Abstract
This article deals with the construction of local identity in Calcutta (Kolkata) through the reappropriation of Western forms of popular music. The focus is on the acculturation process which has taken place in Calcutta, with a particular emphasis on popular music (jazz, rock and pop). The major questions revolve around the dimensions of globalization in the music scene and its effects on a particular setting in South Asia. An ethnographic approach can indeed provide some insights into the ways Anglo-American popular music is received as well as produced among music lovers and both amateur and professional musicians. The article explores the political and social dimensions of contemporary Bengali popular music, with an emphasis on the influence of the Naxalite movement of the 1960s and the 1970s, the circulation of American protest songs tradition in Calcutta and the emergence of the jibanmukhi—literally, oriented towards life—folk songs movement of the 1990s in Bengal and the Bangla rock bands movement that followed in the 2000s.
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