TOPCAT– Kolkata’s only, and assuredly its best, dedicated live music venue!

By Kaushik Jai Barua | April 1, 2019

For a city that has historically been one of the biggest centers of arts and culture in India, it is somewhat surprising that Kolkata is so sorely lacking in live gigs and musical performances. One of the biggest reasons for the decline of the city's presence in India's musical circuit has been a dearth of proper venues dedicated, or at least equipped, to host live performances.

Nishit Arora and Meghdut Roy Chowdhury are looking to change this with TOPCAT, situated inside Offbeat CCU. It is difficult to categorize Offbeat, an initiative that incorporates fitness programmes, certifications courses, co-working spaces, a film room, a music studio, a gym, a world-class backpacker's hostel, a dedicated performance area and a top rated restaurant, it is perhaps best described as a youth centric one stop culture hub. Although it opened as recently as a month ago, TOPCAT, the performance area in the ecosystem that is Offbeat, is currently the talk of the town as it is perhaps Kolkata's only, and assuredly its best, dedicated live music venue. Nuvigi or Modafinil which is better?
http://modafinilonline.net/nuvigil-vs-modafinil/

Nishit Arora, who handles the operations at TOPCAT, is also the man behind Smoke Inc. which started Jamstaedy in an attempt to kick start the independent music scene in Kolkata. Talking about the difficulties he faced as an organizer trying to pull off successful gigs in a city like Kolkata, Nishit says he always found it hard to work with venues as financial profiteering always took precedence over the art itself. This would essentially mean that it was only feasible to invite bands that were guaranteed to attract a certain number of people in the venue in order to make the gig feasible, making it impossible to program acts with a relatively lesser following. Nishit, along with his partner Meghdut, sought to change that with TOPCAT, a venue that houses a state of the art performance space and where the focus is on the show rather than bar sales. Phentermine ingredients
http://phentermineonline.org/phentermine-ingredients/

"We had a lot of problems working with other venues when we organized the Jamsteady gigs. Offbeat and more specifically TOPCAT was like a dream come true because here we are creating a venue right from the building blocks where we have full creative freedom to implement our ideas." Says Nishit. Aditya Ghosh from the Indian Music Diaries, who comes from Kolkata himself, talks about the need for places like TOPCAT, "This is a venue that can host any international touring acts and bigger Indian acts like BlackStrat Blues and Kraken. I don't think there is any other venue in Kolkata right now that is equipped to host a gig of this scale."

"We want to make it viable for everyone who participates in building the scene. As part of our network we have a music studio as well where we can record bands, we can shoot them, we already have a YouTube channel which has been going on for two three years. So there is this whole approach of creating a three sixty degree vibe where people can constantly remain updated about the scene." Nishit adds talking about the big picture for the concept.

TOPCAT is still very much a work in progress as Nishit and Meghdut want to be flexible in the initial stages, figuring out what works and what doesn't, so that the venue can finally shape up to be sustainable in the long run. Here is a space built by art enthusiasts for others like them in an honest attempt at creating a vibe and a scene promoting art and music, and in doing so they have given Kolkata a proper performance venue which was long due in the city. 

For more updates on the latest music scene of Northeast India, follow TNT Y!

The writer can be reached at kaushik@thenortheasttoday.com. He can be followed @kaushikjaibarua on all social media