Soumik Datta’s Borderland
by Jeanny Gering
It’s Saturday night at a theatre bar in Shoreditch. A stream of people are filling the rows of chairs and plush black leather couches which face the stage. Music playing over loudspeakers promises South Asian flavours.
Some in the audience may have been lured here by promises of old Tagore, others by the young sarod player, Soumik Datta. The Bengali-British musician’s latest composition is based on one of Tagore’s stirring poems, Borderland. Virtually an epic poem in its depth (though perhaps not in length) Tagore deals with themes of life, death, identity – and the other ‘borders’ we face in our daily existences.
The outset sees Soumik on sarod, accompanied by his nimble-fingered tabla player, telling a story in Tagore’s words, in an attempt to bring classical poetry into a modern context. The performance sees a gradual increase of musicians on stage, and video installations in the background.
Although the music is really well composed and performed and is a beautiful wave for the story and the images to ride on, it occasionally feels like the composition is trying to combine too many things at once; to show images of the London riots while reciting parts of the poem as stirring as this: “I saw, in the twilight of flagging consciousness / My body floating down an ink-black stream”, is perhaps an overload of ideas.
Although beautiful and successfully conveying a lovely taste for Bengali poetry and sound, it is overwhelming, and difficult to take it all in. It feels as though too much is trying to be said with images and words rather than in Soumik’s actual language – music. It is therefore best ingested by thinking less, and rather, simply immersing yourself in the music, images and words surrounding you, without making too much effort to make sense of it all. A true hedonistic pleasure if ever there was.
Read SALF’s interview with Soumik Datta here and catch Borderland in Portsmouth on the 17th of October, and in Leicester on the 20th.
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