Dyuti Monishita joins a crowd of both old and young for an all-nighter of classical music on the last day of the three-day festival at Chhayanaut that revives a tradition of the Indian subcontinent which goes back centuries

                                              photo by Al-Emrun Garjon
In an attempt to revive an old tradition, Chhayanaut, the famous music academy, and BRAC Bank jointly organised a three-day long classical music festival. The festival started on Thursday, January 15, and went on till Saturday, January 17.

The programme started with speeches from Khurshid Khan, a well respected guru of Chhayanaut, and co-founder of Chhayanaut, Sanjida Khatun. The inaugural programme started from 5:30pm on Thursday with their speeches.

It was their sincerest regret that no one is willing to learn classical music nowadays, and that those who learn classical music move on to sing different genres of music. ‘People are more inclined towards modern music nowadays as it is better accepted by the general public,’ says Sanjida Khatun.

‘The way of life of a classical musician is very hard, but it is rewarding in the end,’ she added. ‘There are times when an artiste cannot even pay for food, but that is when we tell them to have patience and determination, there will be reward in the end.’ After the speeches, the opening song was a chorus by the students of Chhayanaut.

The first part of the festival ended at 10:00pm that day, and the second part started the next morning at 8:00am till 12 noon. However, the main part of the festival was the third segment which went on all night long. It began at 8:00pm on Friday evening and ended at 6:00am on Saturday.

The festival comprised of a total of 23 artistes from all over Bangladesh, and artistes who participated once will not be allowed to participate again. According to the organisers, in this way everyone can get a chance to participate. They also said that there are innumerable numbers of artistes of classical music in Bangladesh that we are not even aware of, and in this way everyone will get the chance to get known.

The 23 participating artistes were Moidul Islam, Feroz Khan, Fakir Shahidul Islam, Rezaul Karim, Priyanka Gope, Jagadananda Roy, Asit Dey, Satindranath Haldar, Shibnath Das, Swarup Hossain, Bijan Chandra Mistri, Nakib Mahmood, Latifun Julio, Rabiul Hossain, Shahin Samad, Rezwan Ali, Anup Barua, Yakub Ali Khan, Alauddin Miah, Yousuf Ali Khan, Gazi Abdul Hakim, Anil Kumar Saha and Iftekhar Alam Prodhan Dollar. Out of these 23 participants, three artistes were from Rajshahi – Jagadananda Roy, Shibnath Das and Rabiul Hossain – and the rest of the participants were from Dhaka.

Aside from singing, classical instruments included sitar played by Feroz Khan, bamboo flute by Shibnath Das and Gazi Abdul Hakim, tabla by Swarup Hossain and Iftekhar Alam Prodhan Dollar, violin by Alauddin Miah and sarod by Yousuf Khan.

Each and every artiste had performed remarkably and not one of them failed to captivate the audience. However, there were a few artistes who outshone others. Artiste Rabiul Hossain from Rajshai was one of them. This elderly artiste is the son of famous Ustad Muzammel Hossain. He sang Raga Bagesri which was nothing short of hypnotic. He had said that he was unwell and had breathing problems due to the cold winter weather, but it made everyone wonder just what he is capable of doing when he is well.

A father and son duet by Yakub Ali Khan and Yousuf Ahmed Khan was a performance that left the audience completely speechless and enthralled. Yousuf Ahmed Khan is the son of the artiste and yet at such a young age, sang the ever so difficult Raga Darbari Kanara with his father Yakub Ali Khan.

The sarod performance by Yousuf Khan and the violin performance by Alauddin Miah had a similar effect on the audience as well. But the flute performance by Gazi Abdul Hakim was one of a kind. His performance on the third segment of the festival captivated the audience so much that they were clapping their hands in a syncopated rhythm with the sound of the flute. Gazi Abdul Hakim was the only artiste that night who was requested an encore performance by the audience.

Indian classical music originated in the Vedic period. It is a tradition that has been evolving from the 12th century AD, in what are now northern India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and also Nepal and Afghanistan. The tradition was born out of a cultural synthesis from several musical streams: the Vedic chant tradition dating back to approximately one millennia BCE, the equally ancient Persian tradition of Musiqi-e-assil, and also existent folk traditions prevalent in the region.

In the 20th century, the power of the maharajahs and nawabs declined, and so did their patronage. The state of artistes of classical music deteriorated due to this. With the expulsion of Wajid Ali Shah to Calcutta after 1857, the Lucknavi musical tradition came to influence the music of the Bengal renaissance, giving rise to the tradition of Ragpradhan gan around the turn of the century.

In modern times, the government-run All India Radio, Bangladesh Betar and Radio Pakistan helped to bring artists in front of the public, countering the loss of the patronage system. But it is still not enough so events such as this holds great importance in trying to preserve this tradition and culture.

The festival started last year with the hope that it will revive the old tradition of our subcontinent. It was not too long ago that there were frequent ‘gaaner ashor’ where live music is played all night long. Although Dhaka has long lost this tradition, people of the rural areas still hold onto it. This year’s festival is special as they reintroduced this tradition to the habitants of Dhaka.

‘We were afraid that no one will show up on the third day and that, as late as it got, there would be less people. But we were surprised at how people responded and stayed till the very end,’ said FM Rezwan Ali, a performer and a staff teacher of Chhayanaut.

He also praised the audience by saying that listening to such spiritual and deep form of music takes a special quality not everyone possesses and that the audience has shown that they hold that much depth to understand classical music.

It was truly a surprise as the auditorium in Chhayanaut was house full to the point that many people could not even find seats inside the auditorium. The audience was a mixture of people of all ages, class and gender. No one ever thought that people of the younger generation would be so interested in this genre of music.

Even as the night went on, the auditorium was still filled with audiences till morning. The reintroduction of this old tradition of gaaner ashor turned out to be a great success, ‘I heard about it from my parents and grandparents. They said that when they were young they used to stay up all night long and listen to different artistes perform,’ says Rima, a university student. ‘This was truly amazing! I feel blessed to have had this experience. Listening to classical music all night long is filled with magic and if you have not experienced it, it is truly a great loss.’