Usha Ganguli and Rangakarmee members during the music session at Landmark. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Rangakarmee ke Ranga-geet was surely a first — a Calcutta theatre group performing just theatre songs and that too in a shopping mall. The fact that most seats at the Landmark bookstore were filled up and people stayed back to know the next show dates said a lot about the enduring power of theatre.

Rangsurabhi singers are Rangakarmee members who have been accompanying the group’s performances for over 30 years. “Even I sometimes wonder how I have written and composed so many songs for our performances without any formal music training. The first one I remember was for Mahabhoj composed on the spur of the moment in a dressing room… Even two days back we were rehearsing for the third Manto play Manto aur Manto to premiere by the year-end when I realised I had a song and a tune ‘Joote laine sitare walia’ (Get me shoes with stars in them),” says Usha Ganguli.

Rangakarmee songs draw extensively on folk traditions because the plays are “about Dalits and the rural poor, with whom it is always easier to communicate through folk songs. And even in cities folk music has its own charm”, adds Usha.

This was borne out by the response to the rhythm of the nagara, manjeera, jhanj and turahi, and the songs of 11 artistes. From songs of Ma (Gorky’s Mother as scripted by Bertolt Brecht) they went on to the rural oppressed with the Lok Katha song “Gire ko giraye duniya/marte ko maare” and the catchy song from Maiyat “Maya maha thagni hum jani”.

Usha, who dreams of someday having a 50-strong theatre choir, rues that Calcutta theatre groups do not use music as they once did, and says: “Music and songs are powerful mediums of communication in drama especially for us since we often put a lot of our messages into the songs.”

But then, all plays do not need songs (“In Rudali, I didn’t use any songs because the sound of the wailers spoke its own language”).

The need factor is stressed by Saoli Mitra who also writes and composes for her group. Songs in theatre are like poetry, necessary only when one has something more to communicate than can be done through plain dialogue and actions, she contends.

“Usually deep and complex experiences and emotions,” explains Saoli, who still remembers how in Pancham Vaidic’s Raja some of Tagore’s original songs were replaced (under Sombhu Mitra’s guidance) by those from Tagore’s Puja series like “Oi aashon tole” because it went better with the opening.

Songs can add a different layer or perspective but they can also slow down the pace of a play. “For example, in Putul Khela and Ekti Rajnaitik Hotya I used no songs at all but I wrote a lot of songs for Nathabati Anathbat and Katha Amrita Saman because those were in the Kathokatha form and the Pandavani touch seemed perfect,” explains Saoli, who has no reservations about the kind of music to be used on stage.

If her classical music guru Dhiren Das and Tarit Bhattacharya set scores for Nathabati and Katha Amrita Saman, strains of Tchaikovsky contribute to the songs of Poshu Khamar.

Saoli agrees that Bengal has a rich tradition of stage music but theatre-goers today probably want to see more of “real live people and it just won’t do to ape the electronic media and include music just anywhere one likes”.

Director-dramatist Bratya Basu remembers “brilliant theatre songs” like those in Dukhi Mukhi Joddha (produced by Chetana) or Madhab Malanchi Koinya (Anya Theatre). Songs, he argues, are to be used only when absolutely necessary.

“For me, songs complete the mood as it did in Aranyadev (where theatre walks hand in hand with fantasy). Since Sahar Yaar itself was centred on a band, there had to be music, which also allowed me to better express the inherent pain. In Page 4, songs like ‘Haio maro maro taan/ Amaar khuli te moder tufan’ express both the vulgar buffoonery of this age and the terrible helplessness of the individual, while the title track ‘It’s also a game’ additionally draws references to the title track of Ram Gopal Varma’s Road.”

A basic passion for music allows Basu to discover “certain rhythms even during the initial drafts of a play”. Just as he knew quite early that Winkle Twinkle and Babli didn’t need songs. And in Hemlat, popular film songs could be used as a sort of textual subversion, a deconstruction.

So is the next step the making and selling of CDs of theatre songs? No way, is the chorus.