Next Big Thing | How Madhubanti Bagchi is Bending Musical Genres

"Aaj Ki Raat" from Stree 2 (2024) might appear to be an item number, but it’s a ghazal at heart. Strip off all the dressing, and you might be able to see it—a sad-eyed lamentation doubling as a cheeky commentary on consent. Composer duo Sachin-Jigar dish out a sped-up, feel-good product; Tamannaah Bhatia, as a courtesan no less, brings glamour, in a horror comedy. It works. But try to imagine the song without the singer. Madhubanti Bagchi’s individuality stands out. There’s a little more saltiness in that voice than the Shreya Ghoshal type. Besides, Bagchi seems at ease with the complicated workings of the genre. She sounds just right for the song.

Bagchi schooled in Hindustani classical from an early age—she’s a student of the Agra gharana (or school), trained in the khayal, a musical form. And it’s little wonder that she caught Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s fancy. He first called her in 2022 to record a song for his non-film album, Sukoon, and eventually, for Heeramandi. The filmmaker-composer has an ear for new female classically trained talent, like he famously did in the case of Shreya Ghoshal in Devdas (2002). Bagchi gets an exquisite thumri in Heeramandi’s “Nazariya Ki Maari.” She sings beautifully, nailing the ornamentations, and in certain passages invoking Shubha Mudgal.

Bagchi recalls how, as young girls, they were not taught thumris (a vocal form). “My guru would tell me I was too young for thumris. Because thumris need a certain maturity. They are so expression-based and experience-based, it’s very difficult for a child to deliver that,” she says in an interview with THR India.

Bagchi’s breakout year was 2024. She appeared on Bhansali’s Heeramandi soundtrack and followed it up with arguably the year’s biggest chartbuster. Now she wants to shatter any assumptions about her versatility. “I used to worry that I would be labelled as the next thumri or ghazal sensation or whatever. Because that is also not who I am as a person,” she says.

Madhubanti Bagchi.

Bagchi grew up in a regimented musical environment—strict classes, and a ban on what you can listen to at home. Hindi film music of the time was not acceptable. So, Bagchi went straight from Manabendra Mukhopadhyay to Linkin Park. And then came the heavy metal days. Bagchi would try out metal vocal techniques in her Hindustani-trained voice. It’s an exercise she did for fun, and it’s paid off in the long run: she’s able to seamlessly switch from a Hindustani mode of singing to a Western one.

It may not seem like it, but Bagchi didn’t grow up with ambitions of being a professional singer—which is why she took academics seriously. She did her bachelor’s degree in engineering, specialising in electronics and instrumentation, and a master’s in laser and optical science. “I liked academics, but music was a far greater love. I thought, let me try to see if it’s possible to get a career in music. If not, then there is always academia to fall back on,” she says.

Bagchi started getting playback opportunities in Bengali films in 2013, but she increasingly felt drawn to Mumbai. She considers it to be a critical period in her life when she couldn’t make up her mind if she was ready to take the plunge. “I know how close I was to letting this one dream go, because everybody I knew said that ‘Mumbai is not your place’,” she says.

A call from M.M. Keeravani’s office in 2018 helped. Bagchi first thought it was a prank call. “I was a little bit mentally down,” she says. But it was real. The next day, she flew to Hyderabad to record for the composer, who would go on to win an Oscar for RRR’s “Naatu Naatu.” “On the flight back, I decided I was going to move to Mumbai in the next two months. I felt like this was a sign. Something needed to shake me out of that limbo,” she says.

It didn’t take long for good things to happen once she made the move in 2018. She lived in the city through the pandemic, made friends for life with fellow professionals, and worked her way into the ecosystem, building good working relationships with composers like Amit Trivedi and Sachin-Jigar.

In 2022, when she got a call from singer-songwriter Arnob from Bangladesh to take part in a Coke Studio Bangla song, it was kind of a fangirl moment for her. Together, they gleefully messed with the S.D. Burman classic “Shono Go Dakhin Hawa.”

Riding on the success of last year, Bagchi already has three Hindi film songs in 2025—“Uyi Amma” from Azaad, the Loveyapa title track, and “Galatfehmi” from Nadaaniyan—but she refuses to be pigeonholed as a Bollywood playback singer. She has a steady stream of non-film work: she’s in the new Coke Studio Bharat and is also composing her own stuff. “I have things that I want to say. I can’t always be a mouthpiece for somebody else,” she says.

In a way, Bagchi is the product of her father’s dreams. Her father and uncle were students of hardcore classical music, born and brought up in Balurghat, West Bengal. He had to give up music after she was born, because of middle-class responsibilities. Thus was born a middle-class dream. Her parents moved to Kolkata in search of better opportunities for her, educationally and otherwise.

She started learning from Subhra Guha, one of the exponents of the Agra gharana. For the first few years, she hated it. “Initially, I was very bored. I was doing the same thing repeatedly. One raga she used to teach for four to five years, just going on… and was very strict too. I literally didn’t speak; I was very scared of her,” she says.

“It took me a good six or seven years of training to start liking what I was doing.”

But it is this relentless rigour that forms the bedrock of Bagchi’s vocal exploits. “When you practise, practise, and practise, you have a lot of control over your voice and what you can do with it,” she says.