Music: Bhasker Dewan
Lyrics: Sudarsan
Album: Mantra
छात्तीभित्र सानो मुटुथियो
मुटुभित्र केही रहरहरू थिए
तारा तोड़ी ल्याउछु भन्ने त्यो मुटुमा
आशाका केही लहरहरू थिए
Chorus:
तर सपनासबै झुठो हुँढो रैछ
जीवन त केवल सधंर्षनै रैछ....................
क्षितिजपारी लक्ष्य छ भन्ढै म
खोला नाला सबै तरी हिड़े
लक्ष्य धेरै टाड़ा छ भन्ढै म
आशाको दीप जलाउदै हिड़े
Chorus:
तर क्षितिजपारी मरूभुमि पो रैछ
जीवन त केवल सधंर्षनै रैछ
छात्तीभित्र....
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Remembering the colorful Hillians of “black and white” Darjeeling
Photo: The hillian Band founder member, Peter J Karthak with Choden Tshering Bhutia, who gave the name "Hillians" to the band. (Copyright material)(Based on the queries put in by Mr. Sudarsan Tamang on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 from Grenoble, France
And answers submitted by Peter J. Karthak on Thursday, October 09, 2008 from Kupondole, Patan, Nepal)
For some reasons, our generation seems to have carried an ostensibly positive mantra: “If we look back, we’ll not be able to move forward.” But I’m afraid if this holds true all the time, because at times, it’s too imperative to keep our human side alive by being a little thankful and grateful to, or at least thoughtful about, the known or unknown individuals who lived in the near or distant past of time that shaped our present world in one way or other.
It’s my honest attempt, therefore, to “catalyze” the commemoration of those wonderful yesteryears of Darjeeling, Sikkim, Kalimpong, Kurseong and the surrounding areas, which are on an imminent process of waning into the lofty horizons of oblivion, if left unheeded.
However, thousands of words are likely to be affianced and millions of hours would elapse if we are to put the deeds of all the heralded and unheralded faces of Darjeeling into sentences and phrases that define their legacies best. Be it bravery, be it music, or be it literature, Darjeeling has had a glorious past that defies logic based on her tiny dimensions on a map itself.
To begin the rather ambitious “catalysis” process of remembering our past heroes with, here I am with one of the brightest sons of the Hills, Mr. Peter J. Karthak (Lepcha), the 65-years-old proud Darjeelingey and the founder member of The Hillians band who have had been seminal in spearheading the musical movement in Darjeeling as back as in the 1960s.
I’m really thankful to Mr. Karthak, now the Chief Copy Editor of The Kathmandu Post/City Post in Kathmandu, for being so patient with the manuscripts and showing meticulous display of love and affection for this very place of mist and fog where he, along with his group, The Hillians, had mesmerized music lovers some 40-odd years back with original Nepali songs like “Mayalu! Mayalu!”
He bares his heart out with humility and sincerity – taking on the inquisitiveness of this young soul (me!) trying to peek into the past for something worth looking back at – and engraves a memoir of himself and of the other colorful Hillians who changed the course of music history, and which takes us back to the vibrant days of “black and white” Darjeeling.
Sudarsan Tamang: Please tell us about your background and family.
Peter J Karthak: I was born in Shillong on December 12, 1943, probably the worst period of World War II at the Burma Front. After my parents were divorced, our single mother took my younger brother Mark and me back to Darjeeling. We spent our infancy at the Poshok/Peshoke Tea Estate with her younger sister Shobhit Karthak Wang (now a Canadian since 1964) and started our school. Eventually, we moved to the family farm in Upper Nor Busti, above Pool Bazaar and Bijan Bari. Having finished our primary education at the village’s Scottish Mission School (it was right above our house and started by my maternal grandfather as its headmaster and with my mother as its headmistress after his retirement) and in the block development area school called Ishwar Chandra Vidhyasagar School at Bijan Bari, our mother brought us to the town of Darjeeling in 1956 for “further” education, and that was the end to our tea garden and rural backgrounds. Little did I know then that I would one day become a city slicker and a Rock n’ Roll idol in Darjeeling, among other things. Good grief!
ST: Back then in the 1960s, Darjeeling must have been a different place. How was the musical atmosphere there then?
PJK: Darjeeling was a musical place from the time its modern settlements began in the 1830s when the Gundri Bazaar (Chowk Bazaar) was planned and some tea estates had already become a viable industry. Darjeeling was a melting pot of different cultures forming an integrated society, where Nepalis were well versed in all genres of folk music from the other side of the Mechi River (except the folk music from extreme west Nepal) while the British brought their own English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish and Cockney airs as well as Christian church and gospel music. Other European influences, including those from the Nordic countries such as Finland and Sweden, also entered the Hills. From the Europeans, Darjeeling learnt and developed harmony, orchestration, scales, chords and pitches and musical arrangements to accentuate their folk-based music and gave it modern tones in songs and instrumentation. The ‘Devkota Sangeet,’ beginning in the mid-1950s and defined by the 60s, blended madal, tyamko, tappa, murali, bansuri, binayo, sarangi, damphu, chaybrung and murchunga and other folk instruments with western musical instruments in Darjeeling. This is a latter-day progression in the artistic metamorphosis of the folk-based Nepali modern music. Even the Hindu Ram Krishna Mission, the Bihari mandirs and the Bengali Brahmo Samaj followed the church patterns in assembly worship and hymn or ‘bhajan’ singing. Many Nepalis had converted to Christianity, and many churches practiced disciplined choirs and hymnals, including in the Nepali language. Even the maestro Amber Gurung acknowledges his musical debts to the church music of Darjeeling whose people had long been attuned to the sounds of piano, accordion, guitar, harmonica (“mouth organ”), ukulele, banjo, and wind, string and reed/keyboard instruments. The French Harmonium became a de facto hands-on instrument for singers, composers and arrangers.
In all these, the denizens of Darjeeling imitated much of the clubby social doings of the British colonizers at the Gymkhana Club and Planters’ Club, the Governor’s Ball, restaurants such as Pliva’s/Glenary’s and Lobo’s. The many Cambridge schools and colleges had their own cultural happenings in music, plays, sports and other extracurricular events. Therefore, while Nepal was closed off to the world during the 104-year Rana rule (1846-1950), the northeast of India, most notably the District of Darjeeling, had flowered into modern consciousness. By the time the British left Darjeeling in 1947, the Nepalis of Darjeeling had come on their own in political thoughts and socio-economic contents with regards to modern music, literature and other schools of arts and culture, and awareness and consciousness as a distinct people. The rest is history, which continues to this day in numerous modes.
ST: Could you tell us how The Hillians came into being and then shot into prominence?
PJK: The group began as an impromptu trio with my older second cousin, the Elvis-like Lalit Kumar Tamang (deceased in 1983), my younger brother Mark, and myself. Lalit was already a senior musician/lead guitarist at Amber Gurung’s Art Academy of Music, and his best friends were Sharan Pradhan and Ranjit Gazmer. They formed a trio of fast friends and musicians at the Academy as well as at Turnbull High School.
As fledgling Hillians, we all played rhythm/chordal guitar and sang in three-part harmony. Our church hymns and choir practices helped us with scales and pitches from our “tween” years. For songs, we sang English, Nepali, Hindi (some Bengali ones, too) popular tunes. The harmony-friendly songs of Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richards, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Peter & Gordon, and Harry Belafonte etc formed our English repertoire while the songs of Amber Gurung and music from Nepal, and Hindi film songs provided suitable local alternatives. The trio also sang Nepali folksongs with Indra “Thappu” Thapaliya, the folk music doyen of Darjeeling. (A much older friend of ours and the “miit” to Amber Gurung, Thappu also passed away, on the same day Lalit Tamang departed.)
The members of The Hillians operated at many levels:
1) Lalit, Ranjit, Mark and I belonged to Mr. Amber Gurung’s Art Academy as his disciples and musicians while the latter Hillians such as Kamal Kumar “KK” Gurung and Phurba Tshering Bhutia also were familiar faces at the Academy.
2) Ranjit and I were members of Mr. Louis Banks’ Quartet and we played mostly at the Gymkhana Club. Ranjit was the drummer and I played double/violin bass. The quartet continued until Mr. Banks left for Soaltee Hotel in Kathmandu in late 1965.
3) Meanwhile, the Hillians were already formed by the winter of 1961/62, coinciding with the beginning of my college years at St Joseph’s/North Point. Later, Lalit had to leave the group because of his job in Gangtok and marriage. Eventually, we became a five-member group with me as the bandleader (lead guitar and lead voice, general manager, electrician/mechanic, negotiator, boot camp drill sergeant etc), Ranjit on drums and percussions, Mark as rhythm guitarist and lead singer, KK Gurung on bass guitar and lead singing, and Phurba Tshering on trumpet and flutes. Thus we became Darjeeling’s first fulltime, professional and commercial group while still remaining a college “boys’ band.” By this time, I had acceptably developed Rock ‘n’ Pop styles in rhythm-lead-and-bass guitar genres in Darjeeling, with doses of Jazz, popular streams, movie themes, and light classical pieces for club band music.
4) During the winter of 1962/63, the Art Academy was disbanded because Mr. Gurung found full employment with the West Bengal Government’s Folk Entertainment Unit (Lok Manoranjan Shakha); so managing the Academy as before became impossible for him. Consequently, Karma and Gopal Yonzon joined the Himalayan Kala Mandir while Gopal also worked as Mr. Gurung’s able assistant at the Unit. On our part, we formed the Sangam Club, led by Sharan, Ranjit, Aruna Lama and Jitendra Bardewa.
5) Meanwhile, I was elected Vice Captain of the Glee Club at North Point in my third year and Captain in my final year. This office kept me busy auditioning our multinational aspirants from 13 countries for the annual Talent Night, Brother Quinn’s Night, Bhanubhakta Jayanti, Robindro Joyonti and other seasonal cultural events of the college, including its social dances and charity balls at North Point and Gymkhana Club. These “extracurricular” assignments gave me much experience in event management and artistic selection procedures.
6) By 1964, the Sangam Club also broke up. Sharan and Aruna fell in love during a recording tour in Calcutta; they got married and left Sangam to form their own duo. Jitendra also left shortly afterward to form his own group. Many members also had left Darjeeling for the British and Indian Army and other services and further education elsewhere. This left only Ranjit and me as senior or decisive members at the helms of affairs at Sangam. This was where The Hillians took over as surrogate Sangam: While Ranjit created Nepali melodies and did musical arrangements, I wrote lyrics and became the lead singer. This was how The Hillains’ super hit “Mayalu” and other popular songs were created, in addition to another hit called “Ramra Ramra Bhavama”, which was exclusively composed for The Hillians by none other than the maestro, Amber Gurung. This was how we in Darjeeling proved that modern Nepali music, too, could be created, composed, set and performed by the same artists themselves – something that was already being done by Amber Gurung, Gopal Yonzon and Jitendra Bardewa. Elsewhere, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others, too, wrote their own lyrics, set them to music, arranged the songs and sang them themselves while playing their instruments as well. In the new era of “completeness,” The Hillians of Darjeeling were the first group in the Nepali world to be self-sufficient in creative talents as well as professional performance. Now, almost every group has these comprehensive components as preconditions to their being dynamic in the first place: If you don’t create and promote your own products, and play only covers, you can’t last long in the business.
ST: What is the story behind the name “Hillians”?
PJK: The Beatles had their Astrid in Hamburg; The Hillians had our Choden in Darjeeling. I met Choden Tshering Bhutia of Bhote Busti in the winter of 1960/61 while I was preparing for my Matriculations. She had already joined St Joseph’s College where Lalit Tamang was her classmate. It was through Lalit that I met her, and our chemistry coalesced from the moment we saw each other. Choden was younger than me but a senior in college because of her brilliant double promotions at St Joseph’s Convent in Kalimpong where she had her schooling. (That’s why we hadn’t met previously) Though coming from a wealthy and rich Sikkimese Kazi family with Cambridge education, she and her older siblings – brother Sonam and sister Pemala – were ardent fans of Amber Gurung and his gang (us!), and they admired what we were doing in music.
As for me, Choden’s place soon became my second home, and I was her constant companion – quite an experience for an ex-hillbilly and tea estate local boy with a young, beautiful, super-brained and westernized “Mem Sahib” – so much so that even our common friends began speculating marriage of the two of us. But our relationship was purely platonic, and we knew ourselves better than what people thought of us. I had my own female fans while she was attached to her own boyfriend. We were fast friends in the truest sense of the term.
It was at her place I heard for the first time the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and the flipside “Ask Me Why.” The latter struck me as a European light classic, and I cherish that song to this day.
Choden was my unconditional friend, a diehard fan, wise guide to the fine points of life’s awareness, constant philosopher, kind mentor and imaginative inspirer, a bright beacon of encouragement.
And since we were all “Pahade”-s, she christened our group The Hillians – so there! She supported me and my efforts all the way, oftentimes even buying new 45rpm and LP records for me and The Hillians to learn from and add to our repertory. This comradeship continued until the group started earning its own huge seasonal fees as a professional band, making us the richest teenagers in Darjeelingtown while our friends had to beg their parents for pocket money and weekly allowances!
Choden and I parted for the first time when she went for her Masters in Economics at Bombay University in 1965; the second permanent parting happened in December 1966 when I left Darjeeling (for good, as it turned out). Her last letter to me is dated early 1968 when she was about to leave her lecturer’s post at North Point to join the IAS. Since then, we have been out of touch with each other. As I write for this blog in September 2008, I believe she is now a most senior bureaucrat at the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in New Delhi.
ST: Was there any particular place where the Hillians often played live?
PJK: As made clear above, The Hillians played and performed at many levels – at the Art Academy, at Sangam, our college socials during festive seasons and at annual events, and so on. But by 1962, I was able to form a full-complement band of three guitars – rhythm, lead and bass – and a drum set, which allowed us to operate as a full-fledged band of three voices, three instruments, and percussion backup. Later, Phurba joined in as our instrumentalist on trumpet and flutes. We were eventually, and very soon, equipped with electric/electronic equipment such as electric guitars, preamps, amplifiers and speakers which were brought to Darjeeling mostly by Thai students at North Point and other schools in town.
We had our two regular tourist-season (March-April-May and September-October-November) contracts at the Gymkhana Club, Planter’s Club, Central Hotel, and Lobo’s Restaurant in Darjeelingtown. When Mr. Louis Banks left Darjeeling for Soaltee Hotel in Kathmandu, he left his turfs to The Hillians, even recommending us to the Indian Army and Indian Air Force which allowed us to travel to Gangtok, Bag Dogra and other forces clubs in winter for the great galas and parties they held. The Indian Armed Forces threw regular parties to impress the Chinese next door at Nathu-La and other border areas, and The Hillians greatly profited from these social events. But come to think of it, as I did many times: Just one single MIG bomb run by the Chinese from their nearby Tibetan airfield on the Norkhil dancehall in Gangtok, and it would obliterate many four-star generals, powerful bureaucrats, industrialists, royal invitees, and important public figures of the region. But it did not happen, thank God! However, such a possibility was never far from my own mind while our amplifiers blasted the night into the wee hours of the dawn.
ST: Who were the original members of the band, and what changes took place in the band’s lineup after its inception?
PJK: This has been answered above in Q. 3. To recap: First, the nucleus was formed by Lalit, Mark and Peter as a trio. This was the time I took up electric bass guitar, the first to do so in Darjeeling. Later, I shifted to lead guitar, leaving the rhythm to Mark and the bass section to Kamal Kumar Gurung when he joined the band. By this time, in late 1963, Lalit had left Darjeeling and The Hillians. Ranjit Gazmer had been our drummer and tabala player from the very beginning.
ST: What difficulties did you all face as a Band?
PJK: There were many difficulties of various kinds – national, regional, local, communal, personal – for artistic and imaginative people of our times. The post-Independence national scene in India was dominated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru whose Nehruvian/Fabian “swadeshi” (national) brand of socialism forbade import and enjoyment of anything “phoren” (foreign, read British) or non-Indian goods. Very soon, as a result, India lacked original ideas because of the inbuilt atrophy. India was also discouraged by Nehru and his party and government to produce and manufacture its own modern and convenience goods such as cars (for examples, the same 1950s models of Fiat, Standard Herald, Ambassador cars and Tata trucks continued for so many decades!), fridges, air conditioners, hi-fi stereo equipments, electric musical instruments, amplifiers, and latest records and players, tape recorders, transistor radios, cameras, fabrics and whatever commodities which were taken for granted elsewhere. As a result, we in India lagged far behind in timely progress and developments to produce our own everyday essential necessities. Even access to essential foreign goods and items were discouraged as anti-Indian and unpatriotic by the License Raj and the exorbitant central and state taxes levied on whatever imports being made.
Consequently, India was the world’s largest democracy but locked from within itself and closed to the world. Whatever we needed in terms of our fundamental consumption commodities were non-existent, and whatever were available, they were either inferior or shoddy. The citizens of India in our time were the most deprived people in the world, as worse off as those in closed Communist countries. Nehru’s all-India prohibition lasting some four decades was liberalized only in the 1980s by his grandson, Rajiv Gandhi. By this time, it was much too late for most of our generation who were teenagers in the 1960s in Darjeeling.
By comparison, the neighborhoods of Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and Burma allowed imports of essential foreign commodities and luxury goods, ranging from Japanese cars and electronics to American jeans and English cigarettes and Scotch whisky to French perfumes. But at home, such officially-imposed famines caused fantasies in Darjeeling. So much so that what limited genres of records HMV (His Master’s Voice) sold in the market, we were forced to buy; so much so that we had to tune in to the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation of Colombo for their Sunday Binaca Hit Parade to listen to the latest western hits, and to its weekly Binaca Geet Mala for the latest Hindi film songs from Bombay’s celluloid empire. All India Radio (AIR), probably the biggest broadcasting network in the world, perhaps as vast as Brazil’s Globo, thought it un-Indian to broadcast its own modern and popular home-grown music. Hence we were forced to dial in to the scratchy and static-laden wavelengths of the distant Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Broadcasting Corporation.
But we were luckier in Darjeeling, as compared to even the metropolises of India, including its coastal cities such as Calcutta and Bombay which were obviously prone to smuggling of “phoren” goods over which moneyed Indians salivated and went gaga. Darjeeling, as it was, was famous for its many “T”s – Tea, tourism, teaching/education in its world renowned schools, timber/forest produces, and TT (telegraphic transfers) – which sustained the hill economy, employed thousands of people, and brought in much-needed foreign exchange in chronic Dollar-hungry India. All the “T”-s generated foreign exchange earnings – the world-famous Darjeeling Tea, the foreign students, and tourism all added to the volume of greenback deposits in the local banks. TT meant the British Gurkhas of Darjeeling remitting money from Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Britain, as well as Indian Army Gorkhas of the Darjeeling Hills repatriating precious IC amounts to their families. The District of Darjeeling in our times was economically middle class; mostly literate, educated and motivated; sincere, honest, and helpful; adventurous and modern in outlook; roaring and raring for more prospects and possibilities, while bleak scenarios obtained in most of India. Darjeeling was that bright billet of a powerhouse of futuristic hopes, profound challenges and optimistic can-do attitudes on the top of a hill range in east Himalaya. Certainly, we had chronic and prolonged problems and lacked many things; but, and therefore, we yearned and worked hard to address these endemic shortcomings – whether inherent, manmade, or state-sponsored.
When The Hillians came into being as a creative, professional, performing and entertaining boys’ band (we tried to induct two girls as our crooners, but to no avail!) in both Nepali and western music by the early 1960s, the British had left Darjeeling for 13 years, and the pipe organs, pianos and other musical instruments left by them in clubs, restaurants and churches were getting old, mildewed and falling in disrepair and disuse. The dwindling British club culture was frowned upon by the post-Independence Hindu/Hindi Cow Belt Indians who led the central government in New Delhi. The decades-old itinerant Shakespeare-wallahs (there’s the film of the same name for the new message) were replaced by Bhangra brouhahas and other rediscovered Indian chic.
However, Darjeeling did not suffer as much as the rest of India, even though the Hills were steadily losing its British residents and Anglo-Indians, Parsis and Chinese denizens (the latter due to the Indo-Chinese War). There still remained some of the British airs in Darjeeling. Almost all the tea estates were still owned by British consortiums (until Indians bought them, causing profits migration, provoking labor problems and inviting Communist political interferences.) The eastern rajahs and maharajas (Burdwan, Cooch Bihar etc) of India still had their summer residences in Darjeeling. The royals, aristocrats and powerful bureaucrats of Nepal, Sikkim, Lhasa and Bhutan continued visiting the hill station. Foreign students, numbering many thousands, still studied at the fine Cambridge schools and colleges of Kalimpong, Kharsang (Kurseong) and Darjeeling.
It was the foreign students who contributed much to my modern musical aspirations in Darjeeling. The first two were the “Burma Boys” – Desmond Aye and Bobby Leong. Desmond was the Pelvis Elvis, and Bobby the Cliff Richards, of North Point. Once they teamed up with Louis Banks (piano/lead guitar), Austin Plant (rhythm guitar/double bass) and Wilson (drums), they blew up the stage of the college.
It was again Choden who got the latest 45rpm and LP records from Desmond and Bobby for my musical learning. Later, I myself borrowed guitars, records and music sheets from the Burma Boys.
Tragically, these rich and wealthy Burmese students disappeared from Darjeeling in 1962, following Gen Ne Win’s “Burmese Path to Socialism” coup in Burma. Desmond’s father lost his banking empire and Bobby’s family their mercantile holdings. Desmond exiled himself, after many years of turmoil in Burma, to Chiang Mai in Thailand where he died as a deranged and stateless person a couple of years ago. He purportedly died dreaming of revolutionary guerilla warfare against the Junta and democratic takeover of Burma. In retrospect, I take the latter-day Desmond Aye as the saddest Burmese Tragedy of our times.
As for Bobby, he too smuggled his eighth-month pregnant wife Bela and himself to Thailand, passing at night by what later turned out to be the “Killing Fields” and migrated to Canada, and is now retired from the Husky Oil Company. For finer details, references may be made to a particular issue of Himal Southasian magazine covering Burma a couple of years ago, in which I’ve paid my own homage to both of these kindhearted North Point seniors. I received much of the above information from Bobby Leong, then living somewhere in Canada, before our emails stopped some years ago. However, he did not remember the junior North Pointer (me) borrowing his guitars and LPs!
The affluent and stylish Burma Boys were supplanted by equally rich and fashionable Thai students at St Joseph’s College. Two of them were Lek and Dang who became my business associates at North Point. Lek was the more astute businessman who brought acoustic/electric guitars (Hofner, Egmond and other European makes) and Vox and Fender amplifiers (all disassembled in parts to get around the Indian Customs in Calcutta) from Bangkok. He sold these items to me, mostly on “credit” until the beginning of the long winter vacation, by which time I earned money by playing music and paid him in full. He needed the money for his parties in Calcutta before going home to Bangkok. Finding an honest client in me, Lek brought more updated gears for The Hillians when college began again in March the next year, and the same process began all over again. In all this, Dang stood as witness to the transactions. Thus we spent our four college years at North Point. At the end, Lek gifted us with a Nilex skin for our snare drum (the set was bought from The Fentones of Shillong), which replaced the calfskin that needed much warming and heating for tight timbre in the moist cold of Darjeeling. Then we parted, in 1966. I believe Lek has long been a hectic businessman in Chiang Mai and Dang Somprasong is the South Asia representative of the Tourism Authority of Thailand and based in New Delhi.
I must add that the first fund of Rs. 1,000 (a whopping fortune in those days!) to pay Lek came from my Maili aunt – the same aforementioned Shobhit Karthak Wang – who was about to immigrate to Canada with her family. This seed money indeed launched The Hillians as a full-fledged performing and club band, the first of its kind – not only in Darjeeling but in the Nepali world as well – as later research by Tshering Choden and Yubakar Rajcarnikar revealed.
In their final years, both Lek and Dang were students of Choden’s at North Point, and we all met at her place regularly. Among the other beneficiaries of the latest materials and modern equipment the Thai students brought to Darjeeling were Tommy Crees (of Sonada, now an acclaimed architect in Kathmandu), Jimmy Plant (perhaps he migrated to Canada?) and other musicians who were The Hillians’ “rivals” (Tommy’s word!) in those olden golden days in Darjeeling.
This, in a gist, is how we managed to nurture our artistic dreams in Darjeeling and in a universally segregated and culturally starved India. My own thanks to the Burma Boys and my Thai classmates shall remain for the rest of my life. They are responsible for arming and equipping The Hillians who, in turn, unleashed a musical movement in Darjeeling that continues unbroken to this day, according to the research carried out by Tshering Choden and Yubakar Rajcarnikar in the WAVE magazine and their “In Tune with Darjeeling” DVD.
Lastly, but equally importantly, my answer to your particular question shall remain incomplete if I miss out on our own (the then) dynamic Darjeeling’s contributions to our musical efforts in the 1960s. We all had our friends and relatives in the British Brigade of Gurkhas in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong. When they retired or visited the hometown during their furloughs, they brought foreign goods which certainly included, among other things, records, guitars, amplifiers, clothes which The Hillians readily purchased. For instance, I bought two fine guitars from Ajay Gurung whose uncle had sent these instruments from Hong Kong. (For more information, Ajay is the older brother of Abhay Gurung, footballer par excellence, and Anuradha Gurung/Koirala of Maiti Nepal in Kathmandu. Ajay was the No 2 tabalchist, after Ranjit Gazmer, at Amber Gurung’s Art Academy before he joined the British Army. After nearly 40 years of soldiering, Ajay has finally retired to his farm in Sipahi Dhura near Kharsang where he is likely to be found harvesting awesome red hot chilies and still playing his tabala at the AIR station below Kurseong Bazaar or the town’s various cultural events. Dear readers of Darjeeling: Please check him out, for me!)
ST: Is there any special moment of your life that you want to share?
PJK: I’m not sure if I understand this question correctly. However, there are many moments in my life which have been momentous, made by the personalities I’ve mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. They, aided and abetted by the very historic times and experiences they themselves engineered, and through which we all lived, have impacted not only me but the greater world around themselves. Even the teachers we had had, such as Messrs Indra Bahadur Rai and Amber Gurung et al, influenced us and still continue to sway the Nepali world with their fresher thoughts and contents in literature and music.
Then there was a junior called Sonam something from Sikkim who pestered me during auditions (while I was the Vice Captain and Captain of the Glee Club at North Point) with request to sing, dance, play flutes and what not at the annual Talent Night show, and I expressed my inability to accommodate one artist with so many items in the same program. In less than five years after college, he emerged as Danny Denzongpa in his very first Bombay blockbuster called “Dhund.”
I’m glad to say, in addition, that in my modest capacity, I’ve written about all the contemporary music composers, singers, lyricists, musicians, literary figures, painters, dancers, actors and other various artists and sports icons of both Darjeeling and Kathmandu who have contributed their best to enrich the Nepali ethos. In all my humility, I’ve merely tried to pay my debts to them for being there in the decades I’ve lived through, during which I have had the undeserved honor of knowing them and working with most of them. Many have passed on, regrettably, but those of us, while fast aging ourselves, try to continue what we’ve been doing to the best of our legacy inherited from these past masters and still-living exemplars.
ST: Where are the Hillians band members at present? Are you still in touch with them?
PJK: All the five members of The Hillians are scattered today. Ranjit Gazmer, Phurba Tshering and I came to Birgunj in Nepal from Darjeeling in 1966 and arrived eventually in Kathmandu in early 1967. All three of us worked at Radio Nepal as its studio recording musicians for some years (I stopped playing in 1975). Mark Karthak followed after sometime while Kamal Kumar Gurung remained in Darjeeling.
Eventually, Ranjit left for Bombay sometime in 1970/71. Phurba also left Kathmandu later and taught at St. Paul’s in Darjeeling. Today, only Ranjit remains in music, and visits Kathmandu occasionally from Mumbai. Phurba, I gather, teaches at a university in the Gulf. Mark has been in New Delhi for the last three years, and does what he is best at – tourism. He also worked as a musician in Kathmandu for many years. Kamal also has been a big travel agent in Darjeeling for many decades. I’ve switched over to literary writing, journalism, editorship, consultancy and related media works while basing myself in Kathmandu since 1967.
No, we haven’t been in touch with each other, although my contact with Ranjit, Kamal and Mark can be reactivated whenever needed. Phurba, however, has truly disappeared from my viewfinder.
ST: Do you all have any plans to have reunion sometime in near future?
PJK: No, as far as I’m concerned, The Hillians don’t have any plans for reunion.
ST: It is said that the Hillians were also known as SIKKIMESE Beatles. What is the story behind it?
PJK: Well, the label is courtesy of Time Magazine and its correspondent covering the exotic coronation of the Chhogyal of Sikkim. It reported to the effect that the Chhogyal and his Gyalmo (the American Hope Cook) did the Twist (under the canopy of the huge tented reception samiana on the royal palace grounds in Gangtok) to the “Sikkimese Beatles” and their “Himalayan version” of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
The Hillians’ “royal command performance” as enlisted by the Gyalmo happened by pure accident. Mark and I were merely visiting Gangtok at the invitation of Lalit who was a teacher at a high school there and also to see an unmet distant cousin called Alfred Karthak (who, I believe, is a big shot in the State Government of Sikkim!) and to attend his birthday party and do some sing-along, too. We had taken only one guitar, a jumbo-like acoustic electric bought recently from Ajay Gurung (mentioned above), without amplifier, but which could be plugged in to the public address system (“mike”) for electric sound and amplification for public performance.
Lalit was an important member of a major reception committee for the royal pomp and ceremony to be attended by a record number of foreign representatives in Sikkim’s modern history. In his runarounds, Lalit happened to meet the famous writer and editor Mr. Desmond Doig of The Statesman of Calcutta (he spent his last decades in Kathmandu), heard our three-tenor singing of the latest Beatles hits at Alfred’s birthday party and quickly filled the queen’s ears about a possible performance by the trio. The Gyalmo “most graciously” assented, and three gold-embroidered royal invitation badges arrived in no time for the evening reception following the daylong coronation ceremony. Since Mark and I were in casual traveling clothes only, we had no proper black suits or tuxedos for the royal do. So we became three men in black – black leather jackets, black string ties, and black tight trousers and so on. For the gala, there was the resident band from Moulin Rouge of Park Street with the voluptuous crooner, Delilah, who announced us. We borrowed the band’s electric guitar and cued the drummer for the beats. We belted out four Beatles hits and an Elvis one, taking fifteen minutes – our strict scheduled slot – and then we were off. But we made our marks, because the rest of the evening no longer maintained the same old behaved and careful diplomatic protocol. Every pair did the Twist, Loco Motion and Jive to our beats and sounds. When the Sikkimese ruler and his consort themselves took to the floor to gyrate their royal pelvises under their richly brocaded “bakkhu”-s, everybody danced with jolly abandon – including the Indian super brats called Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi who had come with their mother, Indira Gandhi, then the I&B Minister, representing India at the coronation.
Our instant popularity resulted in an extended stay in Gangtok. One particular patron turned out to be Princess Yuthok, the Chhogyal’s younger sister whose residence at the end of Lal Bazaar became our station. We sang at her child’s birthday at Norkhil which the Chhogyal and his Gyalmo graced with their presence The Hillians had an “audience” with the Gyalmo who whispered rather than spoke audibly. She commented, “Since you sing in English, we hope you speak English well, too!” The Yuthoks, living in Hong Kong and Japan many months of the year, were in Gangtok for the coronation, and they took us to many picnics and outings, followed by a bevy of girl fans of Gangtok. The Princess promised us electric guitars and amplifiers, but they never materialized, which later surprised her officials because “she never forgets the promises she makes.” But she wrote an explanatory letter to the Father Principal of North Point, requesting him to excuse the long absence from classes incurred by Mark and me.
It was in the college library that very week that Lek showed me the Time magazine clip and wondered if the news was about The Hillians. He was very happy to know that it was indeed about the very local group he had been supplying stuffs to for so long.
I can’t close our uncanny Sikkim Coronation chapter without bringing in Mr. Desmond Doig again. We missed him in Gangtok, but it turned out we were not out of his mind. In a few weeks, back in town, Mr. Dilip Bose, The Statesman’s representative in Darjeeling, came around to the Orient Restaurant, one of our regular hangouts in town, asking “Who are the Hillians? I’m looking for the Hillians.” I introduced myself, and he showed me a telegram, which said, ‘Interview the Hillians for JS. Desmond.’
“This is from Desmond Doig. How come he knows you and I don’t?” Dilip Da wondered in a kind of self-pity. I explained that he had not been around to the social events of the town where we mostly played during the seasons. Then we met twice in his house, answered his questions and handed him our best group photographs. The interview was for a new youth magazine called JS, short for “Junior Statesman” which was rapidly gaining popularity and circulation in India. The JS was Mr. Doig’s concept at The Statesman to cater to the young generation of India. In a few days, The Hillians were carried in the next issue of the youth magazine, becoming the first Rock ‘n’ Roll group to be covered from the Hills or the Northeast. Thus were opened the media gates of the vaster plains to the remote peoples of India, isolated in distant and far-flung nooks and corners.
ST: Who was your inspiration?
PJK: No one inspired me, as such. More than anyone inspiring me, there were many who influenced, encouraged and supported me. Choden was my loving friend and loyal mentor who rejoiced at our greater success in Gangtok and with JS, vindicating her trust and faith in what I was doing. Mr. Louis Banks was a great guiding light and my first employer in music. Mr. Amber Gurung’s musical legacy flows in all his past and present followers, and his influence continues to this day; so much so that he composed the melody of Nepal’s new national anthem in the nation’s avatar as a federal democratic republic, following the dismantling of the monarchy. Mr. Indra Bahadur Rai, our Nepali teacher at Turnbull High, has been the most enlightened writer and thinker in the Nepali world as a whole. The list of kindhearted people in my life in Darjeeling is indeed long. I have been lucky, to say the very least.
The 60s itself were a great watershed period for me to work and live through. Such a dynamic decade will not repeat, and this simple statement sums it all up.
ST: How did the group split?
PJK: The Hillians broke up just like that, as they say. As I said above, three of us (Ranjit, Phurba and I) landed in Birgunj as teachers and consultants to a new “English medium” school there. It happened just after my graduation from North Point, and I was planning for my future when the Birgunj adventurism took place. I was also preparing for The Hillians’ winter schedules out of Darjeeling – the Army in Gangtok, the Air Force at Bag Dogra, and possibly a stint at Trinca’s in Calcutta, and so on. It was then the invitation came from Phurba who had already been to the new school during our seasonal hiatus and academic recess. In the process, Mark and Kamal were left behind in Darjeeling because they had one more year at college. I had intended to be in Birgunj for just about 10 months and be back in Darjeeling to plan my future course of actions. But fate dictated otherwise, and we three found ourselves in Kathmandu after our fiasco in Birgunj. The three Hillians continued as musicians at Radio Nepal, Royal Nepal Academy and elsewhere, but the old band’s formation did not take place even when Mark also joined us in Kathmandu. The two main reasons were the lack of modern equipment and 20th century club culture in Kathmandu while most of our seasoned and professional electric and electronic gears, too, were left behind in Darjeeling, not talking about our lucrative business turfs there and in the neighborhoods. And I had planned to go back to Darjeeling well within 12 months anyway, not knowing, however, that I would overstay in Kathmandu, which is running into its 42nd year in 2008!
Even then, honestly speaking, The Hillians were mostly a college boys’ band, and permanency was not something on the cards. However, two British tea planters of Darjeeling were interested in our other hit – “Ramra Ramra Bhavama”, custom-composed for The Hillians by Mr. Amber Gurung – and they proposed that we record the song in Britain. But we foresaw long bureaucratic passport hassles in distant Delhi, and other pros and cons of travel and equipment and foreign exchange also loomed large. The proposal thus died a natural death as well as the longevity of The Hillians themselves.
In retrospect, frankly, I still find it easy to recall today that our breakup happened spontaneously and casually. Therefore, no hang-ups and regrets were allowed to enter and linger. This was possible because we were not at all aware during those years that The Hillians were making history in creative Nepali popular music and its live performance. It took Pop historians and researchers like Tshering Choden and Yubakar Rajcarnikar of Kathmandu to see the very first milepost erected by The Hillians on the highway of the particular genre. But when the two journalists found out the truth, nearly four decades had passed by before they made the discovery!
Many ask me: Why did another edition of The Hillians NOT happen in Kathmandu? Well, as I said above, Kathmandu was in the Stone Age as far as our kind of popular, modern, creative and performing music and culture were concerned when we arrived here. It took some more years even for cover bands – whose members, by the way, were all non-Kathmandu-born – to see some prospects for economic sustenance in the business. By that time, I, for one, had become the oldest teenager in the world.
But, all said and done, I’m happy to say I have no sorrows; I’m at peace with myself. My group and I did the best we could, and I’m happy that at least Ranjit Gazmer is still in music, and he’ll continue with it until the final bell tolls. As far as The Hillians are concerned, they are termed historic in what they did, and whatever groundbreaking deeds they did once upon a time in Darjeeling are also consigned to history by now. Remembrances of things done in the past are a delightful and nostalgic repast for me, and that’s ample enough reward for me – thank you very much!
ST: Who was/is your favorite singer from Darjeeling?
PJK: My favorite singers from Darjeeling are many because of the novel individual styles and ranges they possessed and demonstrated. While saying so, I must also reiterate that we belonged to the very first modern wave to introduce new sounds in and from Darjeeling. Chronologically speaking, Amber Gurung succeeded the generation of the musical era of Nabin Bardewa and Hira Singh and the singing of Urmila Devi and others in the 1950s. It was with Amber Gurung, however, that Darjeeling heard many unique and original musical manners in his own lyrics, compositions, arrangements and renditions. Gagan Gurung, Rudra Mani Gurung, Shekhar Dixit, Kishore Sotang and other male singers were his singing contemporaries. Shanti Thatal was one in the female department for her individual originality in sound and techniques, while Aruna Lama had that certain nightingale mellifluousness. The list of the latter-day singers, both males and females, is rather long – Gopal Yonzon, Karma Yonzon, Jitendra Bardewa, Kumar Subba; then Lhamu Didi, Dil Maya Khati, Nirmala Gazmer, Mary Karthak, Daisy Baraily, Dawa Gyalmo, Kunti Sundas (Moktan), Sukmit Lepcha (Gurung) and Lasimit Lepcha later on. If I miss other deserving names, it is because of the long roster.
To me personally, there is no one as yet to best Amber Gurung in singing in the male group and Shanti Thatal in the female fraternity for executing their burnished vocal techniques, sharing their learned poetic justice to the sentiments and meanings and messages of the lyrics and melodies of the songs, and their studied and intellectual comprehension and trained grasp of the songs in each of their musical totality and tonality while singing them. Sadly, their best gifts are not recorded on as many discs. I write these words on their behalf because I happened to be one of those musicians who played for them and listened to and heard the finest gems shining forth from their vocalizing capacity from close quarters, during rehearsals and in-camera singing.
ST: Have you listened to any of the bands from Darjeeling of late?
PJK: No, I’m afraid I’ve long been overdue in this, and I don’t think I’ll ever redeem myself. Going back to the 60s, The Diamonds were our understudies in Darjeeling because Pemba is a fellow Lepcha, and they borrowed The Hillians’ equipment and instruments when we took our deserved rest. But I don’t know how they sound today, with many transfers and self-exiles practiced in the community. Dinesh Rai and Subarna Limbu and others also practice migration and reorganize their ensembles. I heard the Rusty Nails twice, and that’s about all for bands originating from Darjeeling. I don’t know, too, anything about the latest musical musings of the PJ Pradhan Twins and Puran Gongba and our own KK Gurung in Darjeeling. In Kathmandu, I’ve been invited to a couple of shows by Abhaya Subba Weise (many thanks, Abhaya!) and The Steam Injuns.
The Gurung Brothers of Kathmandu – Kishor, Raju and Sharad – with sister Alka as well could reunite as a formidable force with Patriarch Amber Gurung, and that’s a dream I wait for fulfillment in the near future.
Frankly, my own commitments have long been to literature and journalism – a fact recognized by Kishor Gurung and The Classical Guitar Society of Nepal who felicitated me in 2001 for making a “unique” crossover from a guitarist to a literary writer “with such high levels of artistry and intellect”….making “us guitarists proud.” It is, I think, the politest way of saying, “You deserter!”
ST: Please tell us something about the famous song “Mayalu.”
PJK: As I mentioned above (in answer to Q 03), the Sangam Club was almost empty when three of its founders (Sharan, Aruna and Jitendra) had left it, and many members had joined their respective camps. Only Ranjit remained at the helms as the remaining leader. The Club was housed in the middle of Chandmari, and the cottage-like building belonged to the “Kami Samaj” and was the headquarters of the well-organized Bishwakarma community of Darjeeling. It was in such a desolate situation that we met one pre-winter evening and planned to carry on with whatever we had at our disposal. “Mayalu”, “Manko Manmai” (the latter song was admired by Mr. Amber Gurung) and other songs were made during this bleak and clueless period, beginning in 1964. By accidental requirements, I was forced to become the lyricist while Ranjit composed the melodies. I became the lead singer, too, and I also prevailed as arranger, especially in determining chords. In this case, the chordal pattern of “Mayalu” was unique in that, based on C Major, the first refrain of “Mayalu” began with C Major, the second refrain had Bm (B Minor) and the third syllable was broken into maya- in Dm (D Minor) to arrive at C Major with –lu again. It was quite unlike any chordal arrangement seen in music, and it should be recognized as such.
The Hillians performed this song at the next event at North Point. It was an instant hit. We later learnt, however, that Mr. Louis Banks completely disapproved of the slow interlude of the sturdy 4/4-beat song. At the next rehearsal meeting of the Louis Banks Quartet in his house near the Municipal School, he laughed at the interlude, dressed Ranjit down resoundingly with his uncompromising critique. Then he ordered me to sing the refrain of mayalu-mayalu-mayalu, after which he played his own version of the interlude on piano. He did it in a single sweep and at one go. Then he transcribed the passage to notation in treble and bass clefs. The passage had the chords of C-E-Am-F-G7-C. And the new interlude stuck officially with the song thereafter.
But Ranjit did not altogether dismiss his old interlude piece, which he incorporated into another Nepali movie song many years later.
I sang the song with The Hillians so many times that I stopped counting after 105. There was a long boredom and fatigue with this super hit. But the fan following was unbelievable. One schoolgirl in Kalimpong made me write the entire song in her notebook, making it the longest autograph I ever wrote.
Then it was time to have the hit song recorded, as was customary in Darjeeling. It was then the first disappointment set in. We booked our date with the Hindustan Records in Calcutta. But at virtually the last minute, Kamal and Phurba cancelled their deadline. Phurba cited his family’s annual Buddhist observations and Kamal had to help his father for his upcoming elections. Without the song’s established bass line and flute interlude handled so habitually by the two members, the song’s recorded version would be flat and unsatisfactory, to say the least. Anyway, Ranjit, Mark and I went to Calcutta and recorded the song and the flipside. It was in fact for the sake of Ranjit Gazmer’s prestige as a music composer, it was necessary to have the recordings made. It was an important issue in Darjeeling to have Ranjit established at par with Sharan Pradhan, Karma and Gopal Yonzon as recording artists and music directors. But when I later heard the song’s scratchy dummy in Darjeeling, the two missing links of bass and flute jarred me with an emptiness, and the five-instrument combine that The Hillians had been so accustomed to were absent in the disc. This unsettled me, and perhaps as a fated coincidence, I never heard the finished product. I left Darjeeling before the final cuts arrived in town, and I’m yet to hear the recorded version of Mayalu to this day. Please believe me when I say this because it is true.
But I would like to listen to it, and it would be for just one reason: I had rewritten the second/final stanza (antara) of the song while we were recording it in the studio. During the recess between the second and third takes, I changed the wordings, and I liked the results. Ranjit and Mark also approved of the changes I had made. So what the public had heard before was edited for better effects in the final product. I, too, would like to hear it and see how the new verse sounds. And I’m still waiting, in 2008 AD!
And there was the second disappointment suffered by “Mayalu.” It took place a couple of years ago when the group 1974 AD showed their interest in recording it. My son Jimmy and his wife are the group’s close friends, and the couple conveyed the group’s message to me. I sang and recorded the song for them to copy, and they made big announcements in the media on their version of the song. But when they recorded it, they bothered neither to consult me nor invite me to the studio. Nor was I invited to the public release of their next album which included “Mayalu.” Forget also about sending Ranjit and me complimentary copies of the CD. And when I heard the song by chance on the radio one day, I was left aghast at the distorted version of the work, especially the linear rendition of the antara stanzas which was so far removed from the old tune that it was more of a different melody than the original.
This artistic corruption also worried me with regards to Ranjit’s possible protests as the co-owner of the property because, after all, there were still the unresolved questions of intellectual property rights, copyrights and royalties, whereas the entire operation was surprisingly one-sided and went ahead without even the minimum niceties and acknowledgements due Ranjit and me as joint creators of the song. And the musical anarchy had happened despite Ranjit providing the group his handwritten notation on Bb Major.
On my part, I explained to Ranjit with my side of the story so that he would not misunderstand me for any conspiracy against him. After all, he was in distant Mumbai, and so he had every right to smell rats in my possible unilateral dealing with 1974 AD, leaving him in the dark. To my relief, I was able to convince him with the truth, and we together wrung our hands in helplessness and resignation.
I also must add that 1974 AD’s multiple maltreatments, which had posed all the dangers of ruining the friendship between Ranjit and me and our joint ownership of “Mayalu”, are typical of the feudalism prevalent in Nepal, and further compounded by the legal laxity in intellectual property rights and copyrights and royalties regimes in Nepal. And that is all we can say on the matter, which would usually go to court in other countries for justice and rightful settlements.
On my own and on behalf of Ranjit Gazmer as well, I’m happy to present this case to the public through your weblog. I just wouldn’t miss the opportunity provided by your questionnaire. Having been allowed to say as much, may I also express, in all fairness, my hope that the other party, too, may be given the rights and freedom to state their side of the case, which may indeed help settle this unpleasant matter?
ST: Any message to the young generations who are trying to follow the path you chose 40 years ago?
PJK: Well, messages and advice and counsels and suggestions come flooding these days. The present digital age and its wizardry, according to one writer in The New Yorker, can turn a mellow-toned Madonna into a superstar, and a cat’s purr into a lion’s roar. Modern state-of-the-art recording studios can turn artificiality into genuine articles, and a certain nobody into somebody special, and senses can be canned into nonsense.
In comparison, the vicissitudes we went through years ago are amply described in the preceding paragraphs, and readers of my descriptions today may call me an outright liar or a writer of fairytales. It’s all upto them, really. The Tin Pan Alley of Kathmandu and its recording studios are full of singers who take music as instant coffee. They want fast fame as if it’s like fast foods.
But times have changed, and changed for better. For instance, when I was in Chicago last fall, I indulged myself in the trivial pursuit of tapping the Internet for songs of those yesteryears. I typed Bobby Darrin and his “Things” on the keyboard, and the six speakers of my nephew’s computer system played it out, streaming the room. I heard Harry Belafonte and listened to his “Island in the Sun” hits, then Trini Lopez, The Shadows, Stan Getz, Carlos Jobim, and other singers and musicians of those nostalgic days. Even lyrics and notations with chords are available these days – and for free! How-to techniques are everywhere. In our days, we bought music sheets from Braganza in Calcutta, each costing a whopping 20 Rupees. Later, the Thai students brought fat songbooks with notations, chords and diagrams, and words, and I ran to Louis Daju’s house at Rose Banks to learn from him. He played the music directly on his piano, exclaiming, “Aha, this is good, Bhai, this is good!” while I held the book and turned the pages. Today, Fender Stratocasters and Marshall Amplifiers are merely two makes in the long list of world-class instruments and equipments sold in the music shops of Kathmandu. The old four-string bass guitar has five strings today; and power chords have been developed.
But everything still boils down to one thing, as in the old days: Dedication! There can be no alternative to hard work, long hours, practice and rehearsals with patience, continuous learning, doggedness with imagination, while maintaining humility and gratefulness, and also banking on a little bit of luck here and there. Why? Because if technology has made access to resources easier and quicker today, one must still compete with those others who enjoy the same facilities. So diligence always counts!
The Hillians as a band played nine types of music for the eveningers, clubbers, dancers and jam session regulars. A recent browse gave me a list of 42 types of music. Today’s musicians also tend to specialize in one genre as a diehard loyalist while despising other styles. Death Metal headbangers of Kathmandu can’t swoon to smooth Blues, and so on. They boo the other stylists. Thus, a specialist in one field today is likely to be a dunce in other streams of thoughts and contents.
However, one established rule for musicians is always this: Go to the roots of one’s folk music and classical developments. Maestros acknowledge this truth by actually “borrowing” from ancient tunes. John Lennon copied a folk tune from Holland for his “Lucy in the Sky with Her Diamonds” and Lloyd Webber reportedly lifted a Middle Age pan-Germanic melody for his “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” (which earned him the nickname of “Worldwide Webber.”) Bob Dylan began with compositions of Woody Guthrie and American folksongs derived from the Olde Worlde of Britain and its immigrants scattered all over in the vast US while African Americans (previously Colored, Negroes, Blacks) had their African roots to draw from during their years of slavery. These are just a few examples of musical cross-fertilization in the world.
Well, so much for “message” in the medium!
Thank you.
Thank you, too, Mr. Tamang!
Originally published in: sudarshantamang.blogspot.com
Copyrights held by:
Peter J. Karthak
Chief Copy Editor
The Kathmandu Post/City Post
Subidha Nagar, Kathmandu
(Tel: 977-1-4480100)
Kopundole, Patan, Nepal
Home tel: 977-1-5524078/-5537357
Mobile: 9841564399
Email: pjkarthak@gmail.com
*****
And answers submitted by Peter J. Karthak on Thursday, October 09, 2008 from Kupondole, Patan, Nepal)
For some reasons, our generation seems to have carried an ostensibly positive mantra: “If we look back, we’ll not be able to move forward.” But I’m afraid if this holds true all the time, because at times, it’s too imperative to keep our human side alive by being a little thankful and grateful to, or at least thoughtful about, the known or unknown individuals who lived in the near or distant past of time that shaped our present world in one way or other.
It’s my honest attempt, therefore, to “catalyze” the commemoration of those wonderful yesteryears of Darjeeling, Sikkim, Kalimpong, Kurseong and the surrounding areas, which are on an imminent process of waning into the lofty horizons of oblivion, if left unheeded.
However, thousands of words are likely to be affianced and millions of hours would elapse if we are to put the deeds of all the heralded and unheralded faces of Darjeeling into sentences and phrases that define their legacies best. Be it bravery, be it music, or be it literature, Darjeeling has had a glorious past that defies logic based on her tiny dimensions on a map itself.
To begin the rather ambitious “catalysis” process of remembering our past heroes with, here I am with one of the brightest sons of the Hills, Mr. Peter J. Karthak (Lepcha), the 65-years-old proud Darjeelingey and the founder member of The Hillians band who have had been seminal in spearheading the musical movement in Darjeeling as back as in the 1960s.
I’m really thankful to Mr. Karthak, now the Chief Copy Editor of The Kathmandu Post/City Post in Kathmandu, for being so patient with the manuscripts and showing meticulous display of love and affection for this very place of mist and fog where he, along with his group, The Hillians, had mesmerized music lovers some 40-odd years back with original Nepali songs like “Mayalu! Mayalu!”
He bares his heart out with humility and sincerity – taking on the inquisitiveness of this young soul (me!) trying to peek into the past for something worth looking back at – and engraves a memoir of himself and of the other colorful Hillians who changed the course of music history, and which takes us back to the vibrant days of “black and white” Darjeeling.
Sudarsan Tamang: Please tell us about your background and family.
Peter J Karthak: I was born in Shillong on December 12, 1943, probably the worst period of World War II at the Burma Front. After my parents were divorced, our single mother took my younger brother Mark and me back to Darjeeling. We spent our infancy at the Poshok/Peshoke Tea Estate with her younger sister Shobhit Karthak Wang (now a Canadian since 1964) and started our school. Eventually, we moved to the family farm in Upper Nor Busti, above Pool Bazaar and Bijan Bari. Having finished our primary education at the village’s Scottish Mission School (it was right above our house and started by my maternal grandfather as its headmaster and with my mother as its headmistress after his retirement) and in the block development area school called Ishwar Chandra Vidhyasagar School at Bijan Bari, our mother brought us to the town of Darjeeling in 1956 for “further” education, and that was the end to our tea garden and rural backgrounds. Little did I know then that I would one day become a city slicker and a Rock n’ Roll idol in Darjeeling, among other things. Good grief!
ST: Back then in the 1960s, Darjeeling must have been a different place. How was the musical atmosphere there then?
PJK: Darjeeling was a musical place from the time its modern settlements began in the 1830s when the Gundri Bazaar (Chowk Bazaar) was planned and some tea estates had already become a viable industry. Darjeeling was a melting pot of different cultures forming an integrated society, where Nepalis were well versed in all genres of folk music from the other side of the Mechi River (except the folk music from extreme west Nepal) while the British brought their own English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish and Cockney airs as well as Christian church and gospel music. Other European influences, including those from the Nordic countries such as Finland and Sweden, also entered the Hills. From the Europeans, Darjeeling learnt and developed harmony, orchestration, scales, chords and pitches and musical arrangements to accentuate their folk-based music and gave it modern tones in songs and instrumentation. The ‘Devkota Sangeet,’ beginning in the mid-1950s and defined by the 60s, blended madal, tyamko, tappa, murali, bansuri, binayo, sarangi, damphu, chaybrung and murchunga and other folk instruments with western musical instruments in Darjeeling. This is a latter-day progression in the artistic metamorphosis of the folk-based Nepali modern music. Even the Hindu Ram Krishna Mission, the Bihari mandirs and the Bengali Brahmo Samaj followed the church patterns in assembly worship and hymn or ‘bhajan’ singing. Many Nepalis had converted to Christianity, and many churches practiced disciplined choirs and hymnals, including in the Nepali language. Even the maestro Amber Gurung acknowledges his musical debts to the church music of Darjeeling whose people had long been attuned to the sounds of piano, accordion, guitar, harmonica (“mouth organ”), ukulele, banjo, and wind, string and reed/keyboard instruments. The French Harmonium became a de facto hands-on instrument for singers, composers and arrangers.
In all these, the denizens of Darjeeling imitated much of the clubby social doings of the British colonizers at the Gymkhana Club and Planters’ Club, the Governor’s Ball, restaurants such as Pliva’s/Glenary’s and Lobo’s. The many Cambridge schools and colleges had their own cultural happenings in music, plays, sports and other extracurricular events. Therefore, while Nepal was closed off to the world during the 104-year Rana rule (1846-1950), the northeast of India, most notably the District of Darjeeling, had flowered into modern consciousness. By the time the British left Darjeeling in 1947, the Nepalis of Darjeeling had come on their own in political thoughts and socio-economic contents with regards to modern music, literature and other schools of arts and culture, and awareness and consciousness as a distinct people. The rest is history, which continues to this day in numerous modes.
ST: Could you tell us how The Hillians came into being and then shot into prominence?
PJK: The group began as an impromptu trio with my older second cousin, the Elvis-like Lalit Kumar Tamang (deceased in 1983), my younger brother Mark, and myself. Lalit was already a senior musician/lead guitarist at Amber Gurung’s Art Academy of Music, and his best friends were Sharan Pradhan and Ranjit Gazmer. They formed a trio of fast friends and musicians at the Academy as well as at Turnbull High School.
As fledgling Hillians, we all played rhythm/chordal guitar and sang in three-part harmony. Our church hymns and choir practices helped us with scales and pitches from our “tween” years. For songs, we sang English, Nepali, Hindi (some Bengali ones, too) popular tunes. The harmony-friendly songs of Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richards, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Peter & Gordon, and Harry Belafonte etc formed our English repertoire while the songs of Amber Gurung and music from Nepal, and Hindi film songs provided suitable local alternatives. The trio also sang Nepali folksongs with Indra “Thappu” Thapaliya, the folk music doyen of Darjeeling. (A much older friend of ours and the “miit” to Amber Gurung, Thappu also passed away, on the same day Lalit Tamang departed.)
The members of The Hillians operated at many levels:
1) Lalit, Ranjit, Mark and I belonged to Mr. Amber Gurung’s Art Academy as his disciples and musicians while the latter Hillians such as Kamal Kumar “KK” Gurung and Phurba Tshering Bhutia also were familiar faces at the Academy.
2) Ranjit and I were members of Mr. Louis Banks’ Quartet and we played mostly at the Gymkhana Club. Ranjit was the drummer and I played double/violin bass. The quartet continued until Mr. Banks left for Soaltee Hotel in Kathmandu in late 1965.
3) Meanwhile, the Hillians were already formed by the winter of 1961/62, coinciding with the beginning of my college years at St Joseph’s/North Point. Later, Lalit had to leave the group because of his job in Gangtok and marriage. Eventually, we became a five-member group with me as the bandleader (lead guitar and lead voice, general manager, electrician/mechanic, negotiator, boot camp drill sergeant etc), Ranjit on drums and percussions, Mark as rhythm guitarist and lead singer, KK Gurung on bass guitar and lead singing, and Phurba Tshering on trumpet and flutes. Thus we became Darjeeling’s first fulltime, professional and commercial group while still remaining a college “boys’ band.” By this time, I had acceptably developed Rock ‘n’ Pop styles in rhythm-lead-and-bass guitar genres in Darjeeling, with doses of Jazz, popular streams, movie themes, and light classical pieces for club band music.
4) During the winter of 1962/63, the Art Academy was disbanded because Mr. Gurung found full employment with the West Bengal Government’s Folk Entertainment Unit (Lok Manoranjan Shakha); so managing the Academy as before became impossible for him. Consequently, Karma and Gopal Yonzon joined the Himalayan Kala Mandir while Gopal also worked as Mr. Gurung’s able assistant at the Unit. On our part, we formed the Sangam Club, led by Sharan, Ranjit, Aruna Lama and Jitendra Bardewa.
5) Meanwhile, I was elected Vice Captain of the Glee Club at North Point in my third year and Captain in my final year. This office kept me busy auditioning our multinational aspirants from 13 countries for the annual Talent Night, Brother Quinn’s Night, Bhanubhakta Jayanti, Robindro Joyonti and other seasonal cultural events of the college, including its social dances and charity balls at North Point and Gymkhana Club. These “extracurricular” assignments gave me much experience in event management and artistic selection procedures.
6) By 1964, the Sangam Club also broke up. Sharan and Aruna fell in love during a recording tour in Calcutta; they got married and left Sangam to form their own duo. Jitendra also left shortly afterward to form his own group. Many members also had left Darjeeling for the British and Indian Army and other services and further education elsewhere. This left only Ranjit and me as senior or decisive members at the helms of affairs at Sangam. This was where The Hillians took over as surrogate Sangam: While Ranjit created Nepali melodies and did musical arrangements, I wrote lyrics and became the lead singer. This was how The Hillains’ super hit “Mayalu” and other popular songs were created, in addition to another hit called “Ramra Ramra Bhavama”, which was exclusively composed for The Hillians by none other than the maestro, Amber Gurung. This was how we in Darjeeling proved that modern Nepali music, too, could be created, composed, set and performed by the same artists themselves – something that was already being done by Amber Gurung, Gopal Yonzon and Jitendra Bardewa. Elsewhere, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others, too, wrote their own lyrics, set them to music, arranged the songs and sang them themselves while playing their instruments as well. In the new era of “completeness,” The Hillians of Darjeeling were the first group in the Nepali world to be self-sufficient in creative talents as well as professional performance. Now, almost every group has these comprehensive components as preconditions to their being dynamic in the first place: If you don’t create and promote your own products, and play only covers, you can’t last long in the business.
ST: What is the story behind the name “Hillians”?
PJK: The Beatles had their Astrid in Hamburg; The Hillians had our Choden in Darjeeling. I met Choden Tshering Bhutia of Bhote Busti in the winter of 1960/61 while I was preparing for my Matriculations. She had already joined St Joseph’s College where Lalit Tamang was her classmate. It was through Lalit that I met her, and our chemistry coalesced from the moment we saw each other. Choden was younger than me but a senior in college because of her brilliant double promotions at St Joseph’s Convent in Kalimpong where she had her schooling. (That’s why we hadn’t met previously) Though coming from a wealthy and rich Sikkimese Kazi family with Cambridge education, she and her older siblings – brother Sonam and sister Pemala – were ardent fans of Amber Gurung and his gang (us!), and they admired what we were doing in music.
As for me, Choden’s place soon became my second home, and I was her constant companion – quite an experience for an ex-hillbilly and tea estate local boy with a young, beautiful, super-brained and westernized “Mem Sahib” – so much so that even our common friends began speculating marriage of the two of us. But our relationship was purely platonic, and we knew ourselves better than what people thought of us. I had my own female fans while she was attached to her own boyfriend. We were fast friends in the truest sense of the term.
It was at her place I heard for the first time the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and the flipside “Ask Me Why.” The latter struck me as a European light classic, and I cherish that song to this day.
Choden was my unconditional friend, a diehard fan, wise guide to the fine points of life’s awareness, constant philosopher, kind mentor and imaginative inspirer, a bright beacon of encouragement.
And since we were all “Pahade”-s, she christened our group The Hillians – so there! She supported me and my efforts all the way, oftentimes even buying new 45rpm and LP records for me and The Hillians to learn from and add to our repertory. This comradeship continued until the group started earning its own huge seasonal fees as a professional band, making us the richest teenagers in Darjeelingtown while our friends had to beg their parents for pocket money and weekly allowances!
Choden and I parted for the first time when she went for her Masters in Economics at Bombay University in 1965; the second permanent parting happened in December 1966 when I left Darjeeling (for good, as it turned out). Her last letter to me is dated early 1968 when she was about to leave her lecturer’s post at North Point to join the IAS. Since then, we have been out of touch with each other. As I write for this blog in September 2008, I believe she is now a most senior bureaucrat at the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in New Delhi.
ST: Was there any particular place where the Hillians often played live?
PJK: As made clear above, The Hillians played and performed at many levels – at the Art Academy, at Sangam, our college socials during festive seasons and at annual events, and so on. But by 1962, I was able to form a full-complement band of three guitars – rhythm, lead and bass – and a drum set, which allowed us to operate as a full-fledged band of three voices, three instruments, and percussion backup. Later, Phurba joined in as our instrumentalist on trumpet and flutes. We were eventually, and very soon, equipped with electric/electronic equipment such as electric guitars, preamps, amplifiers and speakers which were brought to Darjeeling mostly by Thai students at North Point and other schools in town.
We had our two regular tourist-season (March-April-May and September-October-November) contracts at the Gymkhana Club, Planter’s Club, Central Hotel, and Lobo’s Restaurant in Darjeelingtown. When Mr. Louis Banks left Darjeeling for Soaltee Hotel in Kathmandu, he left his turfs to The Hillians, even recommending us to the Indian Army and Indian Air Force which allowed us to travel to Gangtok, Bag Dogra and other forces clubs in winter for the great galas and parties they held. The Indian Armed Forces threw regular parties to impress the Chinese next door at Nathu-La and other border areas, and The Hillians greatly profited from these social events. But come to think of it, as I did many times: Just one single MIG bomb run by the Chinese from their nearby Tibetan airfield on the Norkhil dancehall in Gangtok, and it would obliterate many four-star generals, powerful bureaucrats, industrialists, royal invitees, and important public figures of the region. But it did not happen, thank God! However, such a possibility was never far from my own mind while our amplifiers blasted the night into the wee hours of the dawn.
ST: Who were the original members of the band, and what changes took place in the band’s lineup after its inception?
PJK: This has been answered above in Q. 3. To recap: First, the nucleus was formed by Lalit, Mark and Peter as a trio. This was the time I took up electric bass guitar, the first to do so in Darjeeling. Later, I shifted to lead guitar, leaving the rhythm to Mark and the bass section to Kamal Kumar Gurung when he joined the band. By this time, in late 1963, Lalit had left Darjeeling and The Hillians. Ranjit Gazmer had been our drummer and tabala player from the very beginning.
ST: What difficulties did you all face as a Band?
PJK: There were many difficulties of various kinds – national, regional, local, communal, personal – for artistic and imaginative people of our times. The post-Independence national scene in India was dominated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru whose Nehruvian/Fabian “swadeshi” (national) brand of socialism forbade import and enjoyment of anything “phoren” (foreign, read British) or non-Indian goods. Very soon, as a result, India lacked original ideas because of the inbuilt atrophy. India was also discouraged by Nehru and his party and government to produce and manufacture its own modern and convenience goods such as cars (for examples, the same 1950s models of Fiat, Standard Herald, Ambassador cars and Tata trucks continued for so many decades!), fridges, air conditioners, hi-fi stereo equipments, electric musical instruments, amplifiers, and latest records and players, tape recorders, transistor radios, cameras, fabrics and whatever commodities which were taken for granted elsewhere. As a result, we in India lagged far behind in timely progress and developments to produce our own everyday essential necessities. Even access to essential foreign goods and items were discouraged as anti-Indian and unpatriotic by the License Raj and the exorbitant central and state taxes levied on whatever imports being made.
Consequently, India was the world’s largest democracy but locked from within itself and closed to the world. Whatever we needed in terms of our fundamental consumption commodities were non-existent, and whatever were available, they were either inferior or shoddy. The citizens of India in our time were the most deprived people in the world, as worse off as those in closed Communist countries. Nehru’s all-India prohibition lasting some four decades was liberalized only in the 1980s by his grandson, Rajiv Gandhi. By this time, it was much too late for most of our generation who were teenagers in the 1960s in Darjeeling.
By comparison, the neighborhoods of Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and Burma allowed imports of essential foreign commodities and luxury goods, ranging from Japanese cars and electronics to American jeans and English cigarettes and Scotch whisky to French perfumes. But at home, such officially-imposed famines caused fantasies in Darjeeling. So much so that what limited genres of records HMV (His Master’s Voice) sold in the market, we were forced to buy; so much so that we had to tune in to the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation of Colombo for their Sunday Binaca Hit Parade to listen to the latest western hits, and to its weekly Binaca Geet Mala for the latest Hindi film songs from Bombay’s celluloid empire. All India Radio (AIR), probably the biggest broadcasting network in the world, perhaps as vast as Brazil’s Globo, thought it un-Indian to broadcast its own modern and popular home-grown music. Hence we were forced to dial in to the scratchy and static-laden wavelengths of the distant Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Broadcasting Corporation.
But we were luckier in Darjeeling, as compared to even the metropolises of India, including its coastal cities such as Calcutta and Bombay which were obviously prone to smuggling of “phoren” goods over which moneyed Indians salivated and went gaga. Darjeeling, as it was, was famous for its many “T”s – Tea, tourism, teaching/education in its world renowned schools, timber/forest produces, and TT (telegraphic transfers) – which sustained the hill economy, employed thousands of people, and brought in much-needed foreign exchange in chronic Dollar-hungry India. All the “T”-s generated foreign exchange earnings – the world-famous Darjeeling Tea, the foreign students, and tourism all added to the volume of greenback deposits in the local banks. TT meant the British Gurkhas of Darjeeling remitting money from Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Britain, as well as Indian Army Gorkhas of the Darjeeling Hills repatriating precious IC amounts to their families. The District of Darjeeling in our times was economically middle class; mostly literate, educated and motivated; sincere, honest, and helpful; adventurous and modern in outlook; roaring and raring for more prospects and possibilities, while bleak scenarios obtained in most of India. Darjeeling was that bright billet of a powerhouse of futuristic hopes, profound challenges and optimistic can-do attitudes on the top of a hill range in east Himalaya. Certainly, we had chronic and prolonged problems and lacked many things; but, and therefore, we yearned and worked hard to address these endemic shortcomings – whether inherent, manmade, or state-sponsored.
When The Hillians came into being as a creative, professional, performing and entertaining boys’ band (we tried to induct two girls as our crooners, but to no avail!) in both Nepali and western music by the early 1960s, the British had left Darjeeling for 13 years, and the pipe organs, pianos and other musical instruments left by them in clubs, restaurants and churches were getting old, mildewed and falling in disrepair and disuse. The dwindling British club culture was frowned upon by the post-Independence Hindu/Hindi Cow Belt Indians who led the central government in New Delhi. The decades-old itinerant Shakespeare-wallahs (there’s the film of the same name for the new message) were replaced by Bhangra brouhahas and other rediscovered Indian chic.
However, Darjeeling did not suffer as much as the rest of India, even though the Hills were steadily losing its British residents and Anglo-Indians, Parsis and Chinese denizens (the latter due to the Indo-Chinese War). There still remained some of the British airs in Darjeeling. Almost all the tea estates were still owned by British consortiums (until Indians bought them, causing profits migration, provoking labor problems and inviting Communist political interferences.) The eastern rajahs and maharajas (Burdwan, Cooch Bihar etc) of India still had their summer residences in Darjeeling. The royals, aristocrats and powerful bureaucrats of Nepal, Sikkim, Lhasa and Bhutan continued visiting the hill station. Foreign students, numbering many thousands, still studied at the fine Cambridge schools and colleges of Kalimpong, Kharsang (Kurseong) and Darjeeling.
It was the foreign students who contributed much to my modern musical aspirations in Darjeeling. The first two were the “Burma Boys” – Desmond Aye and Bobby Leong. Desmond was the Pelvis Elvis, and Bobby the Cliff Richards, of North Point. Once they teamed up with Louis Banks (piano/lead guitar), Austin Plant (rhythm guitar/double bass) and Wilson (drums), they blew up the stage of the college.
It was again Choden who got the latest 45rpm and LP records from Desmond and Bobby for my musical learning. Later, I myself borrowed guitars, records and music sheets from the Burma Boys.
Tragically, these rich and wealthy Burmese students disappeared from Darjeeling in 1962, following Gen Ne Win’s “Burmese Path to Socialism” coup in Burma. Desmond’s father lost his banking empire and Bobby’s family their mercantile holdings. Desmond exiled himself, after many years of turmoil in Burma, to Chiang Mai in Thailand where he died as a deranged and stateless person a couple of years ago. He purportedly died dreaming of revolutionary guerilla warfare against the Junta and democratic takeover of Burma. In retrospect, I take the latter-day Desmond Aye as the saddest Burmese Tragedy of our times.
As for Bobby, he too smuggled his eighth-month pregnant wife Bela and himself to Thailand, passing at night by what later turned out to be the “Killing Fields” and migrated to Canada, and is now retired from the Husky Oil Company. For finer details, references may be made to a particular issue of Himal Southasian magazine covering Burma a couple of years ago, in which I’ve paid my own homage to both of these kindhearted North Point seniors. I received much of the above information from Bobby Leong, then living somewhere in Canada, before our emails stopped some years ago. However, he did not remember the junior North Pointer (me) borrowing his guitars and LPs!
The affluent and stylish Burma Boys were supplanted by equally rich and fashionable Thai students at St Joseph’s College. Two of them were Lek and Dang who became my business associates at North Point. Lek was the more astute businessman who brought acoustic/electric guitars (Hofner, Egmond and other European makes) and Vox and Fender amplifiers (all disassembled in parts to get around the Indian Customs in Calcutta) from Bangkok. He sold these items to me, mostly on “credit” until the beginning of the long winter vacation, by which time I earned money by playing music and paid him in full. He needed the money for his parties in Calcutta before going home to Bangkok. Finding an honest client in me, Lek brought more updated gears for The Hillians when college began again in March the next year, and the same process began all over again. In all this, Dang stood as witness to the transactions. Thus we spent our four college years at North Point. At the end, Lek gifted us with a Nilex skin for our snare drum (the set was bought from The Fentones of Shillong), which replaced the calfskin that needed much warming and heating for tight timbre in the moist cold of Darjeeling. Then we parted, in 1966. I believe Lek has long been a hectic businessman in Chiang Mai and Dang Somprasong is the South Asia representative of the Tourism Authority of Thailand and based in New Delhi.
I must add that the first fund of Rs. 1,000 (a whopping fortune in those days!) to pay Lek came from my Maili aunt – the same aforementioned Shobhit Karthak Wang – who was about to immigrate to Canada with her family. This seed money indeed launched The Hillians as a full-fledged performing and club band, the first of its kind – not only in Darjeeling but in the Nepali world as well – as later research by Tshering Choden and Yubakar Rajcarnikar revealed.
In their final years, both Lek and Dang were students of Choden’s at North Point, and we all met at her place regularly. Among the other beneficiaries of the latest materials and modern equipment the Thai students brought to Darjeeling were Tommy Crees (of Sonada, now an acclaimed architect in Kathmandu), Jimmy Plant (perhaps he migrated to Canada?) and other musicians who were The Hillians’ “rivals” (Tommy’s word!) in those olden golden days in Darjeeling.
This, in a gist, is how we managed to nurture our artistic dreams in Darjeeling and in a universally segregated and culturally starved India. My own thanks to the Burma Boys and my Thai classmates shall remain for the rest of my life. They are responsible for arming and equipping The Hillians who, in turn, unleashed a musical movement in Darjeeling that continues unbroken to this day, according to the research carried out by Tshering Choden and Yubakar Rajcarnikar in the WAVE magazine and their “In Tune with Darjeeling” DVD.
Lastly, but equally importantly, my answer to your particular question shall remain incomplete if I miss out on our own (the then) dynamic Darjeeling’s contributions to our musical efforts in the 1960s. We all had our friends and relatives in the British Brigade of Gurkhas in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong. When they retired or visited the hometown during their furloughs, they brought foreign goods which certainly included, among other things, records, guitars, amplifiers, clothes which The Hillians readily purchased. For instance, I bought two fine guitars from Ajay Gurung whose uncle had sent these instruments from Hong Kong. (For more information, Ajay is the older brother of Abhay Gurung, footballer par excellence, and Anuradha Gurung/Koirala of Maiti Nepal in Kathmandu. Ajay was the No 2 tabalchist, after Ranjit Gazmer, at Amber Gurung’s Art Academy before he joined the British Army. After nearly 40 years of soldiering, Ajay has finally retired to his farm in Sipahi Dhura near Kharsang where he is likely to be found harvesting awesome red hot chilies and still playing his tabala at the AIR station below Kurseong Bazaar or the town’s various cultural events. Dear readers of Darjeeling: Please check him out, for me!)
ST: Is there any special moment of your life that you want to share?
PJK: I’m not sure if I understand this question correctly. However, there are many moments in my life which have been momentous, made by the personalities I’ve mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. They, aided and abetted by the very historic times and experiences they themselves engineered, and through which we all lived, have impacted not only me but the greater world around themselves. Even the teachers we had had, such as Messrs Indra Bahadur Rai and Amber Gurung et al, influenced us and still continue to sway the Nepali world with their fresher thoughts and contents in literature and music.
Then there was a junior called Sonam something from Sikkim who pestered me during auditions (while I was the Vice Captain and Captain of the Glee Club at North Point) with request to sing, dance, play flutes and what not at the annual Talent Night show, and I expressed my inability to accommodate one artist with so many items in the same program. In less than five years after college, he emerged as Danny Denzongpa in his very first Bombay blockbuster called “Dhund.”
I’m glad to say, in addition, that in my modest capacity, I’ve written about all the contemporary music composers, singers, lyricists, musicians, literary figures, painters, dancers, actors and other various artists and sports icons of both Darjeeling and Kathmandu who have contributed their best to enrich the Nepali ethos. In all my humility, I’ve merely tried to pay my debts to them for being there in the decades I’ve lived through, during which I have had the undeserved honor of knowing them and working with most of them. Many have passed on, regrettably, but those of us, while fast aging ourselves, try to continue what we’ve been doing to the best of our legacy inherited from these past masters and still-living exemplars.
ST: Where are the Hillians band members at present? Are you still in touch with them?
PJK: All the five members of The Hillians are scattered today. Ranjit Gazmer, Phurba Tshering and I came to Birgunj in Nepal from Darjeeling in 1966 and arrived eventually in Kathmandu in early 1967. All three of us worked at Radio Nepal as its studio recording musicians for some years (I stopped playing in 1975). Mark Karthak followed after sometime while Kamal Kumar Gurung remained in Darjeeling.
Eventually, Ranjit left for Bombay sometime in 1970/71. Phurba also left Kathmandu later and taught at St. Paul’s in Darjeeling. Today, only Ranjit remains in music, and visits Kathmandu occasionally from Mumbai. Phurba, I gather, teaches at a university in the Gulf. Mark has been in New Delhi for the last three years, and does what he is best at – tourism. He also worked as a musician in Kathmandu for many years. Kamal also has been a big travel agent in Darjeeling for many decades. I’ve switched over to literary writing, journalism, editorship, consultancy and related media works while basing myself in Kathmandu since 1967.
No, we haven’t been in touch with each other, although my contact with Ranjit, Kamal and Mark can be reactivated whenever needed. Phurba, however, has truly disappeared from my viewfinder.
ST: Do you all have any plans to have reunion sometime in near future?
PJK: No, as far as I’m concerned, The Hillians don’t have any plans for reunion.
ST: It is said that the Hillians were also known as SIKKIMESE Beatles. What is the story behind it?
PJK: Well, the label is courtesy of Time Magazine and its correspondent covering the exotic coronation of the Chhogyal of Sikkim. It reported to the effect that the Chhogyal and his Gyalmo (the American Hope Cook) did the Twist (under the canopy of the huge tented reception samiana on the royal palace grounds in Gangtok) to the “Sikkimese Beatles” and their “Himalayan version” of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
The Hillians’ “royal command performance” as enlisted by the Gyalmo happened by pure accident. Mark and I were merely visiting Gangtok at the invitation of Lalit who was a teacher at a high school there and also to see an unmet distant cousin called Alfred Karthak (who, I believe, is a big shot in the State Government of Sikkim!) and to attend his birthday party and do some sing-along, too. We had taken only one guitar, a jumbo-like acoustic electric bought recently from Ajay Gurung (mentioned above), without amplifier, but which could be plugged in to the public address system (“mike”) for electric sound and amplification for public performance.
Lalit was an important member of a major reception committee for the royal pomp and ceremony to be attended by a record number of foreign representatives in Sikkim’s modern history. In his runarounds, Lalit happened to meet the famous writer and editor Mr. Desmond Doig of The Statesman of Calcutta (he spent his last decades in Kathmandu), heard our three-tenor singing of the latest Beatles hits at Alfred’s birthday party and quickly filled the queen’s ears about a possible performance by the trio. The Gyalmo “most graciously” assented, and three gold-embroidered royal invitation badges arrived in no time for the evening reception following the daylong coronation ceremony. Since Mark and I were in casual traveling clothes only, we had no proper black suits or tuxedos for the royal do. So we became three men in black – black leather jackets, black string ties, and black tight trousers and so on. For the gala, there was the resident band from Moulin Rouge of Park Street with the voluptuous crooner, Delilah, who announced us. We borrowed the band’s electric guitar and cued the drummer for the beats. We belted out four Beatles hits and an Elvis one, taking fifteen minutes – our strict scheduled slot – and then we were off. But we made our marks, because the rest of the evening no longer maintained the same old behaved and careful diplomatic protocol. Every pair did the Twist, Loco Motion and Jive to our beats and sounds. When the Sikkimese ruler and his consort themselves took to the floor to gyrate their royal pelvises under their richly brocaded “bakkhu”-s, everybody danced with jolly abandon – including the Indian super brats called Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi who had come with their mother, Indira Gandhi, then the I&B Minister, representing India at the coronation.
Our instant popularity resulted in an extended stay in Gangtok. One particular patron turned out to be Princess Yuthok, the Chhogyal’s younger sister whose residence at the end of Lal Bazaar became our station. We sang at her child’s birthday at Norkhil which the Chhogyal and his Gyalmo graced with their presence The Hillians had an “audience” with the Gyalmo who whispered rather than spoke audibly. She commented, “Since you sing in English, we hope you speak English well, too!” The Yuthoks, living in Hong Kong and Japan many months of the year, were in Gangtok for the coronation, and they took us to many picnics and outings, followed by a bevy of girl fans of Gangtok. The Princess promised us electric guitars and amplifiers, but they never materialized, which later surprised her officials because “she never forgets the promises she makes.” But she wrote an explanatory letter to the Father Principal of North Point, requesting him to excuse the long absence from classes incurred by Mark and me.
It was in the college library that very week that Lek showed me the Time magazine clip and wondered if the news was about The Hillians. He was very happy to know that it was indeed about the very local group he had been supplying stuffs to for so long.
I can’t close our uncanny Sikkim Coronation chapter without bringing in Mr. Desmond Doig again. We missed him in Gangtok, but it turned out we were not out of his mind. In a few weeks, back in town, Mr. Dilip Bose, The Statesman’s representative in Darjeeling, came around to the Orient Restaurant, one of our regular hangouts in town, asking “Who are the Hillians? I’m looking for the Hillians.” I introduced myself, and he showed me a telegram, which said, ‘Interview the Hillians for JS. Desmond.’
“This is from Desmond Doig. How come he knows you and I don’t?” Dilip Da wondered in a kind of self-pity. I explained that he had not been around to the social events of the town where we mostly played during the seasons. Then we met twice in his house, answered his questions and handed him our best group photographs. The interview was for a new youth magazine called JS, short for “Junior Statesman” which was rapidly gaining popularity and circulation in India. The JS was Mr. Doig’s concept at The Statesman to cater to the young generation of India. In a few days, The Hillians were carried in the next issue of the youth magazine, becoming the first Rock ‘n’ Roll group to be covered from the Hills or the Northeast. Thus were opened the media gates of the vaster plains to the remote peoples of India, isolated in distant and far-flung nooks and corners.
ST: Who was your inspiration?
PJK: No one inspired me, as such. More than anyone inspiring me, there were many who influenced, encouraged and supported me. Choden was my loving friend and loyal mentor who rejoiced at our greater success in Gangtok and with JS, vindicating her trust and faith in what I was doing. Mr. Louis Banks was a great guiding light and my first employer in music. Mr. Amber Gurung’s musical legacy flows in all his past and present followers, and his influence continues to this day; so much so that he composed the melody of Nepal’s new national anthem in the nation’s avatar as a federal democratic republic, following the dismantling of the monarchy. Mr. Indra Bahadur Rai, our Nepali teacher at Turnbull High, has been the most enlightened writer and thinker in the Nepali world as a whole. The list of kindhearted people in my life in Darjeeling is indeed long. I have been lucky, to say the very least.
The 60s itself were a great watershed period for me to work and live through. Such a dynamic decade will not repeat, and this simple statement sums it all up.
ST: How did the group split?
PJK: The Hillians broke up just like that, as they say. As I said above, three of us (Ranjit, Phurba and I) landed in Birgunj as teachers and consultants to a new “English medium” school there. It happened just after my graduation from North Point, and I was planning for my future when the Birgunj adventurism took place. I was also preparing for The Hillians’ winter schedules out of Darjeeling – the Army in Gangtok, the Air Force at Bag Dogra, and possibly a stint at Trinca’s in Calcutta, and so on. It was then the invitation came from Phurba who had already been to the new school during our seasonal hiatus and academic recess. In the process, Mark and Kamal were left behind in Darjeeling because they had one more year at college. I had intended to be in Birgunj for just about 10 months and be back in Darjeeling to plan my future course of actions. But fate dictated otherwise, and we three found ourselves in Kathmandu after our fiasco in Birgunj. The three Hillians continued as musicians at Radio Nepal, Royal Nepal Academy and elsewhere, but the old band’s formation did not take place even when Mark also joined us in Kathmandu. The two main reasons were the lack of modern equipment and 20th century club culture in Kathmandu while most of our seasoned and professional electric and electronic gears, too, were left behind in Darjeeling, not talking about our lucrative business turfs there and in the neighborhoods. And I had planned to go back to Darjeeling well within 12 months anyway, not knowing, however, that I would overstay in Kathmandu, which is running into its 42nd year in 2008!
Even then, honestly speaking, The Hillians were mostly a college boys’ band, and permanency was not something on the cards. However, two British tea planters of Darjeeling were interested in our other hit – “Ramra Ramra Bhavama”, custom-composed for The Hillians by Mr. Amber Gurung – and they proposed that we record the song in Britain. But we foresaw long bureaucratic passport hassles in distant Delhi, and other pros and cons of travel and equipment and foreign exchange also loomed large. The proposal thus died a natural death as well as the longevity of The Hillians themselves.
In retrospect, frankly, I still find it easy to recall today that our breakup happened spontaneously and casually. Therefore, no hang-ups and regrets were allowed to enter and linger. This was possible because we were not at all aware during those years that The Hillians were making history in creative Nepali popular music and its live performance. It took Pop historians and researchers like Tshering Choden and Yubakar Rajcarnikar of Kathmandu to see the very first milepost erected by The Hillians on the highway of the particular genre. But when the two journalists found out the truth, nearly four decades had passed by before they made the discovery!
Many ask me: Why did another edition of The Hillians NOT happen in Kathmandu? Well, as I said above, Kathmandu was in the Stone Age as far as our kind of popular, modern, creative and performing music and culture were concerned when we arrived here. It took some more years even for cover bands – whose members, by the way, were all non-Kathmandu-born – to see some prospects for economic sustenance in the business. By that time, I, for one, had become the oldest teenager in the world.
But, all said and done, I’m happy to say I have no sorrows; I’m at peace with myself. My group and I did the best we could, and I’m happy that at least Ranjit Gazmer is still in music, and he’ll continue with it until the final bell tolls. As far as The Hillians are concerned, they are termed historic in what they did, and whatever groundbreaking deeds they did once upon a time in Darjeeling are also consigned to history by now. Remembrances of things done in the past are a delightful and nostalgic repast for me, and that’s ample enough reward for me – thank you very much!
ST: Who was/is your favorite singer from Darjeeling?
PJK: My favorite singers from Darjeeling are many because of the novel individual styles and ranges they possessed and demonstrated. While saying so, I must also reiterate that we belonged to the very first modern wave to introduce new sounds in and from Darjeeling. Chronologically speaking, Amber Gurung succeeded the generation of the musical era of Nabin Bardewa and Hira Singh and the singing of Urmila Devi and others in the 1950s. It was with Amber Gurung, however, that Darjeeling heard many unique and original musical manners in his own lyrics, compositions, arrangements and renditions. Gagan Gurung, Rudra Mani Gurung, Shekhar Dixit, Kishore Sotang and other male singers were his singing contemporaries. Shanti Thatal was one in the female department for her individual originality in sound and techniques, while Aruna Lama had that certain nightingale mellifluousness. The list of the latter-day singers, both males and females, is rather long – Gopal Yonzon, Karma Yonzon, Jitendra Bardewa, Kumar Subba; then Lhamu Didi, Dil Maya Khati, Nirmala Gazmer, Mary Karthak, Daisy Baraily, Dawa Gyalmo, Kunti Sundas (Moktan), Sukmit Lepcha (Gurung) and Lasimit Lepcha later on. If I miss other deserving names, it is because of the long roster.
To me personally, there is no one as yet to best Amber Gurung in singing in the male group and Shanti Thatal in the female fraternity for executing their burnished vocal techniques, sharing their learned poetic justice to the sentiments and meanings and messages of the lyrics and melodies of the songs, and their studied and intellectual comprehension and trained grasp of the songs in each of their musical totality and tonality while singing them. Sadly, their best gifts are not recorded on as many discs. I write these words on their behalf because I happened to be one of those musicians who played for them and listened to and heard the finest gems shining forth from their vocalizing capacity from close quarters, during rehearsals and in-camera singing.
ST: Have you listened to any of the bands from Darjeeling of late?
PJK: No, I’m afraid I’ve long been overdue in this, and I don’t think I’ll ever redeem myself. Going back to the 60s, The Diamonds were our understudies in Darjeeling because Pemba is a fellow Lepcha, and they borrowed The Hillians’ equipment and instruments when we took our deserved rest. But I don’t know how they sound today, with many transfers and self-exiles practiced in the community. Dinesh Rai and Subarna Limbu and others also practice migration and reorganize their ensembles. I heard the Rusty Nails twice, and that’s about all for bands originating from Darjeeling. I don’t know, too, anything about the latest musical musings of the PJ Pradhan Twins and Puran Gongba and our own KK Gurung in Darjeeling. In Kathmandu, I’ve been invited to a couple of shows by Abhaya Subba Weise (many thanks, Abhaya!) and The Steam Injuns.
The Gurung Brothers of Kathmandu – Kishor, Raju and Sharad – with sister Alka as well could reunite as a formidable force with Patriarch Amber Gurung, and that’s a dream I wait for fulfillment in the near future.
Frankly, my own commitments have long been to literature and journalism – a fact recognized by Kishor Gurung and The Classical Guitar Society of Nepal who felicitated me in 2001 for making a “unique” crossover from a guitarist to a literary writer “with such high levels of artistry and intellect”….making “us guitarists proud.” It is, I think, the politest way of saying, “You deserter!”
ST: Please tell us something about the famous song “Mayalu.”
PJK: As I mentioned above (in answer to Q 03), the Sangam Club was almost empty when three of its founders (Sharan, Aruna and Jitendra) had left it, and many members had joined their respective camps. Only Ranjit remained at the helms as the remaining leader. The Club was housed in the middle of Chandmari, and the cottage-like building belonged to the “Kami Samaj” and was the headquarters of the well-organized Bishwakarma community of Darjeeling. It was in such a desolate situation that we met one pre-winter evening and planned to carry on with whatever we had at our disposal. “Mayalu”, “Manko Manmai” (the latter song was admired by Mr. Amber Gurung) and other songs were made during this bleak and clueless period, beginning in 1964. By accidental requirements, I was forced to become the lyricist while Ranjit composed the melodies. I became the lead singer, too, and I also prevailed as arranger, especially in determining chords. In this case, the chordal pattern of “Mayalu” was unique in that, based on C Major, the first refrain of “Mayalu” began with C Major, the second refrain had Bm (B Minor) and the third syllable was broken into maya- in Dm (D Minor) to arrive at C Major with –lu again. It was quite unlike any chordal arrangement seen in music, and it should be recognized as such.
The Hillians performed this song at the next event at North Point. It was an instant hit. We later learnt, however, that Mr. Louis Banks completely disapproved of the slow interlude of the sturdy 4/4-beat song. At the next rehearsal meeting of the Louis Banks Quartet in his house near the Municipal School, he laughed at the interlude, dressed Ranjit down resoundingly with his uncompromising critique. Then he ordered me to sing the refrain of mayalu-mayalu-mayalu, after which he played his own version of the interlude on piano. He did it in a single sweep and at one go. Then he transcribed the passage to notation in treble and bass clefs. The passage had the chords of C-E-Am-F-G7-C. And the new interlude stuck officially with the song thereafter.
But Ranjit did not altogether dismiss his old interlude piece, which he incorporated into another Nepali movie song many years later.
I sang the song with The Hillians so many times that I stopped counting after 105. There was a long boredom and fatigue with this super hit. But the fan following was unbelievable. One schoolgirl in Kalimpong made me write the entire song in her notebook, making it the longest autograph I ever wrote.
Then it was time to have the hit song recorded, as was customary in Darjeeling. It was then the first disappointment set in. We booked our date with the Hindustan Records in Calcutta. But at virtually the last minute, Kamal and Phurba cancelled their deadline. Phurba cited his family’s annual Buddhist observations and Kamal had to help his father for his upcoming elections. Without the song’s established bass line and flute interlude handled so habitually by the two members, the song’s recorded version would be flat and unsatisfactory, to say the least. Anyway, Ranjit, Mark and I went to Calcutta and recorded the song and the flipside. It was in fact for the sake of Ranjit Gazmer’s prestige as a music composer, it was necessary to have the recordings made. It was an important issue in Darjeeling to have Ranjit established at par with Sharan Pradhan, Karma and Gopal Yonzon as recording artists and music directors. But when I later heard the song’s scratchy dummy in Darjeeling, the two missing links of bass and flute jarred me with an emptiness, and the five-instrument combine that The Hillians had been so accustomed to were absent in the disc. This unsettled me, and perhaps as a fated coincidence, I never heard the finished product. I left Darjeeling before the final cuts arrived in town, and I’m yet to hear the recorded version of Mayalu to this day. Please believe me when I say this because it is true.
But I would like to listen to it, and it would be for just one reason: I had rewritten the second/final stanza (antara) of the song while we were recording it in the studio. During the recess between the second and third takes, I changed the wordings, and I liked the results. Ranjit and Mark also approved of the changes I had made. So what the public had heard before was edited for better effects in the final product. I, too, would like to hear it and see how the new verse sounds. And I’m still waiting, in 2008 AD!
And there was the second disappointment suffered by “Mayalu.” It took place a couple of years ago when the group 1974 AD showed their interest in recording it. My son Jimmy and his wife are the group’s close friends, and the couple conveyed the group’s message to me. I sang and recorded the song for them to copy, and they made big announcements in the media on their version of the song. But when they recorded it, they bothered neither to consult me nor invite me to the studio. Nor was I invited to the public release of their next album which included “Mayalu.” Forget also about sending Ranjit and me complimentary copies of the CD. And when I heard the song by chance on the radio one day, I was left aghast at the distorted version of the work, especially the linear rendition of the antara stanzas which was so far removed from the old tune that it was more of a different melody than the original.
This artistic corruption also worried me with regards to Ranjit’s possible protests as the co-owner of the property because, after all, there were still the unresolved questions of intellectual property rights, copyrights and royalties, whereas the entire operation was surprisingly one-sided and went ahead without even the minimum niceties and acknowledgements due Ranjit and me as joint creators of the song. And the musical anarchy had happened despite Ranjit providing the group his handwritten notation on Bb Major.
On my part, I explained to Ranjit with my side of the story so that he would not misunderstand me for any conspiracy against him. After all, he was in distant Mumbai, and so he had every right to smell rats in my possible unilateral dealing with 1974 AD, leaving him in the dark. To my relief, I was able to convince him with the truth, and we together wrung our hands in helplessness and resignation.
I also must add that 1974 AD’s multiple maltreatments, which had posed all the dangers of ruining the friendship between Ranjit and me and our joint ownership of “Mayalu”, are typical of the feudalism prevalent in Nepal, and further compounded by the legal laxity in intellectual property rights and copyrights and royalties regimes in Nepal. And that is all we can say on the matter, which would usually go to court in other countries for justice and rightful settlements.
On my own and on behalf of Ranjit Gazmer as well, I’m happy to present this case to the public through your weblog. I just wouldn’t miss the opportunity provided by your questionnaire. Having been allowed to say as much, may I also express, in all fairness, my hope that the other party, too, may be given the rights and freedom to state their side of the case, which may indeed help settle this unpleasant matter?
ST: Any message to the young generations who are trying to follow the path you chose 40 years ago?
PJK: Well, messages and advice and counsels and suggestions come flooding these days. The present digital age and its wizardry, according to one writer in The New Yorker, can turn a mellow-toned Madonna into a superstar, and a cat’s purr into a lion’s roar. Modern state-of-the-art recording studios can turn artificiality into genuine articles, and a certain nobody into somebody special, and senses can be canned into nonsense.
In comparison, the vicissitudes we went through years ago are amply described in the preceding paragraphs, and readers of my descriptions today may call me an outright liar or a writer of fairytales. It’s all upto them, really. The Tin Pan Alley of Kathmandu and its recording studios are full of singers who take music as instant coffee. They want fast fame as if it’s like fast foods.
But times have changed, and changed for better. For instance, when I was in Chicago last fall, I indulged myself in the trivial pursuit of tapping the Internet for songs of those yesteryears. I typed Bobby Darrin and his “Things” on the keyboard, and the six speakers of my nephew’s computer system played it out, streaming the room. I heard Harry Belafonte and listened to his “Island in the Sun” hits, then Trini Lopez, The Shadows, Stan Getz, Carlos Jobim, and other singers and musicians of those nostalgic days. Even lyrics and notations with chords are available these days – and for free! How-to techniques are everywhere. In our days, we bought music sheets from Braganza in Calcutta, each costing a whopping 20 Rupees. Later, the Thai students brought fat songbooks with notations, chords and diagrams, and words, and I ran to Louis Daju’s house at Rose Banks to learn from him. He played the music directly on his piano, exclaiming, “Aha, this is good, Bhai, this is good!” while I held the book and turned the pages. Today, Fender Stratocasters and Marshall Amplifiers are merely two makes in the long list of world-class instruments and equipments sold in the music shops of Kathmandu. The old four-string bass guitar has five strings today; and power chords have been developed.
But everything still boils down to one thing, as in the old days: Dedication! There can be no alternative to hard work, long hours, practice and rehearsals with patience, continuous learning, doggedness with imagination, while maintaining humility and gratefulness, and also banking on a little bit of luck here and there. Why? Because if technology has made access to resources easier and quicker today, one must still compete with those others who enjoy the same facilities. So diligence always counts!
The Hillians as a band played nine types of music for the eveningers, clubbers, dancers and jam session regulars. A recent browse gave me a list of 42 types of music. Today’s musicians also tend to specialize in one genre as a diehard loyalist while despising other styles. Death Metal headbangers of Kathmandu can’t swoon to smooth Blues, and so on. They boo the other stylists. Thus, a specialist in one field today is likely to be a dunce in other streams of thoughts and contents.
However, one established rule for musicians is always this: Go to the roots of one’s folk music and classical developments. Maestros acknowledge this truth by actually “borrowing” from ancient tunes. John Lennon copied a folk tune from Holland for his “Lucy in the Sky with Her Diamonds” and Lloyd Webber reportedly lifted a Middle Age pan-Germanic melody for his “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” (which earned him the nickname of “Worldwide Webber.”) Bob Dylan began with compositions of Woody Guthrie and American folksongs derived from the Olde Worlde of Britain and its immigrants scattered all over in the vast US while African Americans (previously Colored, Negroes, Blacks) had their African roots to draw from during their years of slavery. These are just a few examples of musical cross-fertilization in the world.
Well, so much for “message” in the medium!
Thank you.
Thank you, too, Mr. Tamang!
Originally published in: sudarshantamang.blogspot.com
Copyrights held by:
Peter J. Karthak
Chief Copy Editor
The Kathmandu Post/City Post
Subidha Nagar, Kathmandu
(Tel: 977-1-4480100)
Kopundole, Patan, Nepal
Home tel: 977-1-5524078/-5537357
Mobile: 9841564399
Email: pjkarthak@gmail.com
*****
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
DANNEY DENJONGPA-SIKKIM
Danney Denzongpa (Real name: Tshering Phinsto Bhutia) was born in Yoksom, Sikkim, grduated from St. Joseph’s college(B.Sc. / Bio science) Darjeeling.
He started his career by singing Indian Nepali songs and acting in Indian Nepali movies and has acted in more than 150 hindi movies, several Indian Nepali movies.
He has also done some international projects, the most famous being Seven Years in Tibet where he acted alongside famous Hollywood actor Brad Pitt. In 2003, Denzongpa was awarded the Padma Shree, India's fourth highest civilian honour.
A few people know that he is also an accomplished singer having sung with Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhonsle, three stalwarts of Indian music. He has sung for several Indian Nepalese movies. His most famous songs are “kanchi lai ghumauney kathmandu sahaara”, “maan ko kura lai badhi narakha"“Chiso Chiso Hawama", “Suna katha”and "Rato Rani Phule".
My salute to such a great personality of SIKKIM!!!
Song: Suna Katha(Saino)
Sunday, September 21, 2008
SANSKRITI-MANTRA
The jeans vs. daurasuruwal, drums vs. madal, these are quite old rivals. One politician passed a remark in public about the song Bir Gorkhali. He said, “Our guys talk about culture in songs (referring to bir gorkhali), but live/dress like westerners”. I did not have remotest possibility of replying his remark anyhow as it was considered too dangerous, especially during heydays of GNLF. But, it gave me impetus to pen down a song about a person tagged as "western" by one school of people. The result was the song titled Sanskriti.
Music: Vasker Dewan and a little bit of inputs from the lyricist.
Well, this song was my answer to those who think the new generation has forgotten the cultural dress, songs and rituals. Be it a folk song or rock numbers, they are just a beat apart-that's the theme of the song.
Lyrics:
Birseko chainau hami Sanskriti ajhai pani
Nasa nasa ma purkha ko ragat Bagdacha ajhai pani
Sirma topi nahola hamro Daura suruwal nahola
Tara chati bhari maya ccha aafnai jati prati
Deurali pakha bhiralo kasari birsula
Yahi mato ma janmeko yasaima milula
Naulocha saili hamro naulo ccha hamro vesh
Birseko cchainau tara pahar jharna khola ko desh
Damphu ra madal nahola hamro sarangi nahola
Tara hridaya bhari sraddha ccha yahakai sangeet prati
Maruni selo juhari Prerna hamro ho Je bhaneni lok bhaka sarainai ramro ho............
Music video: Sanskriti
Music: Vasker Dewan and a little bit of inputs from the lyricist.
Well, this song was my answer to those who think the new generation has forgotten the cultural dress, songs and rituals. Be it a folk song or rock numbers, they are just a beat apart-that's the theme of the song.
Lyrics:
Birseko chainau hami Sanskriti ajhai pani
Nasa nasa ma purkha ko ragat Bagdacha ajhai pani
Sirma topi nahola hamro Daura suruwal nahola
Tara chati bhari maya ccha aafnai jati prati
Deurali pakha bhiralo kasari birsula
Yahi mato ma janmeko yasaima milula
Naulocha saili hamro naulo ccha hamro vesh
Birseko cchainau tara pahar jharna khola ko desh
Damphu ra madal nahola hamro sarangi nahola
Tara hridaya bhari sraddha ccha yahakai sangeet prati
Maruni selo juhari Prerna hamro ho Je bhaneni lok bhaka sarainai ramro ho............
Music video: Sanskriti
Friday, September 19, 2008
OM BAND
The band started in 2004 with a spiritual dictum, OM.They are really talented young group, with Alfa in vocals, Pranesh in guitars, Suraj on Bass, Sujay on drums and Pankaj on keyboards (Anup was the former keyboardist). Though they haven’t lunched their solo album as yet, but have already created an indellible impression by playing overwhelming live shows in various places. For those who want to have kind of feel of the band, I suggest, to get hold of an original copy of compilation album named THE NEW BEGINNING (2005). Their song ‘Sapana’ became quite hit in Darjeeling, Sikkim and other places.The song goes like....Parkhi base..aucchau bhani....
“We have been experimenting with our music for 4 years now and we feel experienced enough to deliver a brand new album with a difference soon”, Pranesh says.
“We have been experimenting with our music for 4 years now and we feel experienced enough to deliver a brand new album with a difference soon”, Pranesh says.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
MADHUSUDAN LAMA-SIKKIM
“Kati Kura Nabhanera nai; Mitha Mitha Mitha hunchan. Bhaniyeka Kura Baru; Jhuta Jhuta Jhuta Hunchan.” (Some words are better not expressed, when expressed they are often faulted)
Four years back when Nepali people of Darjeeling, Nepal and Sikkim were waving their heads in the mood of music by the song of Deo Narayan Pradhan, a Kathmandu based renowned singer, Madhusudhan Lama was lonely doing his bit in his Ragini Studio at Panihouse, Gangtok. Pradhan’s song was so popular that more than one lakh albums were sold like hot cake in the market. But very few people knew that the famous song was composed by Madhusudhan. Mr. Lama not only composed the music for that song, he also composed the music for a number of songs which are still doing rounds mouth to mouth.
Mr. Lama is a Nepali Post graduate teacher of Ranipool senior secondary school. He was born and brought up in Kalimpong. But for more than 25 years he has been in Sikkim all by himself. He has opened a music studio, Ragini Studio, which has the facilities comparable to those in Mumbai and Kathmandu. “I have every facility in the studio like Sangam studio of Kathmandu, a renowned studio of Nepal with 24 tracks of recording machine,” Mr. Lama said. He rued that still the people go to Mumbai and Kathmandoo for recording and said “it is just waste of money and time.” Regarding the prospect of his studio, he said “It is not that I do not have good business. We have been given entrepreneurship award by NBCFD, New Delhi, and SABCCO, Gangtok, as best performing enterprise”.
(Courtesy: D B Rai Sikkim Express)
Four years back when Nepali people of Darjeeling, Nepal and Sikkim were waving their heads in the mood of music by the song of Deo Narayan Pradhan, a Kathmandu based renowned singer, Madhusudhan Lama was lonely doing his bit in his Ragini Studio at Panihouse, Gangtok. Pradhan’s song was so popular that more than one lakh albums were sold like hot cake in the market. But very few people knew that the famous song was composed by Madhusudhan. Mr. Lama not only composed the music for that song, he also composed the music for a number of songs which are still doing rounds mouth to mouth.
Mr. Lama is a Nepali Post graduate teacher of Ranipool senior secondary school. He was born and brought up in Kalimpong. But for more than 25 years he has been in Sikkim all by himself. He has opened a music studio, Ragini Studio, which has the facilities comparable to those in Mumbai and Kathmandu. “I have every facility in the studio like Sangam studio of Kathmandu, a renowned studio of Nepal with 24 tracks of recording machine,” Mr. Lama said. He rued that still the people go to Mumbai and Kathmandoo for recording and said “it is just waste of money and time.” Regarding the prospect of his studio, he said “It is not that I do not have good business. We have been given entrepreneurship award by NBCFD, New Delhi, and SABCCO, Gangtok, as best performing enterprise”.
(Courtesy: D B Rai Sikkim Express)
Sunday, September 7, 2008
SURESH KUMAR CHETTRI
Born in the year 1957, he brought a substantial change in Darjeeling music. His first album “LOVE SONGS” hit the market in 1994. There was no MEDIA to publicize his music. But the magical feel of his songs spread own its own like a wild fire. In mid 90s there were no happy occasions/ marriages were his songs were not played.
The first album was followed by equally brilliant ones.
Songs like “Awu aba angalo ma”, “ Jindagi ko kiran”, Herda herdai sapana mero” , "priya timro samjhan.."
etc. are still close to our heart.
KAGENDRA KALIKOTE
The song “Kewal timro” was a super duper hit when I was in St. Robert’s high school. It ruled million hearts world over without any assistance from MEDIA. THE singer, composer and writer of this song, KAGENDRA KALIKOTE had just finished the college, when I got admission in St. Joseph’s college as a fresher. He suddenly vanished form the Darjeeling music scene leaving us all awaited for his come back.
He actually did make his come back in year 2006 or so (After 8 years), but his second album went into oblivion unnoticed as MANTRA was already ruling the hills by this time. Besides his song, I (perhaps we) hardly know anything about him. But his name will be certainly written in the history of Darjeeling music for his short, yet eternal service…
Even Prashant Tamang sang this song in the reality show Indian IDOL3, but nobody ever mentioned his name.
Lyrics of the song KEWAL timro:
केवल तिम्रो याढ लिएर कति दिन बाँचीदिनु
चाहे धेरै भुल्न तिमीलाई कसरी भुलु तिम्रा बातहरु
....
प्रीति गाँस्न भुल होइन सजाई किन व्यर्थै मलाई
रोजेथे तिमीलाई आफ्नु सम्झी विरानो ठानी नढुखाउ मनै
केवल तिम्रो ...
....
जति टाड़ा भएपनि तिमै याढमा रोईरहन्छु
चोट सबै उपहार सम्झी तिमै आश्मा बाँचीरहन्छु
केवल तिम्रो ...
Watch (or rather listen) the song KEWAL timro
He actually did make his come back in year 2006 or so (After 8 years), but his second album went into oblivion unnoticed as MANTRA was already ruling the hills by this time. Besides his song, I (perhaps we) hardly know anything about him. But his name will be certainly written in the history of Darjeeling music for his short, yet eternal service…
Even Prashant Tamang sang this song in the reality show Indian IDOL3, but nobody ever mentioned his name.
Lyrics of the song KEWAL timro:
केवल तिम्रो याढ लिएर कति दिन बाँचीदिनु
चाहे धेरै भुल्न तिमीलाई कसरी भुलु तिम्रा बातहरु
....
प्रीति गाँस्न भुल होइन सजाई किन व्यर्थै मलाई
रोजेथे तिमीलाई आफ्नु सम्झी विरानो ठानी नढुखाउ मनै
केवल तिम्रो ...
....
जति टाड़ा भएपनि तिमै याढमा रोईरहन्छु
चोट सबै उपहार सम्झी तिमै आश्मा बाँचीरहन्छु
केवल तिम्रो ...
Watch (or rather listen) the song KEWAL timro
BHRAM-A new BAND with OLD charm
WE had an awesome band called REINCARNATION a few years back in Darjeeling. They rocked the hills with their timeless numbers HIJA SAMMA and TIMI BINA.
Some of the band members left the band as the hills had very little to offer such great talents. Most of them left for big cities. BUT now, the lead guitarist, SADEO Tamang has made a come back with a new band called BHRAM. The album seems to be an admixture of ROCK, blues, pop and some jazz. Perhaps, a FUSION of its own kind. I listened the songs and believe me, SADEO is at his best again with his guitar.
DAWA’s husky vocals have given the metallic touch to the songs-making them more raw and appealing. I liked the title song “Bhram” and “lakhao tara”, which kicks off with a nice punchy keyboard works….
DOCUMENTARY
Darjeeling is undoubtedly capital of western music in INDIA. The musical atmosphere in this small town is amazing. Let us know western music scenario of Darjeeling in the past and present. Here is a documentary titled, “In tune with Darjeeling.
ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
Saturday, September 6, 2008
THE DIOMONDS
The Diamonds formed in the second half of the sixties are considered by some as the first band to start Western Rock in Darjeeling.The band line up had Pemba Lepcha,Bikram Subba,Suren Rai,Pravin Gazmer and Subarna Limbu. They started off playing instrumentals by Ventura and Shadows and went on to play the covers of The Beatles ,Santana and the like.The band broke up in the early seventies,members dispersing to form other bands.
Among the band members ,Pemba later formed Prism in Kathmandu.Subarna joined him later.They are still playing in the band.Suren Rai holds a government job and Bikram runs a studio in Darjeeling called Ears Studio.
Courtesy:www.exploredarjeeling.com
Among the band members ,Pemba later formed Prism in Kathmandu.Subarna joined him later.They are still playing in the band.Suren Rai holds a government job and Bikram runs a studio in Darjeeling called Ears Studio.
Courtesy:www.exploredarjeeling.com
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT
Perhaps the first band to make news everywhere,this band was the longest standing band in Darjeeling.The had the biggest impact on the Western Music in Darjeeling.Their musical journey began out of personal interests and actually started in 1970 with the original line-up of Paulgose on guitars and vocals,Jivan Pradhan on bass guitar,Robert Wilson on drums and Viveka Wilson on piano.
Western music and playing guitars were a taboo while Eastern Music was accepted those days.It was a forbidden fruit So they had to take a bite by all means and cared less about being thrown out of their homes and their grades going down in school.
The band released the first rock album "The First Bite" in their later years.It was a home recording with no proper equipments.Nevertheless the album did make history as the first Rock Album in Darjeeling.
Courtesy: www.exploredarjeeling.com
Western music and playing guitars were a taboo while Eastern Music was accepted those days.It was a forbidden fruit So they had to take a bite by all means and cared less about being thrown out of their homes and their grades going down in school.
The band released the first rock album "The First Bite" in their later years.It was a home recording with no proper equipments.Nevertheless the album did make history as the first Rock Album in Darjeeling.
Courtesy: www.exploredarjeeling.com
JIWAN PRADHAN
He is one of the most important people in Darjeeling who made Darjeeling stand out in the music scene. He is another person who is admired and loved my music lovers of Darjeeling. He is actively involved in the process of making of musicians through the institute, "Melody Academy" founded by his father Mr. Mahendra Pradhan in 1978. The institute imparts the musicial education to its students for as low as Rs. 150/- per month. The institute also helps outstanding students to prepare for exams affiliated to the "Trinity College of Music" in London.Mr.Jeevan was introduced forcibly to violin at a tender age of 8 years. But then he never looked back. So when he was in the college he started learning the piano,and at 20, he tried his hands on guitar. Soon he was sharing his musical expertise with students in his father's academy.He is a member of the Delhi Symphonic Society, the only symphonic society in India.He used to play for various bands but now he is more into classical.Some of his very popular compositions are Ecstasy, Sunrise and Snake Charmer. Besides teaching in his academy he is a teacher in Turnbull High School, Darjeeling. He has also directed plays like Le Miserables, Evita, Oliver Twist and Jesus Christ Superstar.
Courtesy: http://www.exploredarjeeling.com/
Courtesy: http://www.exploredarjeeling.com/
PURAN GONGPA
Mr.Puran Gongba is one musician who was admired then and still admired now. He started playing the guitar out of interest, and learnt it the hard way.He used to tirelessly listen to the radio, watch movies and teach himself to place fingers and strum the strings.he played the guitar with many bands like Extreme Moderation and Hillians.In between he went to the United Kingdom for a few years. Here he worked and took guitar lessons. That was when he learnt to read music.He is fondly called "Joey" by the Darjeeling crowd and the foreigners, who visit his pub called "Joey's Pub" ,the only pub in town.He tells us that Darjeeling was a happening place back in the sixties.He cherishes the Jazz,Samba,Ramba dances that used to be held at the Gymkhana Club and jokes that the ball room is now called the Dining Room.People from the North-East used to come to Darjeeling to buy the latest gadgets and ask him about the latest in music, he adds.Inspite of his love for music he stopped playing after his last stage appearance in 1985.We asked him the reason and he stated that guys in Darjeeling have lots of talent but there is one to promote them.So they have to give up their love for music soon and start finding other alternate ways to earn their daily bread and butter.
Courtesy: www.exploredarjeeling.com
Courtesy: www.exploredarjeeling.com
THE HILLIANS
Vortex of electric, electronic and techno-mechano music
By Peter J Karthak, the founder member of the HILLIANS band, Darjeeling
Soon after the British left Darjeeling after India’s independence in 1947, Americans appeared to fill in their vacant slots. There were some Canadians, too. This was noticeable in the Protestant missions deserted by the centuries old British missionaries.
By 1956, the year I arrived in Darjeeling town from my village farm in Nor Busti, American missionaries had occupied many niches in Darjeeling. They established a big Bible school in Mirik.
My proximity with many American arrivals was due to my mother working for some of them. The first were the Alvin Bergs at the Eden Chine below the Gymkhana Club. The ex-head mistress of the Scottish Mission School in Nor Busti, Mother worked as their cook preparing Nepali dal-bhat-tarkari-achar-and-masu cuisine, the local tastes the Americans wanted to acquire in the new environments. Mother also assisted them in translation and interpretations in Nepali and English, acquainting the Yankees with the local colours and ethos of Darjeeling.
The next American family she worked for were the Roy P Hagens. They had four sons, and Carl was quite friendly with me because he relished our bhat-and-masu khana by many platefuls. And he ate with his right hand in our kitchen in the “servants’ quarters” where we lived.
I was only 11 at that time. But many questions haunted me. One, didn’t they go to the Korean War that had just ended in a stalemated armistice? Perhaps they did, and they returned alive to do the Lord’s bidding in Darjeeling. Secondly, why were they all with German surnames - Berg, Hagen and all that? Three, why did they live exclusively and secluded in the lovely cottages and bungalows camouflaged by the sylvan surroundings of the town’s scenic hills? They hardly came to the town’s still active churches manned and managed by Nepali Christians. Occasionally they did, only to disappear again for long intervals in Stephen’s Mansion, Kutchery Road, Jala Pahar, St. Paul’s and behind the Union Church. They had a nice and comfortable colony in Mirik where they produced Bible graduates to found new churches in the northeast and Nepal. Likewise, the entire northeast of Assam also had many new American missionaries, and a family took my mother to work with them. Having lived in Shillong, where her two boys were born during WWII, she was quite familiar with the then Assamese surroundings.
The American missionaries helped me help The Hillians form and mature in the early 60s by lending me their acoustic guitars. From them, I knew about Gibson and Martin brands of guitars. One couple had a metal guitar called dobro which intrigued me. It was a white-and-gold shiny and stylistic Roy Rogers type. The elderly dobro owner, whose difficult name I sadly forget today, also gave me a glossy booklet of rudimentary guitar chords and notations. I remain thankful to the Americans for their kindness. To me, they were open-minded, egalitarian and liberal as opposed to the hidebound British in Darjeeling.
By the end of 1963, The Hillians and I were self-sufficient in our gears and equipment. We had three electric guitars - rhythm, lead and bass - and three powerful amplifiers with suitable pre-amps, and a complete drumset. I had two standard stabilisers or “step-ups” ready to maintain a steady 200-watt voltage in power-starved Darjeeling. We had spare guitar and electric bass strings, both round-wound in brass and flat-wound in aluminium, brought from Thailand by Lek because India did not produce them. We also had three spare acoustic guitars. All these I had managed to buy by scrounging, borrowing, saving and through many other devices. Plus we had maracas, tambourines, harmonica, tablas and bongos. Harmonica, called “mouth organ” in the early days, was my first instrument, and I played it quite expertly. But gone were by now my expertise in bamboo flute playing and “bimbili” reed piccolo from my childhood years in Nor Busti.
Then Lek brought a new amplifier after his vacation in Bangkok. It had two large speakers set in a perpendicular Victorian wood design. It had 12 knobs. One was for dreamy vibrato for the trilling and lingering notes and sounds on the guitar strings. We called it vibrator until the Playboy magazine scuttled it away for female erotica. Embarrassed, we settled for “tremolos”. Another knob was for creating lightning and thunder reverberations in echoes. We called it “thunder box” but realised it was an excremental contraption. So it was “echo chamber” to us and it suited us just fine. Other knobs facilitated for two guitars to be connected for professional sound with great watt power while other dials were for hi-fi combinations and the like. In short, it was a versatile machine for sonic engineering. Rock ‘n’ Roll and Pop was going from electric to electronic to techno-mechano. But I had no money to buy this 1,000-rupee magic sound box. So I approached my Maili Chhyama, my mother’s immediate younger sister, for a loan. She would migrate to Canada in two weeks, and was clearing her income tax and property deals while making her farewell calls on friends and relatives. I had brought the device home, and I demonstrated its multifarious functions on my guitar and hi-fi works for her to appreciate and wonder. She was impressed, and gifted me the precious amount as her last leaf to me. Lek was happy and threw an extra acoustic guitar in the deal. With this great help from my aunt, The Hillians became the first truly professional and the best-equipped boys band in Darjeeling.
Until this time, I was alternating between Mr. Amber Gurung’s Art Academy, Mr. Louis Banks’ Quartet, The Hillians and Sangam Club, the last one under Saran Pradhan, Ranjit Gazmer, Aruna Lama and Jitendra Bardewa. Now it was time to concentrate on one or two activities instead of moonlighting all over town.
The first job was to tighten and streamline the composition of The Hillians. I became the official bandleader, lead guitarist, co-singer, negotiator, manager and trouble-shooter. My younger brother Mark was given the rhythm and singing. Kamal Kumar “KK” Gurung, our Cliff Richard, was given the bass portfolio and singing while Phurba Tsering Bhutia took up trumpet, French horn and flute. Ranjit Gazmer, the co-leader of Sangam, was our drummer, tabla player, music arranger and harmoniser. Lalit Tamang was the other and original Hillian, now in Gangtok in Sikkim, and I had to do something about him in due time.
This timely realisation arrived when Choden took me to her house where I heard the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” for the first time in my life. The age of self-sufficient, self-contained and multifarious Rock bands had come. The Hillians had to confront the times, or go bust as a bunch of had-beens! Either The Hillians had to touch the summit of the Kanchanjunga or drown in the muddy waters of the Teesta River.
The choice had to be made for the new year!
Note:This memoir was originally published in The KATHMANDU POST, 2003
Watch the original song Mayalu by Hillians
By Peter J Karthak, the founder member of the HILLIANS band, Darjeeling
Soon after the British left Darjeeling after India’s independence in 1947, Americans appeared to fill in their vacant slots. There were some Canadians, too. This was noticeable in the Protestant missions deserted by the centuries old British missionaries.
By 1956, the year I arrived in Darjeeling town from my village farm in Nor Busti, American missionaries had occupied many niches in Darjeeling. They established a big Bible school in Mirik.
My proximity with many American arrivals was due to my mother working for some of them. The first were the Alvin Bergs at the Eden Chine below the Gymkhana Club. The ex-head mistress of the Scottish Mission School in Nor Busti, Mother worked as their cook preparing Nepali dal-bhat-tarkari-achar-and-masu cuisine, the local tastes the Americans wanted to acquire in the new environments. Mother also assisted them in translation and interpretations in Nepali and English, acquainting the Yankees with the local colours and ethos of Darjeeling.
The next American family she worked for were the Roy P Hagens. They had four sons, and Carl was quite friendly with me because he relished our bhat-and-masu khana by many platefuls. And he ate with his right hand in our kitchen in the “servants’ quarters” where we lived.
I was only 11 at that time. But many questions haunted me. One, didn’t they go to the Korean War that had just ended in a stalemated armistice? Perhaps they did, and they returned alive to do the Lord’s bidding in Darjeeling. Secondly, why were they all with German surnames - Berg, Hagen and all that? Three, why did they live exclusively and secluded in the lovely cottages and bungalows camouflaged by the sylvan surroundings of the town’s scenic hills? They hardly came to the town’s still active churches manned and managed by Nepali Christians. Occasionally they did, only to disappear again for long intervals in Stephen’s Mansion, Kutchery Road, Jala Pahar, St. Paul’s and behind the Union Church. They had a nice and comfortable colony in Mirik where they produced Bible graduates to found new churches in the northeast and Nepal. Likewise, the entire northeast of Assam also had many new American missionaries, and a family took my mother to work with them. Having lived in Shillong, where her two boys were born during WWII, she was quite familiar with the then Assamese surroundings.
The American missionaries helped me help The Hillians form and mature in the early 60s by lending me their acoustic guitars. From them, I knew about Gibson and Martin brands of guitars. One couple had a metal guitar called dobro which intrigued me. It was a white-and-gold shiny and stylistic Roy Rogers type. The elderly dobro owner, whose difficult name I sadly forget today, also gave me a glossy booklet of rudimentary guitar chords and notations. I remain thankful to the Americans for their kindness. To me, they were open-minded, egalitarian and liberal as opposed to the hidebound British in Darjeeling.
By the end of 1963, The Hillians and I were self-sufficient in our gears and equipment. We had three electric guitars - rhythm, lead and bass - and three powerful amplifiers with suitable pre-amps, and a complete drumset. I had two standard stabilisers or “step-ups” ready to maintain a steady 200-watt voltage in power-starved Darjeeling. We had spare guitar and electric bass strings, both round-wound in brass and flat-wound in aluminium, brought from Thailand by Lek because India did not produce them. We also had three spare acoustic guitars. All these I had managed to buy by scrounging, borrowing, saving and through many other devices. Plus we had maracas, tambourines, harmonica, tablas and bongos. Harmonica, called “mouth organ” in the early days, was my first instrument, and I played it quite expertly. But gone were by now my expertise in bamboo flute playing and “bimbili” reed piccolo from my childhood years in Nor Busti.
Then Lek brought a new amplifier after his vacation in Bangkok. It had two large speakers set in a perpendicular Victorian wood design. It had 12 knobs. One was for dreamy vibrato for the trilling and lingering notes and sounds on the guitar strings. We called it vibrator until the Playboy magazine scuttled it away for female erotica. Embarrassed, we settled for “tremolos”. Another knob was for creating lightning and thunder reverberations in echoes. We called it “thunder box” but realised it was an excremental contraption. So it was “echo chamber” to us and it suited us just fine. Other knobs facilitated for two guitars to be connected for professional sound with great watt power while other dials were for hi-fi combinations and the like. In short, it was a versatile machine for sonic engineering. Rock ‘n’ Roll and Pop was going from electric to electronic to techno-mechano. But I had no money to buy this 1,000-rupee magic sound box. So I approached my Maili Chhyama, my mother’s immediate younger sister, for a loan. She would migrate to Canada in two weeks, and was clearing her income tax and property deals while making her farewell calls on friends and relatives. I had brought the device home, and I demonstrated its multifarious functions on my guitar and hi-fi works for her to appreciate and wonder. She was impressed, and gifted me the precious amount as her last leaf to me. Lek was happy and threw an extra acoustic guitar in the deal. With this great help from my aunt, The Hillians became the first truly professional and the best-equipped boys band in Darjeeling.
Until this time, I was alternating between Mr. Amber Gurung’s Art Academy, Mr. Louis Banks’ Quartet, The Hillians and Sangam Club, the last one under Saran Pradhan, Ranjit Gazmer, Aruna Lama and Jitendra Bardewa. Now it was time to concentrate on one or two activities instead of moonlighting all over town.
The first job was to tighten and streamline the composition of The Hillians. I became the official bandleader, lead guitarist, co-singer, negotiator, manager and trouble-shooter. My younger brother Mark was given the rhythm and singing. Kamal Kumar “KK” Gurung, our Cliff Richard, was given the bass portfolio and singing while Phurba Tsering Bhutia took up trumpet, French horn and flute. Ranjit Gazmer, the co-leader of Sangam, was our drummer, tabla player, music arranger and harmoniser. Lalit Tamang was the other and original Hillian, now in Gangtok in Sikkim, and I had to do something about him in due time.
This timely realisation arrived when Choden took me to her house where I heard the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” for the first time in my life. The age of self-sufficient, self-contained and multifarious Rock bands had come. The Hillians had to confront the times, or go bust as a bunch of had-beens! Either The Hillians had to touch the summit of the Kanchanjunga or drown in the muddy waters of the Teesta River.
The choice had to be made for the new year!
Note:This memoir was originally published in The KATHMANDU POST, 2003
Watch the original song Mayalu by Hillians
BIR GORKHALI-MANTRA
About the song: Dedicated to Gorkha soldiers who laid their lives for this country. Originally I wanted to put “kahile pani kahile gham dhero sishnu hamro maam..”, but I don’t know why the band preferred “sishnu..” over “dhero..” and it is indeed “sishnu..” in the song. I must confess here that it was Vasker Dewan, who wanted me to write a song on Gorkhas. He probably contacted Binay Dewan, co writer of this song too, besides me for the lyrics. Finally, we (Binoy Dewan and I) wrote it together and the song surpassed definitely my own expectations. This song was also sung by Indian Idol3 Prashant Tamang, during his final round of the reality show. It had become so hit that, even a 3 year old kid in my village sang it in his childish accent. What more a lyricist’s could have asked for…..
Music: Vasker Dewan
Lyrics: Sudarsan Tamang and Binoy Dewan
Proggrammed and arranged by: Mantra
Recorded at: EARS studio, Darjeeling
Mixed and Marketted by: Indreni company, Kathmandu/ then by Taal music and also by SONY for Prashant Tamang
lyrics:
Gorkhali ko cchoro ma Gorkhe mero naam
Ayi lagne satru ko garcchu kaam tamam
Itihash paltai hera ya purkhalai sodha Jite kai cchau sansara lai
Aru ko jastai dukha ccha hamilai
Nirdai ta hoinau hami pani
Bir bir bir gorkhali, bir bir bir Gorkhali
Pahara ko cchoro ma gorkhe mero naam
Kahile pani kahile gham dhero sihnu hamro maam
Angal cchu jati lai Sangit ra sanskar lai
mato ko maya cchadai ccha ni
Gaucchu paharai ma deusi ra bhailo ma
Garbaccha malai afnai panma
Bi bir bir gorkhali bir bir bir gorkhali
watch the music-video of the song
Music: Vasker Dewan
Lyrics: Sudarsan Tamang and Binoy Dewan
Proggrammed and arranged by: Mantra
Recorded at: EARS studio, Darjeeling
Mixed and Marketted by: Indreni company, Kathmandu/ then by Taal music and also by SONY for Prashant Tamang
lyrics:
Gorkhali ko cchoro ma Gorkhe mero naam
Ayi lagne satru ko garcchu kaam tamam
Itihash paltai hera ya purkhalai sodha Jite kai cchau sansara lai
Aru ko jastai dukha ccha hamilai
Nirdai ta hoinau hami pani
Bir bir bir gorkhali, bir bir bir Gorkhali
Pahara ko cchoro ma gorkhe mero naam
Kahile pani kahile gham dhero sihnu hamro maam
Angal cchu jati lai Sangit ra sanskar lai
mato ko maya cchadai ccha ni
Gaucchu paharai ma deusi ra bhailo ma
Garbaccha malai afnai panma
Bi bir bir gorkhali bir bir bir gorkhali
watch the music-video of the song
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
EKANTAMA-MANTRA
Introduction :
This one is my personal favourite...
Background :
The song is based on a true story.
Title : Ekantama
Lyric : Sudarsan
Composition : Bhaskar Dewan
Music arrangement: Mantra Band
Recorded at: EARS Darjeeling by Vikram Subba and Rupesh Rashaily
एकान्तमा किन किन तिम्रैनै याढ आउछ
सम्झनामा अझैपनि आँखा यो किन रसिन्छ
थाह छ मलाई तिमी आउदैनौ तिमी कसैकी भईसकेछौ
तर किन किन फेरी सम्झन्छु
नढुखेखो मुटुलाई किन ढुखाउछु
एक्लै हिड़्दा कहिलेकाही तिमी साथमा पाउछु
हिड़ढा हिड़ढै बोल्दा बोल्दै एक्लै पाँउदा झस्कन्छु
थाह छ मलाई यो भ्रमहो फेरी भेटिने आशानै छैन
तर किन किन फेरी सम्झन्छु
नढुखेखो मुटुलाई किन ढुखाउछु
कति छिटो बितेछन् मिलनका ती पलहरू
सम्झना मात्ररह्यो सपना सबै ओझेल पर्यो
एकान्तमा किन किन.......
Ekantama kina kina timrai nai yada aaucha
Samjhanama ajhaipani aankha yo kina rasauccha
Thaha ccha malai timi aaudainau
Timi kasaiki bhai sakecchau
Tara kina kina feri samjhancchu
Nadukheko mutulai kina dukhaucchu
Eklai hirda kahile kahi timi saathma paucchu
Hirda hirdai bolda boldai eklai pauda jhaskincchu
Thaha ccha malai yo bhrama ho
Feri bhetine ashanai cchaina
Tara kina kina feri samjhancchu
Nadukheko mutulai kina dhukhaucchu
Kati cchito bitecchan milan ka ti palharu
Samjhana matrai rahyo
Sapana sabai ojhel paryo...ekantama..
This one is my personal favourite...
Background :
The song is based on a true story.
Title : Ekantama
Lyric : Sudarsan
Composition : Bhaskar Dewan
Music arrangement: Mantra Band
Recorded at: EARS Darjeeling by Vikram Subba and Rupesh Rashaily
एकान्तमा किन किन तिम्रैनै याढ आउछ
सम्झनामा अझैपनि आँखा यो किन रसिन्छ
थाह छ मलाई तिमी आउदैनौ तिमी कसैकी भईसकेछौ
तर किन किन फेरी सम्झन्छु
नढुखेखो मुटुलाई किन ढुखाउछु
एक्लै हिड़्दा कहिलेकाही तिमी साथमा पाउछु
हिड़ढा हिड़ढै बोल्दा बोल्दै एक्लै पाँउदा झस्कन्छु
थाह छ मलाई यो भ्रमहो फेरी भेटिने आशानै छैन
तर किन किन फेरी सम्झन्छु
नढुखेखो मुटुलाई किन ढुखाउछु
कति छिटो बितेछन् मिलनका ती पलहरू
सम्झना मात्ररह्यो सपना सबै ओझेल पर्यो
एकान्तमा किन किन.......
Ekantama kina kina timrai nai yada aaucha
Samjhanama ajhaipani aankha yo kina rasauccha
Thaha ccha malai timi aaudainau
Timi kasaiki bhai sakecchau
Tara kina kina feri samjhancchu
Nadukheko mutulai kina dukhaucchu
Eklai hirda kahile kahi timi saathma paucchu
Hirda hirdai bolda boldai eklai pauda jhaskincchu
Thaha ccha malai yo bhrama ho
Feri bhetine ashanai cchaina
Tara kina kina feri samjhancchu
Nadukheko mutulai kina dhukhaucchu
Kati cchito bitecchan milan ka ti palharu
Samjhana matrai rahyo
Sapana sabai ojhel paryo...ekantama..
CHAKRA
They came, they played and gone with the wind leaving many people spellbound with their music. I had a privilege to be a part of their only(so far) album CHAKRA in a small way. I remember how challenging it was for me when they asked me to write lyrics on a track they had composed. The tune was basically rock in genre but with a little bit of Indian classical touch. So I though I will make it more unique or rather complicated by writing a typical nepali lok lyrics for it. The song goes as,
Maichang ko aankha ma dubera, chyangba le birsethyo sansara….and it goes with some majestic bass-guitarring from Rabin Tolangi and seminal drumming from...Chewang Lama, and of course Naresh David Chettri has woven evrything with a fitting vocal.
Besides this I have two more songs in their album-German and Sir ko topi.
Band members (during the making of album Chakra):
Vocals: Naresh David Chettri
Guitar: Karma Lama
Bass: Robin Tolangi
Keyboard: Prashant Subba
Drums: Chewan Lama
Well, I must add on a quick note here that the vocalist Naresh is extremely talented. I remember his amazing performance in one of the school (St. Robert’s high School) programmes, where he had performed along with Prashant Tamang (Indian Idol3). He could sing duet songs without female vocalist…amazing talent!!!
Maichang ko aankha ma dubera, chyangba le birsethyo sansara….and it goes with some majestic bass-guitarring from Rabin Tolangi and seminal drumming from...Chewang Lama, and of course Naresh David Chettri has woven evrything with a fitting vocal.
Besides this I have two more songs in their album-German and Sir ko topi.
Band members (during the making of album Chakra):
Vocals: Naresh David Chettri
Guitar: Karma Lama
Bass: Robin Tolangi
Keyboard: Prashant Subba
Drums: Chewan Lama
Well, I must add on a quick note here that the vocalist Naresh is extremely talented. I remember his amazing performance in one of the school (St. Robert’s high School) programmes, where he had performed along with Prashant Tamang (Indian Idol3). He could sing duet songs without female vocalist…amazing talent!!!
Song Lyrics
Title: German
Lyrics: Sudarsan Tamang
Composition: Sudarsan Tamang
Music arranged by: Chakra Band
German ko dhawama hamro bajele gauthyore,
"tato roti nakhau timi chisai roti khai
Mathlo bato german ayo tallo bato jau"
Chiya ko bot ma paisa ccha bhantyo re
janme ko thaulai mayamari authyo re...
Angrej ko palo ma hamro baje le gauthyore,
"gande maila gande sainla, rupe paisa gande
mayalule sodhyobhane pardesh gakccha bhande"
Kohi malaya lahure bhai janthyo re
Kohi mechipari munglan pasthyo re....
YELLOW HAMMER
A few years back, I watched them performing live at capital hall in Darjeeling and I was truly impressed by these extremely talented young boys. They may be barely in their twenties, but they play with a kind of dexterity which is hard to attain even after years of preparations.
I came to know that the band was formed in the year 2002 and have many awards to their credit including wildfire IIT2005 kharagur, Mangan (Sikkim) beat contest and Alcheringa IIT Guwahatti. They are truly one of the most promising bands in Darjeeling today. They have already launched an album titled ‘yellow hammer’, which contains songs like ‘kina kina’, ‘roi diyo aakash’, ‘question’ amongst others. Like many other post-agitation bands of Darjeeling, they have too succesfully bloomed where they belonged.
Band members:
Pashang (guitars/ vocals)
Samten (drums)
Ashim (keys)
Nishant(Bass guitar)
Pranay (guitar)
I came to know that the band was formed in the year 2002 and have many awards to their credit including wildfire IIT2005 kharagur, Mangan (Sikkim) beat contest and Alcheringa IIT Guwahatti. They are truly one of the most promising bands in Darjeeling today. They have already launched an album titled ‘yellow hammer’, which contains songs like ‘kina kina’, ‘roi diyo aakash’, ‘question’ amongst others. Like many other post-agitation bands of Darjeeling, they have too succesfully bloomed where they belonged.
Band members:
Pashang (guitars/ vocals)
Samten (drums)
Ashim (keys)
Nishant(Bass guitar)
Pranay (guitar)
Monday, September 1, 2008
SONAM SHERPA-PARIKRAMA
According to Parikrama official website, he was born and brought up in Kalimpong(DOB:08/10/1971). Playing guitars since when he was 9. He has played with many bands in his hometown, and in next door Darjeeling, before Joining the Parikrama Band in Delhi. Now an ace guitarist of India’s top rock Band, Parikrama and for us a living inspiration...
Song:But it rained
Parikrama making INDIA proud (watch this BBC Video)
Song:But it rained
Parikrama making INDIA proud (watch this BBC Video)
LOUIS BANKS
Son of Pushkal Budapriti and Saraswati, Dambar Bahadur (Known as LOUIS BANKS), grew up in Darjeeling, graduating from St. Joseph’s college at North Point.
He is one of the brightest stars of Darjeeling music history. He used to perform live during 60s with Bands like Hillians in various places.Banks is a jazz pianist at the core, even known as the godfather of jazz in India. He has performed with the likes of Yolande Bavan, Charlie Mariano and Charlie Byrd and toured India with Dizzy Gillespie. Banks is known throughout Europe, Australia, Russia, China and the Middle East. He co-wrote and recorded India's first mega Broadway hit and has even hosted a popular broadcast named after himself, The Louis Banks Jazz Hour Special. He has given background music and music scores in various bollyhood movies. When he is not playing music he is known to paint impressionistic canvases in oil and acrylic. Taking time out from his hectic schedule, he still comes to Darjeeling during carnivals and mesmerises the crowd with his unblemished performances. We are extremely proud of him.
He is one of the brightest stars of Darjeeling music history. He used to perform live during 60s with Bands like Hillians in various places.Banks is a jazz pianist at the core, even known as the godfather of jazz in India. He has performed with the likes of Yolande Bavan, Charlie Mariano and Charlie Byrd and toured India with Dizzy Gillespie. Banks is known throughout Europe, Australia, Russia, China and the Middle East. He co-wrote and recorded India's first mega Broadway hit and has even hosted a popular broadcast named after himself, The Louis Banks Jazz Hour Special. He has given background music and music scores in various bollyhood movies. When he is not playing music he is known to paint impressionistic canvases in oil and acrylic. Taking time out from his hectic schedule, he still comes to Darjeeling during carnivals and mesmerises the crowd with his unblemished performances. We are extremely proud of him.
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Life was beautiful and worthwhile, if only we knew the art of appreciating the world around us. What if we noticed it: a budding talent beneath shy exteriors, a potential stars veiled by deceiving looks, zipped lips and featureless faces. What if we clapped for them.………..?
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