Rabindrasahitya O Sangeet e Prathabhanga Prem (Subversive Love in Tagore’s Literature and Songs), an experimental audio album is formally published by Bihaan Music on 1st week of April 2016.
This initiative comprises musical renditions by Pritha Chattopadhyay and poetic and literary renditions by Ushasie Chakraborty.
What is subversive about love?
This out of the box and experimental album is an effort to interpret Tagore’s idea of love from a feminist perspective. When the experience of being in love validates feminine sexuality, autonomy and agency it surely subverts the patriarchal structure.
In this album the selected poems and songs of Rabindranath have been rifted apart from their traditional association and revisited through and recontextualised in the perspective of an active feminine sexuality and agency in love.
The female protagonists of the texts like Konkal, Chaturanga, Raktokorobi and Shyama strongly defy the patriarchal construct of the beloved. They love passionately but they also demand and seduce. They are not the mere objects of love.
The album documents the passion, desire, anxiety, desperation, failure, frustration and even the rare moments of fulfilment of these women as active subjects of love. The script of the album and the selection of the songs have been done by Prof. Epsita Halder of the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Pritha Chattopadhyay and Rahuldeb Roy. The album is formally released by Smt. Shatarupa Sanyal, eminent filmmaker, Shri Sabyasachi Deb, distinguished poet and writer and Smt. Krishna Bandopadhyay, writer and women’s rights activist.
Place: Press Club, Kolkata, 5th April, 2016