JOIN USHumour, satire, social awareness, love and hope are the five elements that form ‘saMcara’s music. They call themselves an alternative pop band and are inclined towards contemporary sounds that can be used to convey the social issues that plague our country and the moral ones that we deal with in our day-to-day lives.
Sutirth Mukherjee, who is a composer, songwriter and a singer, decided to form a team to build social awareness through music. He produced a project called ‘saMcara’, which means ‘being together’ in Sanskrit, in 2012. In 2013, he joined hands with Simon Jacob, who plays the guitar, and later G.BO, a percussionist who plays the cajon and djembe for the project.
“Some of our compositions include ‘BAPU’, a song about the hypocrisy in a society that talks about Gandhi’s ideals but never follows them and ‘Mat Kar Maya’, a song which talks about the side effects of an inflated ego and how it should be in control,” says Sutirth. “‘Sarey Jahan Se Achcha’ is a song which talks about the expectations we have from our country and ‘We are Englishmen in India’ is a song about our identity, which is considered fake, weak and driven by the West. ‘Gussa’ shows the ill-effects of anger and ‘Thook’ is a song about keeping one’s mind clean in order to help the world,” he adds.
Sutirth has also composed the music for a lake conservation project named ‘Kaikondrahalli Lake – The Uncommon Story of an Urban Commons’. He says, “In 2009, we also composed music for a documentary named ‘I Love My Junk Food’, which is a satire on distribution of junk food in our country and its ill-effects on health.”
‘saMcara’ uses powerful words to help people question and bring about a change in society. Why are their compositions based on social issues? “Human society depends on social relationships between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions. So it should be our innate responsibility to maintain those relations,” says Sutirth.
“But sometimes, because of certain negative influences, the positive energies in a relationship get clouded. Then it becomes our responsibility again to help clear those negative clouds. As musicians, we have decided to use our musical power to touch every mind. Music is divine and positive so we aim to make every negative mind positive. Eventually, a positive mind will help building a positive society,” he adds.
One of the biggest challenges the band faces is to entertain the audience and send out a strong message at the same time. “It’s a journey we started one-and-a-half years back so everyday is a lesson and every performance is a learning opportunity. In few cases, our satire and sarcasm has been misunderstood, so we had to dilute some ideas to bridge the communication gap,” he sums up.