Debjit’s musical journey started at the age of 8. He was homeschooled by his family in the basics of Indian Music with the Harmonium. Enamoured by old school rock artists like Led Zeppelin and The Who, he picked up the guitar as a preteen and quickly transitioned to the electric bass. At 17, he was introduced to the world of Western Classical by his first teacher, Abraham Mazumdar. Though he had started playing the cello, he soon found ‘love’ in the Double Bass.
Graduating with a Masters in Computer Applications and having dedicated over a decade to learning music, Debjit started a day job as a Physics teacher in a high school. He quit his job in 3 years to give his life to his calling – music. He joined the Calcutta School of Music, as principle double bassist for the Calcutta Chamber Orchestra. Within a year, he also began performing with the Indian National Youth Orchestra and the Bombay Chamber Orchestra in the same role. He had the opportunity to perform and/or interact with renowned international conductors, such as Dr. Hans Juergen Nagel, Vijay Upadhyay, Karen Gorden, Nicholas Pendlebury, Felix Benatti and Maestro Zubin Mehta. The following couple of years ,he joined and started performing with the Indo-European Chamber Orchestra (Hyderabad), The South Asian Symphony Orchestra and the Bangalore City Chamber Orchestra.
In the last 2 years, besides Western classical music, Debjit started discovering his own sound and making music by collaborating with different artists from varied backgrounds (musicians, dancers and theatre performers). Underground music explorations like drum-n-bass, electronic music also began, along with regularly performing with regional and local artists, taking the double bass out from its conventional usage in western classical and jazz and introducing it to Indian music. Apart from performing live, he is also a studio artist and has plays for jingles, films and indie music.
Currently he is working on his first album which is scheduled to be released next year. Being the sole Upright Bass Player of his resident state that plays as a full time professional and one of the few such professional double bassists in the country, he is working towards popularising his sound and the instrument. He continues to learn Dhrupad music under the great Rudra Veena maestro, Ustad Bahauddin Dagar , the scion of the 20 generations old musical gharana, also known as Dagarvani.
Debjit hopes to make the double bass a better known instrument in India and show the world, the varied usage of this beautiful instrument, which is yet to be discovered and across all different genres.
Here are the links to a couple of articles talking about his music!