"We don’t care about being famous. For us, art comes first,” shares Bodhisattwa Ghosh, guitarist and composer of The Bodhisattwa Trio—a musical group comprising Ghosh, Shonai (keyboards and synth bass) and Premjit Dutta (drums and percussions), who are known for their captivating compositions and genre-defying sound. With a journey spanning over a decade, this Kolkata and New Delhi-based band has evolved and grown, immersing themselves in a myriad of musical influences that range from Jimi Hendrix to contemporary European classical music, Indian classical music to drum and bass, and funk to trip-hop. In this edition of Soundscape, Ghosh chats with us about their latest album Frontier, the genesis of their musical voyage, and more.
How would you describe your musical journey over the years? What were some of the key influences while making Frontier?
We started the band in November 2011, and believe it or not, it started with a Jimi Hendrix tribute concert in Kolkata. We connected so well that we decided to focus on our music from there on, and obviously, the sound has been changing throughout this whole period. For this album, apart from the musical influences, which include the realms of modern jazz, contemporary European classical music, Indian classical music, drum-n-bass, trip hop and funk to name a few, science fiction and storytelling have had a massive influence on the design of the sound. We have tried to craft a story through sound, and that is pretty evident if you listen to it.
What is Frontier about?
Frontier is a sci-fi concept album. We are three astronauts who have escaped Earth, which is being destroyed because of a nuclear apocalypse and we have to travel across multiple universes to find ourselves a new home planet. Space is the final frontier for mankind, and we have to take this interdimensional journey to cross our final frontier before we find our new home planet. It is also a musical frontier for us. We as musicians have never done anything as grand and challenging as this and I believe we have crossed all the barriers of genres and definitions and created a sound which has never been heard before. Hence the name Frontier.
How would you describe the musical style of this album?
Well, we have evolved as musicians, and are still evolving, so the change in approach is a very obvious reflection of that process. Our second album Heart of Darkness was very much a jazz rock album and we had a bass guitar player back then. When Shonai joined the band replacing the bass guitar, we automatically had to change the sound to justify the use of the synth bass, and the fact that Shonai is a jazz pianist par excellence. So from 2018, the sound started becoming much heavier on the jazz side of things, as well as leaning towards a lot of synthesisers and sound effects and a definite footprint of electronic music, rather than rock. The Grey Album was a transitional sound in my opinion, and Frontier, along with Mimika Orchestra (an extremely cutting-edge contemporary Jazz ensemble ), has finally given a really solid definition of our sound.