Hente Chenashona Rastay n System: a music review (Bengali, Jeet Ganguly)

I am not really into Bengali music and understand the language very little, but recently when I was going through the Ovi website, I saw this album called ‘System’ that attracted me a bit and I downloaded Hente Chenashona Rastay, Papon’s version. And the sound so impressed me I downloaded the entire album.

So you may count it as an opinion of a music fan restricted by the limits of language rather than a music review. First of all let me talk of the song. Jeet Ganguly comes up with some lovely music and arrangements and the romantic song (as much as I got it) sounds really good. Papon is not-so-surprisingly very Bengali in his rendition and I wonder how he can shift his accent when singing in different languages so… perfectly.

Jeet’s version of the song seems to play down the vocals a bit in relative terms, but is good nonetheless.

Besides, Jeet sounds a touch unnatural in some places in Alok Borsho Dure Aaj as he goes very high in lines and then suddenly gets all normal in the same line, but the song is a fine composition and overall, is not bad. Ferrari Mon sounds more like an early 2000s Bollywood composition, sounds nice but doesn’t have too much to it. Still, the added alaap and the part after that gives it a little extra advantage, making it worth a listen at the least.

Lopamudra Mitra’s Mahi Rey is mostly about the singing she does here. Nice composition, but it’s the singing that makes the soft song so lovely here. Bhupinder sings a sad, touching Ei System, and while the rest of the song is nice, ei system, ei system sounds a bit strange, makes it more of a background thing. System theme is okay.

Overall, System sounded like a good album to me. Especially Chenashona Rastay, followed by Mahi rey.

Tags: Bengali, Bhupinder Singh, Jeet Ganguly, Lopamundra Mitra, Monali Thakur, Music Review, Papon