Sony DADC India launched a melodious offering “Setu” by Madhusmita Bhattacharyya and Nachiketa Chakraborty, a new Bengali studio album, across both physical and digital platforms worldwide. Noted singer Nachiketa Chakraborty and Madhusmita Bhattacharya released the musical venture in September.

“Setu” is a remarkable and melodious musical collaboration of Madhusmita and famous Bengali singer Nachiketa. The name ‘Setu’ has significance as this name was suggested by singer Nachiketa himself. The name means “bridge” the gap between Bengal and Assam.

“Setu” consists of 8 songs in total. It is the first bilingual album from the region, consisting of 5 Bengali songs composed by Nachiketa and sung by Nachiketa and Madhusmita and 3 Assamese songs composed by Mr Jateen Sarmah, sound engineer and music director from Assam settled in Mumbai and by talented popular new generation heartthrob music director from Assam Mr Palash Gogoi. This album also has 1 song with lyrics penned by senior lyricist of Assam, Sri Hiren Gohain. The rest of the lyrics are penned by renowned music composer and writer Mr Rajdeep. The interior of this album was done in Mumbai, Kolkata and Assam.

“Setu” is a romantic album with two great music directors and incidentally it is already creating a buzz among the fan base of Madhusmita and Nachiketa.

Speaking on the occasion Madhusmita said, “Setu’ is a bilingual album by collaborating artists from two states Assam and Bengal. Nachiketa Chakraborty and I are a merging of two cultures. ‘Setu’ is our first album with Sony DADC. We hope to work together in future also. As an artist, I have had a very good experience with Sony DADC”.

Speaking on the launch of the album, Rajat Kakar, MD Sony DADC said, “We are excited to launch this melodious album. It connects Bengal and Assam, the places of melody. We hope to take this music to existing and new fans using our extensive distribution network with a simultaneous release across all platforms.”

Madhusmita is one of the most successful artists of Assam who has rendered her voice as a vocalist in Radio, television, solo music albums and playback singing for films in Assam as well as nationwide. She has been trained in Indian classical and traditional music too. She holds the Visharad degree in music from Vatkhande gharana. In addition to this, she has acquired a detail understanding of folk and indigenous musical form of Assam.

It was Madhusmita’s devotion and high commitment level that brought back the long lost genre of ‘Bongeet’ which was once the bloodline genre of Assamese music. She contributed one year of her precious life in the researching and resourcing the Bongeet’s which were available only in the record albums owned by the original artist’s families. It took a lot of perseverance and patience to acquire the rights from the families of the original artists to get the copy rights of the songs as the families feared that the songs might get diluted in the wave of the western remixes. But Madhusmita’s sincere and honest approach helped her to win the trust of the families and she re recorded the Bongeet without diluting its original form. After 34 years of its original recording Madhusmita revived the Bongeet’s an asset to the Assamese music industry which Madhusmita gifted to the people of Assam in the forms of albums “Horinir Sakute”, “Bon Luit Konwai”, “Mou Tukarirmaat”.

Her collaborations with the various artists of Assam and nationally has helped her to create a genre for herself. It was in the 2005 that Madhusmita’s first collaboration as a singer for T Series started. She recorded a number of songs for T Series in Mumbai. Since then Madhusmita has been lending her melodious voice to various musical albums for T Series as well as collaborating with various music composers from West Bengal, Assam and Mumbai. With her exposure to different forms of music, she realized that the strength and future of Assamese music lies in the restoration of its glorious musical tradition in the original form. Her constant effort to revive and preserve the old gold musical melodies of the Assamese with various musical maestros have created constant ripples in the Assamese music scene with every music album released by Jonak Productions. In 2013, Madhusmita had released her romantic album “Akaxor Nilakhini” with popular playback singer Angaraag Papon Mahanta.

Nachiketa Chakraborty is a renowned Bengali singer - songwriter and composer who is known for his modern Bengali lyrics and natural mode of singing. He achieved fame in the early 1990s, with the release of his debut album “Ei Besh Bhalo Achhi”. His forte being urban folk, Nachiketa Chakraborty started composing and performing as a student of Maharaja Manindra Chandra College in North Kolkata, Shyambazar. In 1993 his first album “Eibesh Bhalo Achhi” was released; it was an instant hit. He had a huge youth fan following, but gradually he has touched listeners from all age groups. The colloquial language immediately hit the stagnancy of Bengali music in the early 90s. Following the path of Kabir Suman (then Suman Chattopadhyay), Nachiketa changed the age-old concept of Bengali lyrics.