Birina Pathak on honouring her legacy and taking Assamese heritage global
She carries Assam’s soul in her with a modern pulse. Following in the footsteps of music legends, her parents, the late Rameswar Pathak and Dhanada Pathak, Birina Pathak is now taking Kamrupi Lokageet to the next generation. Yet, her art extends far beyond preserving this musical heritage through her contemporary releases.
In this candid conversation, we speak with Birina Pathak to discuss her deep-rooted musical heritage, the delicate balance between tradition and trend, and her mission to take Assamese folk culture to the global stage.
You practise and perform Kamrupi Lokageet. Could you tell us the difference between Kamrupi Lokageet and Bihu?
Assam is divided into two: Upper and Lower Assam. While Bihu is mostly practised in Upper Assam, Kamrupi Lokageet belongs to Kamrup in Lower Assam. There are many kinds of Kamrupi Lokageet, too. They include devotional songs about ordinary women and their lives and struggles, songs about women characters like Sita and Radha and songs about Nou Khel (traditional Assamese boat race, also known as Nou Khel Geet). In fact, Assam didn’t celebrate Durga Puja earlier. We celebrated Devi Puja, and those ritual songs are now a part of Kamrupi Lokageet.
Even Bihu has a lot of variations, but it is mostly about new beginnings, including new crops, new year or new love.
What drew you to these traditional compositions, and how do you approach maintaining their soul while adapting them for modern listeners?
I’m a millennial. When I grew up, we watched only two channels— DD National and DD Metro. We grew up amid nature, in the fields, by the pondside, in the courtyards, with our knees getting scraped; in fact, bleeding legs were our prized possessions. We grew up realising how important the songs of the land were.
Over the years, these scenes have changed. For this generation, humming tunes doesn’t make sense; they can only imagine it but never feel it the same way as we did. When our parents performed, we listened to folk songs, and there were exclusive Bihu shows. Slowly, things started fading away. All of this is lost, and now I have the responsibility of carrying forward the legacy of my parents besides keeping the traditional music alive.
Coming to your question now, how do I balance between the two? I present the traditional folk song in new ways so that it reaches even the younger generations, making things a little upbeat and a little groovy. If you are performing folk music, it need not be raw, rugged and sad. It can be modern and presentable. You have to mould it according to the demand.
How do you balance the pressure of honouring your parents, who have been music icons, and the desire to make them uniquely your own?
While it is a matter of extreme pride to be born to legends, it is also a huge responsibility. You cannot choose not to pursue or carry forward the legacy; you cannot make mistakes or distort the original, especially when it comes to the craft. So I have to do a lot of research and leg-work before doing anything that my parents might have done. In fact, I even have to choose my outfits very carefully.
I had promised my father that I would carry forward his legacy, his work, and his name, and I couldn’t do anything else but choose this profession, even though I bagged a job at the Indian Railways. my mother was a musician, a central government officer and a mother of four, and she had no helping hands. Even if I could do one-tenth of what she did, that would probably be an achievement.
Your discography ranges from soul-stirring folk classics to high-energy Bihu dance tracks like Sai Thaku Sai Thaku. Do you feel like a different performer when you switch between the genres?
My father never taught me to distinguish among genres. While on one hand, I have been asked to sing Tera Rang Balle Balle, I have also been taught to sing the traditional classical devotional songs of Assam, Borgeet, from Kamrupi Lokgeeti to Rajasthani folk to Tagore songs; there were no limitations. If my parents hadn’t experimented with my vocal range, I probably wouldn’t have this versatility. Because of this, be it on stage or anywhere else, I can perform any song at any moment.
Have you ever faced any challenge as a female independent artiste in the Assamese music industry? How did you navigate it?
I didn’t face any challenges during my initial days, nor do I face any trouble now, but sometimes in the middle, after I got married and became a mother soon after, there came a career break for about 10 years. my husband, Joy Chakraborty, stayed and practised music in Mumbai, so if both of us got busy, parenting would have become difficult. Bringing everything back on track was extremely difficult, especially since my subject is folk songs. and because music is also a performance-based craft, and it is all about stage performances, how you look also matters. So these last six years were a lot more challenging.
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