Journalist-filmmaker Anindita Dutta Roy presents a riveting documentary chronicling how the pulse of 90s Bombay was interdigitated with its live music scene
Anindita Dutta Roy
At one point in the documentary Back Then: The Story of Live Music in Bombay, an interviewee summarises the images—representative of the nightlife of Bombay in the ’90s—unfolding on screen. “[It was] loud, heavy, [with a] sea of black T-shirts, and long hair,” he says in what may well serve as an apt depiction of the scenes that unfolded in popular nightclubs like Blue Frog and Razzberry Rhinoceros. But, contrary to the perception that these words aim to diminish the movement, the interviewee in fact highlights the hedonic hunger that Indians had for rock music at the time.
Debutante director Anindita Dutta Roy’s documentary spotlights the world of underground live music, and showcases what it implied for both gig-goers and performers to be part of this community, even before the word community was popularised by social media users. Showcasing the boom and death of the music scene of Bombay across 30 years, the 58-minute film is an apparent tribute to the ‘misfits’. “As an outsider, I loved this part of the city. I wasn’t permitted [to experience] a lot of these things in Calcutta. Bombay gives people the freedom to enjoy [these experiences]. These artistes had only one or two venues to perform at. These venues became like a visit to a friend’s house. It offered comfort—as though saying it would be a ritual to head there every Thursday. It offered [artistes] the chance to meet like-minded people. And for those who didn’t listen to what was culturally more popular then, like Bollywood music, these venues served as a place where they found [solace]. It’s an ode to these misfits,” says Roy of the documentary co-directed by Abhishek Chandran. The film will be screened at NCPA on April 16.
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