The year was 1971 when musician-songwriter Susmit Bose sang Winter baby about child abuse, and instantly knew that he wanted to sing about issues that people preferred to ignore. Three decades later, Bose is still crooning for causes such as HIV/AIDS, farmers’ distress and the Babri Masjid demolition, which have found their way into two of his latest music projects.

One of these is Rock of Life, in which the 58-year-old singer has collaborated with eight bands from the Northeast to talk about HIV/AIDS. “The Northeast is badly affected by AIDS, and while there have been attempts to talk to youngsters about it, there is nothing better than music to mobilize them,” says the Delhi-based urban folk musician.

There is a band from each Northeastern state in the project — Soulmate from Shillong, Scavenger Project from Mizoram and Native Rising from Nagaland among others — writing about the stigma. One of the songs Bose has written will be the HIV/AIDS anthem, whose chorus has been translated into eight languages of the Northeast. The track will be performed at a function in Shillong on December 1, World’s Aids Day. “There will be about 40 musicians on stage at the same time, singing along,” says Bose, a self-taught musician.

Ask him about the label of being an Indian Bob Dylan and he quips, “I have followed his style but never cloned him. Maybe it’s because I play the harmonica that I have been called the Indian Bob Dylan.”

The comparison can only grow stronger when Bose’s fourth studio album, ‘Essentially Susmit Bose’, is released later this year. “It is a compilation of 12 songs which I wrote between 1980 and 2005, when I had given up performing since music at the time seemed to only about being a mainstream artist,” says the singer, who has drawn his lyrics from a themes ranging from the Liberhan commission that was probing the Babri Masjid demolition to the difficult lives of farmers. He has roped in friends like Rahul Ram of Indian Ocean to play in the album. “I like to try something different in every album and this one’s going to be no different,” says Bose, who had combined his urban folksy sound with the 12th century music of Baul musicians from Bengal in his last album.

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