Indulge Kolkata turns 7: Shrestha Das shares what made her pursue Western music after learning Indian classical music

I am a student of Indian classical music, and it has nourished me as an artiste. The training introduces you to not just the world of classical music but also every minute detail about the world of music, making you think, ‘If you can do this (Classical music), I can do it too.” Nothing feels tough if your base knowledge is strong.

In global music, more than the music, what attracts me is the lyrics. I love literature, and that instantly drew me to those songs. Since a young age, I wanted to ideate and create something myself. I started composing music when I was just 13, and because I learnt Indian classical music, compositions and improvisations come naturally to me. But as I grew up, I realised how the songs only spoke about God and the Almighty and never the things or people who we see around us. Jazz music spoke about the Blacks and what they go through in their daily lives and how they are very much looked down upon. Similar things happened in India, too, but nobody wrote about it in classical music. So, for me, it was more of an ideological shift. Over time, I also realised that classical music is nepotistic, and getting a stage is very difficult if you are not from an affluent background.

In 2018, we formed a band called Palindrome (when I was still in college) and started stage performances a year later. We started exploring genres and performed songs, which probably no one else in the city was doing. For instance, like Heart’s Barracuda, Rupsha Sen and I did a Pink Floyd tribute show. And to be very honest, I fell in love with the stage. I thought of pursuing academics, to study and teach, but music and the stage had my heart. I couldn’t find more joy in anything else.

I do have idols—people who changed my outlook towards the world, like Freddie Mercury, has influenced me a lot. Then there’s Coldplay, who used to write things so difficult yet sang them simply, with such ease. And what I tell everybody is that I have a bug in my head, and if you don’t have that bug, practising and performing rock and roll is impossible. I have always wished to bring a positive change: thus these genres became my lifelines. I had a difficult personal life, which is a lot more than any other 27-year-old might have witnessed, so even that was instrumental in exploring these musical genres.

Oort Cloud performs a kind of rock-metal thing, Palindrome performs more like popular music and a little rock-pop. For Shrestha D Live, it is mostly my playback songs and a few singles that have been released over the years. I am developing this line-up as such, which can showcase a performance like that of Coke Studio easily. It is not ‘massy’ per se; it’s very stylised but can also rock a stage in say Malda or Gangarampur. We can make people dance, but musically, it is a lot like a traditional fusion band, with Western music incorporations. For example, we perform a medley of Maiyya Maiyya from Guru and have blended it with Khalbali from Rang De Basanti, with the hook from Carlos Santana’s Maria Maria. We also have plans to come up with singles.

I have Bhanupriya Bhooter Hotel and Maya Satya Bhram, with Timir Biswas, in the pipeline. I also have my independent English song, composed and produced in the 1980s rock style, which will be released soon. I have a few more in the pipeline, which I will announce later.

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