Song for Change

Once American folk singer Peter Seeger wrote, ‘If you miss me on the battlefield/You will find me nowhere/Come on over to the battlefront/I’ll be fighting up there’. This was the message that the ballad singer Sanjo had chosen to deliver at his recent concert titled ‘The Power of Protest Songs’ at Saptaparni, Banjara Hills. He was demonstrating the impact of music to bring a change in society.

He believes that raising voice against something does not necessarily have to be political but also is about evoking positive thought to bring in change. “My initial fascination with ballad song was the storytelling part of it. So I travelled all over India and globally to countries like Pakistan, Australia with my show ‘The Song of the Balladeer’ for several years,” shared the 52-year old artist who started his career in an advertising agency and worked for sixteen years before taking up ballad singing full-time.

Hailing from Kolkata, Sanjo is the alumnus of Don Bosco School from where he had his informal training in music that had widened his music sense. He got the inspiration to sing protest songs from ‘Bauls’, the folk musicians of Bengal. “I consider ‘Bauls’ the most progressive in their time. They talked against widow marriage and child marriage to bring change in the orthodox Hindu society, before anyone else. I think that was an impactful way to protest against the social system.”

As a ballad singer he has taken the initiative to preserve some old and rare songs that are on the verge of going obsolete. His choice includes the many songs with various historical references - the song of Ohio (referring Vietnam War, 1970) and a rare song like ‘Peace of ground’.

During his concert, he sang, ‘Johnny I hardly knew ye’ by Joseph B. Geoghegan, a prolific English songwriter, ‘ Who will love a little sparrow’, ‘Back of the bus’, ‘Blowing in the wind’, ‘Sixteen tons’, ‘Peace of the ground’, ‘The ballad of Lou Marsh’ and ‘The sound of silence’. The audience thoroughly enjoyed and joined him in singing ‘Blowing in the wind’. He also sang the song that he composed for ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign, the protest march that was held earlier this year in Hyderabad.

“I think Hyderabad audience is more open to accept my choice of music. And I must mention that these youngsters are politically more conscious than our time,” said the performer who is going to release his second album ‘Hum Se Hi Hai Ye Sab’ based on various social issues like environment, AIDS, gender discrimination etc. “When I released my first album in the year 2006 titled ‘Barso Huye’, I faced a lot of pressure from producers to add some commercial elements in the compositions to market the album. But this time, my album that I will release in Hyderabad is the kind of work I wanted to do,” concluded Sanjo.