When rock meets Bengali there is an eruption of emotions

The history and evolution of Bengali music have gone through several transitions. Before and in the mid of the 70s the Bengali music world was dominated by the singers like Manna Dey, Hemanta Mukhopadhdhay, Shyamal Mitra etc. and in those times, the genre of the music was mostly soft, melancholic and calming. In the commercial Bengali music world at that time, the lyrics were also more likely to entertain romance, fantasy and normal events. But at the same time, rock music was booming and spreading exponentially in western countries. But Bengal was still so constrained with Rabindra sangeet, they and other soft music genres. Bengali was not even prepared to take the inclusion of rock music in Bengali music. But then in the 70s when Mohinder Ghoraguli came up with their first music album, a revolutionary tide of rock combined with beautiful Bengali lyrics broke in the Bengali music world.

How it evolved:

The maestro and legend of Bengali rock music Gautam Chattapadhay and with some of his companions formed the first Bengali rock band "Mohiner Ghoraguli'' which introduced Bengal to a lot more genres like soft rock, American folk, Indian and Bengali local folk, jazz, progressive rock and it was like a drastic change in graph of previous types of Bengali songs. The name Mohinder Ghoraguli draws its reference from a poem "Ghora" in the book "Satti Tarar Timir '' written by famous Bengali poet Jibananda Das. They came up with such beautiful Bengali lyrics which connected the whole generation and all their songs contain some kind of social, political, socio-economic scenario of the contemporary time. Though in the commercial market they couldn't make a huge success, Gautam Chattaopadhay kept on giving chances to the new voices and new artists of that time. Many of the artists like Debojyoti Mishra, Bonnie Chakraborty, Poroma Bandyopadhyay had come under the limelight with all their debuts in Mohiner Ghoraguli's music albums. After that Gautam Chattopadhyay came up with an album named" Mohiner Ghoraguli Sompadito Gaan" which contained some outstanding tracks of new bands of the contemporary time and some old songs of their band.

Some Famous Bengali Rock Bands:

After this inception, numerous Bengali bands strived hard to keep the Bengali rock culture alive. After Mohin, the bands which became very popular and known mostly among the late 90s generation are Cactus, Fossils, Chandrabindu(They are famous for their satirical and humorous lyrics), Lakhkhichara(Gaurab Chattapadhay popularly known as “Gabu” was the founder of this Bengali band), Kaalpurush, Dohar(This band was famous for their improvised and innovative works in Bengali folk), Mokam, Bhumi and some others.