It is not just Rongili Biswas’ powerful, lilting voice that makes you sit up and take notice. While she renders songs from her father Hemango Biswas’ archive, formed by her, a rich repository of folk music, steeped in history and created from the music of the toiling masses, she is deeply immersed in her performance. Rongili, an economist, writer and musician, recently performed at Lahe Lahe in Bengaluru, presented by Maraa, Singing the boatman, the fakir, the woman . Her passion stems from her dedication to making known her father’s legacy. Hemango Biswas proved that the uses of folk music, besides being aesthetic, are also of expression of solidarity, getting over a life of drudgery and used for revolution, as shown by the instances of the songs he collected.
Hemango Biswas was one of the foremost musicians and composers of his time, was also known for his writing and political activism, and was a pioneer of the leftist cultural movement known after the IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association). But unlike his contemporaries like Bhupen Hazarika and Salil Chaudhuri, Hemango Biswas didn’t become a famous musician. Rather, he never hankered after limelight. He was driven primarily by his principles and deep commitment to folk music. Rongili is a grantee of India Foundation for the Arts, working on a fellowship of the archives of her father, with a focus on the famous collaboration between him and Bhupen Hazarika, in the 1950s and 1960s, during the linguistic riots in Assam, where the duo led a peace mission, speaks of her father’s undying passion to mobilise the masses. “IPTA was created in 1943 in the backdrop of political turbulence. Writers, creative performers, and artists felt the need to form an organisation, where folk forms can be borrowed and used in political protest. Folk forms were used to politically motivate the common people. My father and Bhupen Hazarika, in particular, made the best possible use of folk forms to mobilise the masses. They successfully completed the cultural tour in these riot-hit areas. I am retracing this journey in my research. This history must not be lost.”
Hemango Biswas was born in 1912 to Harakumar, a landowner, and Sarojini Biswas, who, Rongili adds, were one of his earliest musical influences. In 1930, Hemango had joined the Civil Disobedience Movement, but was arrested for violating Section 144, and was once again arrested in 1932. During this time he had contracted tuberculosis while in jail, that rendered him physically weak till his death in 1987. Despite his ill health, he lived a life of modest means and passionate idealism. He formed the Surma Valley Cultural Squad around 1943 that toured Assam and Sylhet, staging revolutionary songs and plays. “He became the chief organizer of the Sylhet chapters of the Progressive Writer’s Association and IPTA in 1943-1944. He single-handedly, at one time, organised cultural activities. Despite his ill health, he sacrificed so much. And there was never a time when he thought about fame or fortune. He didn't gain monetarily, either. He had a selfless, deeply uncompromising spirit. In 1939, he began composing revolutionary songs belonging to the genre of Ganasangit, and became a leading exponent of it,” informs Rongili.
When the Communist Party was banned in 1948, Hemango Biswas composed the famous satirical ballad, Mountbatten Mangalkabya . His other compositions include Banchbo banchbo amra , which is on the pain of Partition, Sankhachil , in 1965, after Hiroshama bombing, and Haradhan Rangmon Kotha composed with Bhupen Hazarika, which combined both Bhatiali and Bihu. Besides this, he composed the music for Utpal Dutt’s Tir , under a pseudonym, and in 1966 he was the music director of Dutt’s Kallol , on the RIN Mutiny. In 1971, in West Bengal, he started the Mass Singers, and he was the foremost exponent of bhatiali in West Bengal.
Hemango's first collection of songs Bishan was published in 1943, which featured folk forms such as dhamail, bhatiali, baul etc. and 'Western style marching songs.' "I was 20 when I lost my father.
I was very close to him," recalls Rongilig, When he came to Kolkata in 1959, he led an ordinary life. He was born in Sylhet to a zamindari family. But he had ideological differences with his father and left home.
As a child, Rongili was deeply immersed in the atmosphere at home. But it was over the years that she understood the importance to make known her father's incredible body of work.
It was while she was editing the first volume of his book on folk music, all the songs he had referred to in his writings, that Rongili had a moment of epiphany. "All his songs came back to my mind magically. I thought to myself, all the songs will be lost, how is that possible? I wanted to escape this whole process of memory that is how the idea of a performing archive came to be."
In times when there is such an adulteration of the arts in particular, Rongili has held fort in doing justice to the purity of her father's deep commitment to folk music. His concept of Bahirana, for instance, is a theory of folk music which was specific to the way of life and idioms specific to a region, which kept away from the notions of Nationalism in general. "For this I needed to know every in-depth aspect of folk music. I have to explain and sing it as well. I work with traditional musicians from remote places."
