Gautam Chattopadhyay

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Gautam Chattopadhyay was a musician, singer, one of the founder members and the inspirational leader of the band Moheener Ghoraguli formed in the 1970s. He was also a theatre person, filmmaker and ethnographer.

He played many instruments with flair. He used to play the saxophone but mainly lead guitar in a band called The Urge whose members were mostly Anglo Indians during the 60s in pubs like Trinca's and Moulin Rouge on the famous Park Street of Kolkata.

While a student at the Presidency College in Kolkata, he was sucked into the political movement of the late 60s and early 70s in Bengali campuses also known as the the Naxal Movement. He was jailed and was told to stay outside Bengal for a period of 5 years. He wandered around India spending time in Bhopal and Jabalpur as a medical representative. But he continued composing music even during this phase of hs life and was just biding his time to get back to the city he so much loved - Kolkata.

After he came back to Kolkata, he formed a band called Saptarshi with his brothers Pradip Chattopadhyay, Biswanath Chattopadhyay, first cousin Ranjon Ghoshal, Biswanath's friend Abraham Mazumder, and family friends Tapesh Bandopadhyay and Tapash Das. Later they went on to christen themselves as Moheener Ghoraguli and made music as was unheard of in Bengal at that time. It was a heady concoction of Baul and Jazz with liberal sprinkling of English words in between - possibly a bit too much for the average conservative music listener of Bengal.

The band came with totally new energy, new sound, new stagecraft, new dress code and jolted Bengalis out of their stupor. He introduced absolutely new lyrics and musical instruments like the guitar, saxophone and drums. He made Bengalis aware that any song can be sung accompanied by just the guitar.

Mohiner Ghoraguli couldn't be very "successful!?" commercially during the time and disintegrated in 1981 - but went on to inspire a whole generation of Bengali youth. So much so that by the time Gautam returned with the second innings of Moheener Ghoraguli in the 90s, he became an icon.

After the disintegration of the band Goutam continued his musical journey alone, composing new songs, making films like Nagmoti (that won the President's Medal at the National Film Awards in 1983), a tele-film A Letter to Mom, a documentary film about dhakis (drummers) of Bengal The Primal Call , a short film for an American community television To Love is to Paint..., a musical video series for Kolkata Doordarshan Video Gaan, another film Somoy (which was never released) and Rong-bing, which remained incomplete due to his sudden death in 1999 at the age of 51.