Excerpt from a talk with Khaled Choudhury on December 28, 2012 - On changing attitudes…“…The word folk is a broad brush which is used to label any song which uses a bit of the ha sound. Though why this is being used, is not explained.
Throughout the world in tribal societies, the sound is used to express - I am scared - of living, Aham - to mark the beat. In all folk music the sound “ha” is prevalent, but now they think that adding it makes it a folk song, so they do! This is creating a lot of confusion.
You will not find pure Baul, pure Vaishnav or pure Buddhist music, you find them in parts, or a suggestion of the form. While collecting and categorizing in the course of my work, I found that there was no explanation forthcoming, nor was there a clear categorization. It was left to me to figure it out. Classifying them using the rhythms used also does not appear to be an option. Everything has changed. The old beats have disappeared- for example earlier
bhikus used to go from home to home to beg for alms, now they only take donations.
What has actually happened is the attitude has changed. Earlier we find in a Baul composition the statement -
Gaach tola korechi sar ( I live under a tree), but now in consonance with current societal norms, they have to buy land, build houses, farm land, rear animals - in effect live like ordinary householders, but declare themselves as Bauls. But the inherent humanism is also changing as also tastes. And to keep up with changing demands, newer performers enter the scene, learning not from the original Bauls, but from those who have “copied”. The original Baul is extinct, this will also disappear in the same way.
Perhaps they will be maintained in other places. For example, a German writer, I forget his name now, says that in Germany to collect folk music one has to go through school teachers. The reason for this is that when they have to interact with children from the villages, they have to know folk music. However, what he had recorded is no longer true. Times and attitudes have changed there.
Slowly it will become more and more difficult to gather original folk music. As people get more and more mechanized, their roots get eroded and they no longer maintain connections with folk music. We had attempted to collect these at one time, but my health no longer permits me to do that kind of work. We had started with idealism in place, but I find that that idealism is not static - it is also changing. I suddenly discovered that within one song I found all - Sufi, Buddhist, Vaishnav philosophy mixed up or in another just one philosophy. This is what I have found.”
A man of incredible creativity, Khaled Choudhury was a living legend in the field of theatre and folk music in West Bengal, who embodied the spirit of freedom. A member of the IPTA (Indian People`s Theatre Association) since the 40s, he had worked with renowned directors of both Bengali and Hindi theatre, including Shombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, and Shyamanand Jalan in various capacities - creating stupendous set designs and costumes - the most iconic one of them being the set design for Bohurupee`s Raktakarabi in 1954. A wearer of many hats, he was later a Music Director as well and was equally renowned for his book covers and illustrations. He also worked with the legendary film maker Mrinal Sen on his film, Chorus.
Khaled Choudhury was born on December 20, 1919 in Karimganj, which was then in undivided Assam, a state of British India. Named Chiraranjan by his father, he deliberately changed his name to Khaled in 1943 (though he did not change his religion). He moved to Calcutta in 1945 to join the Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha (Indian People`s Theatre Association) and joined the theatre group Bohurupee in 1953 and continued to work actively in theatre for the next half a century.
His tryst with folk music and folklore research began in the 1960s. Together with his friends Hemango Biswas, Ranajit Sinha, Nihar Barua and others, he set up the Folk Music and Folklore Research Institute of Calcutta and scoured all of Eastern India, recording rural music in villages and at fairs with the minimum equipment they had. Choudhury was Secretary of the Institute at its inception in 1965 and this entire collection was subsequently donated to the Lok Sanskriti o Adibasi Sanskriti Kendra (Centre for Folk and Adivasi Culture), Govt. of West Bengal.
The numerous awards he received included the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1986), Sangeet Natak Akademi Ratna (2008), Nandikar Puraskar (1987), D.Litt (Honoris Causa) from Rabindra Bharati University (2000), Dinabandhu Puraskar from Pashchimbanga Natya Akademi, Govt. of West Bengal (2005); and the prestigious Padma Bhushan from the government of India (2012) for his contribution to theatre.
Daricha Foundation is fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend nearly an hour with him during this interview. Soumya da (Dr Soumya Chakravarti, in whose home the bachelor nonagenarian lived) had warned us about how weak he was and that he would probably not be able to converse for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Well, this giant of a man spoke nonstop for more than 45 minutes!!! We feel so privileged and bereft ....
As has been rightly said of him, he truly was a saint who walked the earth.