Musically Yours

An elegy has been scripted across all media this morning: shutdown call of a music store in Calcutta. As if representing the city of culture in this subcontinent, it came as a “shock” to my fellow citizens – some of who have made it big in the industry in the last 13 years. Certainly, they owe a lot to the music store, promoted and owned by a company, which is one of the last few still headquartered in the city once considered next only to London for its sheer royalty and financial prowess.

That financial prowess is over. We have conceded that to Bombay long back, maybe just a decade after Independence. Now, is business over? Or have the businessmen shifted their focus to something else? We, the laymen, have hardly an answer. Coming back to the music store. It will, as has been reported in one of the leading English dailies, soon make way for a coffee joint – a perfect proposition to lure couples for a sip or two in the lazy afternoons after a stroll in the Maidan – especially when the famous Coffee Houses of the yore are also struggling to survive, forget profits.

At least two major reasons have been cited by the company to shut down the music store. 1. Virus of virtual onslaught on CDs. 2. Piracy on the Net and elsewhere. But hasn’t it affected a store like M Biswas Symphony in Esplanade or Modern Music under the Sealdah flyover? While the former is still the largest selling music outlet in the city, sale figures of the latter decides chartbusters in Calcutta. In terms of business, where did the Park Street music store figure? It had, still has, fabulous collection of albums and movies but could not match – maybe because of its maintenance cost – the fabulous discount the Esplanade store used to offer for decades. Isn’t Symphony older than Music World? How can they survive the scimitar of piracy and Cloud? Somewhere, Bengalis are still cash-conscious. If someone gets an original barcoded CD for Rs 100 instead of paying Rs 149 for the same in Music World, why shouldn’t s/he make a queue that would spill on to the pavement? Such is the craze at Symphony that they had to open another outlet on Lenin Sarani some five years back.

The shutdown saga could have been seen in a different way. With changing times, and listeners of music, several audio firms and shops have gone the digital way. CDs and DVDs would be obsolete in another 15/20 years, Clouds will cover the entire world in its different avatars. Music World could have evolved – like they sold accessories such as Walkman or earphones – ways to sell CDs along with coffee or tie up with companies like Yamaha or Gibson to sell even musical instruments to utter fulfilment of music lovers. Shutdown is sort of escapism. Survival, battling against odds, is the key in life, particularly when the life concerns thousands of citizens. We have seen Oxford bookstore to survive even in the world of e-books and Kindle; we have seen Starmark (launched as Landmark almost the same time Music World was born) to spread its wings; we have seen Crossword making its foray into the malls also. What ails Music World then?

Has it anything to do with the demise of RPG, the quintessential Bengali with music and culture in his blood? Is it a symbol of beginning of the end of Bengali cultural journey? Questions like these have many answers, or raise further queries.