Three minutes on music from Bangladesh.

Henderson, David

Look up "Bangladesh" in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Hmm. There is an entry for "Bengali music," but not "Bangladesh." Try the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. There you will find "Bangladesh and West Bengal (India)." Despite a classificatory discrepancy here--what other nation is refused its own entry?--these scholarly choices seem reasonable. Why separate something that is inseparable? But West Bengal and East Bengal were separated, first in 1905, then again in 1947.

The doyen of Bengali music and literature, Rabindranath Tagore, composed the songs that became the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh. Claimed as a native son by both motherlands, Tagore's songs remains very much in favor today. Lesser known outside of South Asia is Kazi Nazrul Islam, thirty-eight years Tagore's junior--deeply influenced by him yet with a distinctive voice, a Bengali Beethoven to Tagore's Mozart.

When Partition severed Bengal, Kolkata was its cultural hub, home to thriving music and film industries. In Dhaka, film production (replete with songs, of course) only began in 1956. Local radio was of little import before Bangladesh Betar began broadcasting patriotic songs during the Bangladesh Liberation War. Recording studios were scarce before audiocassette technology opened the door to cheap production facilities in the 1970s and 1980s. The increasing availability of inexpensive digital audio and video production software dramatically raised production standards in the late 1990s, and widening Internet access in the 2000s shifted patterns of consumption and distribution.

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Alongside technological transformations came new forays into both global and local musical styles. An explosion of rock and metal bands in the 1980s and 1990s, including groups such as Miles, LRB, and Aurthohin, cleared a path for later bands like Black, Artcell, and Nemesis. In the 2000s Bangla and others tried placing traditional tunes and instruments within a more modern context. Such experiments achieved mixed results, with advocates praising their efforts to give old songs new life and critics wary of these dilutions or distortions of the purity of tradition.

Musicians wrestle with the same problems of cultural identity that concern writers, politicians, and rickshaw drivers. So what makes the expression of these issues in musical terms particularly powerful? In Bangladesh, music is the art form that reaches people from all walks of life. It immerses people in shared anger, sadness, indignation, happiness, joy. And it unites people, whatever divides them: listen, for instance, to "Tin minit" ("Three minutes"), a song written by West Bengali singer-songwriter-politician Kabir Suman in February 2013 in support of the Shahbag Protest.

Editorial note: Visit WLT's website for a suggested listening list and audio clips.

Author note: This article is based in part on a lovely conversation over e-mail with Srabonti Narmeen Ali, a singer-songwriter from Dhaka. My deep gratitude to her. Thanks also to Sadia Rahman Rodriguez, a former student of mine, who put me in touch with her.

David Henderson teaches music and film at St. Lawrence University.