Kolkata nightlife: live music, culture and Park Street after dark

Kolkata does nightlife with a cultural streak no other Indian city quite matches. This is a place with a genuine live-music soul — jazz, rock, blues and Bengali bands are woven into the going-out fabric, and the historic Park Street strip has been the beating heart of it for generations.

Park Street's restaurants, bars and live-music institutions anchor the classic Kolkata night. Beyond it, the city has modern clubs and lounges serving the commercial and electronic crowd, but the live circuit is what gives Kolkata its identity — few cities take a band on stage as seriously.

The crowd here is warm, unpretentious and up for a long evening. Festivals and the year-end season bring a surge of events, and the city's love of a good time is genuinely infectious.

• ›Seek out the live venues — they're the city's real speciality.
• ›The Christmas-to-New-Year stretch on Park Street is legendary.
• ›Kolkata rewards a slower, conversational night as much as a dancefloor one.

For soul, history and live music, Kolkata is one of a kind.