30 years of Cactus.

As a medical student, was it challenging to convince your parents about a career in music?

Bengali parents in general are not only conservative about their kid’s career prospects, but also about the genre of music they follow. It wasn’t just me, but a lot of us who preferred rock music had to deal with questions about our choices. I remember being mocked that if rock music has to be heard in Bengali, one might as well prepare themselves to listen to Kirtans in English. Personally, I simultaneously practised medicine and music and only took the latter as a strong passion until around 2003 I realised it was getting difficult to balance between the two. That is because my MBBS degree acted as a cushion just in case a career in music failed. However, a lot of my bandmates had their own set of struggles. While some survived the impediments, some couldn’t for instance our first vocalist Rajesh Lahiri. It was only after he succumbed to family pressure and quit Cactus in 1999 that we found our current vocalist Pota.

Thirty years back, what was that one incident that made you stick to Cactus?

We were not driven by any particular target or ambition of reaching a particular milestone when we kicked off. We continued taking small steps as it came our way, and continued walking the journey as it came along. Back in August 24^th 1992, we first went up on stage as Cactus to compete in the Eastern Group Music section of National Medical College’s fest, but was denied judgement as our base concept was West inclined. A few months later in 1993, organisers at IIT KGP’s Springfest refused to let Cactus be a part of the Western Group and only gave us a twenty minute slot to perform separately. Both of these incidents made us realise how different our ensemble and music was and gave us the confidence to start performing commercially March 5, 1993 onwards and things kept rolling after that.

Do you wish to credit audio-visual media as an important part of your success?

It took us five years to release our first self-titled album in 1999, followed by Nil Nirjane in 2002. Each of the sets were gradually gaining momentum until FM stations like Aamar FM, Times FM and Mirchi saw a sudden boom and opened doors for band songs to reach the masses. TV channels like Sangeet Bangla too played a vital role in turning band music from niche to mass by hammering our tracks into the audience's minds. However, this declined 2010 onwards as slots were bought by producers to promote film music. Independent musicians be it an ensemble, or a solo performer suffered and saw their own sets of struggle around this time until digitisation took over. Even though we have to produce our own songs now, and invest more time behind each, we are elated to reconnect with audiences via digital platforms like YouTube and Spotify.

What comes after Cactus 30?

We have celebrated turning 30 throughout our birthday week by organising blood donation camps and band faceoffs to provide a platform to new independent ensembles. We also organised a show at Nazrul Mancha on the 27^th that saw 30 celebrated musicians coming together to perform our songs. Our newest track Khoda Jaane Na’s audio was released on 27^th, and we are looking forward to releasing its video soon. We also wish to recreate a couple of our old songs in the coming months with a new arrangement.