A bylane off Sitaram Ghosh Street would generally be considered a bookworm’s haunt. A typical north Calcutta neighbourhood close to the College Street book hub, the para exudes old-world, with its narrow alleys, buildings conjoined like Siamese twins and a million different publishing and printing factories. Not exactly a rock’n’roll environment.
The milieu, however, doesn’t deter Gautam Das, 43, from building one drumkit after another, tirelessly working in his tiny 12ftx10ft factory-workshop at the end of a blind lane, with just three assistants.
He’s been at it for the past 15 years. In all this while, the “expansion” has meant moving the “store” to a similar-sized room atop the main workshop. And, in a little over a decade, Gautam Drums, as his brand of instruments is better known, has become one of the first-call choices for budding drummers in the city, without burning a deep hole in the pocket.
Das’s store is not the only address in town for the drumming greenhorn looking for that budget kit. Over the past four decades, two shops in yet another bustling central city district, a stone’s throw from Lalbazar, have been the hub of locally manufactured drums.
Bapy Music, on Sunayat Sen Street across Rabindra Sarani, started it in 1971, building the first locally made drumkit. BCM Music Palace followed in a few years, specialising in fibreglass sets that became a rage in the mid-’80s and early ’90s.
In the US, independent drum-makers like this trio would be respected artisan-entrepreneurs, with adequate government support to help their businesses flourish. Custom drum-builders like Pork Pie Percussion, Dunette & Lang and Jeff Ocheltree are known the world over. All of them started in backyard garages.
The picture isn’t that rosy in this city, but our local heroes shine on. The reasons are simple: you can get stuff custom-made, not to mention the price. A decent imported drumkit comes for Rs 20,000, but the hardware may be rickety. And then there’s always the issue of after-sales services, accessories and repair.
In contrast, kits from our local drum-makers range from as little as Rs 2,500 to over Rs 15,000 for a full-blown, six or seven-piece set.
Mahadev Chakraborty, the owner of Bapy Music, started off with a gramophone retail and repair shop at the Sunyat Sen Street address in the late ’50s. “I was always interested in how drums are made. A Goanese drummer named Victor who often visited my gramophone store taught me what drumset design is all about,” says Chakraborty.
Das’s knowhow didn’t come from a very different source: he assisted a music instrument maker and was a master at operating the lathe machine. Once he knew the way drum hardware was built, switching to making drums was smooth. Setting up his own store was the next, natural step.
Bapy Music started rolling out the first locally-made drums in 1971: the first ones to be manufactured in Calcutta. Everything except the hardware — which Chakraborty imported — was built at his Lalbazar address.
Bapy Music’s drums caught on immediately, so much so that by the late ’70s, Chakraborty started sending out kits to Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. By the mid-80s, he expanded his workshop. “I started off with two assistants. Today, there are over 30 workers in our company,” smiles a proud Chakraborty.
BCM Music Palace on Rabindra Sarani was founded in the 50s by Bhimchandra Mondal — thus the name BCM. Grandson Tapas now mans the Lalbazar store, while his father Ashoke, 55, visits the store’s Howrah factory every working day.
BCM started manufacturing its sets from the early ’80s. “We had been in the music instruments business for over two decades before we started manufacturing our drums. We did enough research to find out what sort of materials we would need in order to make quality drumkits,” says Ashoke. In the turn of the decade, the company’s fibreglass shell model became an instant hit with city drummers.
Then Chiradeep Lahiri, former drummer for Krosswindz, Span and Bickram Ghosh’s fusion outfit Rhythmscape started off playing the drums in the mid-’80s.
“The very first kit I owned was a second-hand BCM make, which lasted me a long time. Gautam’s drums came in the early ’90s, and they were very decent kits,” recalls Lahiri.
Monojit ‘Kochu’ Datta of the Orient Express recalls playing BCM and Bapy Music drums “for almost a decade” before actually laying his hands on an imported drumkit. Even then, Datta still gets most of his stuff custom-made from Das’s store.
Ditto for Ritoban Das, drummer for Cassini’s Division and Debapratim Bakshi, drummer with Span and the Saturday Night Blues Band. Hip Pocket drummer and t2 columnist Nondon Bagchi — who owns a vintage Ludwig drumset that dates back to the ’70s — relies on Das’s shop for hardware-related problems and his drum cases.
ARKA DAS
Published in The Telegraph Metro, Saturday , April 24 , 2010
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