The Gen-Z today is going retro even at Trincas.” When asked to reflect on Ramba Ho, the 1981 hit finding a fresh lease of life through Dhurandhar, Usha Uthup simply says, “A song is bigger than a singer. You have to give it time to become a classic – the kids have made it so.
She sang Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Tom Jones, and continues to draw from those legends. Over time, Uthup tweaked her style quotient as well: she started pairing her Kanjeevaram sarees with what she calls Kanjeevaram sneakers – Reebok sneakers lined with the border of a Kanjeevaram saree. She has borrowed from contemporary artistes – Adele’s Skyfall has been on every performance playlist since the Bond film released in 2012.
Likewise, when the 79-year-old artiste-performer – born in the year India got her Independence from colonial rule – looks back, there is little rose-tinted nostalgia, but a measured remembrance of a country that shaped her. An untutored singer, she started performing at 21, not confined into boxes, which led her to sing in varied Indian languages. Because i had no other garment of choice, “I was a change at the clubs — I wore sarees. Because women did not look at me as a threat, and as I moved from club to club, I drew in families.
Trincas is the iconic heritage restaurant and tea room, and a much-sought out venue for live music in Kolkata, where Uthup performed in her early years, and continues to do so occasionally. There is no triumphalism in her voice about the song she first struck to life decades ago being reinvented; instead, a quiet acceptance that only someone who spent many years under the sun can understand. “That was our post-Partition eclectic way of life. “But I wasn’t unhappy about that. I started playing the tambourine. After singing at Nine Gems, a nightclub in Madras, she moved to Talk of the Town in Bombay and Trincas in Calcutta. Persuaded by an aunt, she stepped into the clubs at a time when they were dominated by Anglo-Indian performers. She turned heads equally with her powerful textured voice that held a deep bass resonance and by turning up in decorous silk sarees paired with traditional jewellery, an arresting bindi and flowers in her hair. She commanded the stage as she moved with the music turning rhythm into absolute power.
A born performer, “known to stand up on the table and sing”, her earliest memories of music is that of an uncle listening to Beethoven or Mozart on one floor, another playing the Kingston Trio on another floor, and her aunts listening to Kishori Amonkar or MS Subbalakshmi. Uthup was thrown out of her class choir “because the teacher could not find a proper place for my voice” While music entered her life without warning. I was no sex symbol,” she says.
