He takes the mic to hum a tune from his chartbusting songs and they sing back the lyrics in toto. He stands up on the dais and they go click-happy with their cell-phones in hand like amused shutterbugs. He takes the stage to set it afire and they ensure a rousing applause in response. He bangs his head, taps his feet and they crazily follow his
electrifying actions. He strums his guitar and they promptly air-guitar in unison. He sings aloud with full-throated ease and they deliriously croon along in chorus.
Rupam Islam is the current rock-sensation of Bengal and the beatnik frontman of leading Bangla band — Fossils. Legions of blind frenetic fans, swear by his name as their ultimate rock idol. Synonymous with the phrase “a volcano of talent”, Rupam shot to national fame when hitmaker Bollywood composer Pritam spotted his voice to be roped in for the title song Jannat Jahan of Emraan Hashmi starrer Jannat, back in 2008.
Till date, he has lent his vocals in over 30 Hindi as well as Bengali films to reckon with. His assignation with the mainstream Bollywood music continued with last year’s Diwali blockbuster All the Best. He made inroads as a movie scorer with his maiden Tollywood project Mahanagar-@Kolkata, for which he received a national award as a singer in fact. Does his creative liberty get hampered when he composes for films? Isn’t setting notes for his own band a much simpler task to cope up with? “Well, it’s nothing like your creativity is taken a beating or something similar. Of course, a film has its own sound, jurisdiction and requirement to meet with. Often the situation or a given sequence dictates the terms but what perturbs me most is the last-minute rush hour in post-production stage where everything gets fixed up in haste. There comes a tight deadline calling at your doorstep and you get drowned nose-deep into work to round off those finishing touches. However, having said that, I know I am ambitious about film projects. I always nursed this keen aspiration to become a composer and I feel, you always deliver your best when the pressure cooker is on. Your instinctive worth excels when you’re kept on toes under challenging constraints. So at the end of the day, I can’t complain and I must respect the prevalent system with whole-hearted honesty,” he advocates assertively.
Supporting the healthy trend of musical trade-offs between a singer and composer or vice-versa, Rupam corroborates that rock as a movement had begun long time back in India. Of late, Rupam has etched out his hot-cake like selling solo album after a long hiatus of 12 years.
Of course, the band pre-occupation kept him amply busy, but despite going solo off and on, this rebellious rocker believes in churning out unanimously orchestrated ventures.
“I’m always game for joint efforts. For any endeavour, if different heads converge to hatch ideas and get along like a house ion fire, what’s the harm? People are joining hands on a mutual consensus and are conjuring up many collaborative projects. Here, my listeners will be entertained with a collection of eight carefully crafted
songs. There’s been no compromise on qualitative grounds too,” he promises assuringly.
Thriving on world music and well-known for his experimental escapades, Rupam can at facile ease scribble words about anger, agony, pain, pathos, jubilation, romance, revolution, solitude, trauma, supernaturalism, historical characters like Joan of Arc as a symbol of reciprocation in love and other such imageries with equal élan.
His angst-ridden brooding eyes, unruly curls and don’t-you-dare-mess-with-me attitude give him a stand-out-of-the-average-crowd status. Coupled with cerebral expressions on the paper, he sets his class apart from the rest. “I feel there’s always a value attached to pure gems and that is good quality music to me,” he adds.