Song Connection

Neel Dutt is out to carve his own niche, with his brand of urban, young melodies

The posto-meets-pizza generation of Bengalis that is ours, lives on a music of its own. And if the likes of Neel Dutt have their way, it would soon be on our lips too. "We have a distinctive vocabulary, a way of living that neither denies its Bangaliana nor takes a meaningless nostalgia-driven plunge into its peculiarities," says Dutt, who is out to carve a niche for his music, stepping out of his father's shadows. His music is urban with its hummable, easy feel. The lyrics, at times penned by himself, follows our language — non-verbose Bengali with a smattering of English and Hindi. "My music has a very city feel to it," says Dutt.

His score for Sudeshna Basu's soon to be released Cross Connection, belongs to the same school as Bong Connection. "We have targeted the young urbane city slickers, who for a long time have stopped identifying with Bengali film music. It's an attempt at bringing them back to music in their mother tongue," says Dutt who usually works with a young team. "Since, I am new to the profession, I like working with young upcoming musicians, poets etc," says Dutt.

Cross Connection and several of his movies to follow, are most likely to sound like new-age Bengali poetry strung to tune. "While the Cross Connection score is essentially Bengali with a bit of pop and lounge thrown in, Chowrasta was all about musically reliving Darjeeling," says Dutt. It was easy strumming together the music for Chowrasta as Darjeeling like several north-eastern hill destinations is fashioned on the West. The guitars, the orchestras have been Dutt's mainstay for a long time. "I grew up listening to music of the '60s America," he recollects, "And as for Darjeeling, even the whistle of the toy train is music, like is the Nepali flute."

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