The story of the unbroken musical taste of a certain generation in Jhumri Telaiya is inextricably tied with its economic history. With the laying of the railroad in Koderma (Jhumri Telaiya is in the Koderma district of erstwhile south Bihar, now Jharkhand. Manisha Jain, programme executive, VBS, Mumbai, says, “Nowadays if there are 10 letters from Yavatmal (the town in Maharashtra that matched Jhumri Telaiya for maximum number of song requests in the ’80s), from Jhumri Telaiya there is one. But Jagannath Sahu, a 66-year-old flour merchant, who is probably the last letter-writer to All India Radio’s music programmes from Jhumri Telaiya, will not put up with this. “With the whole of India listening, how would it sound if a person from Jhumri Telaiya chooses a bad song,” he asks.

Source: Hindustan Times August 06, 2016 17:03 UTC