Bangla (band)

Bangla is a folk-rock band from Bangladesh. Formed by the popular indie musician Arnob, Bangla mainly blends the traditional Bangladeshi folk genres like Baul, Lalon together with western flavours like jazz, blues, rock etc. The band released its first album Kingkortobbobimurho in 2002. Over the years, the band has emerged as a prominent music group in the country and became one of the most sought after bands, especially among the urban youth listeners.

Formation

The formation of the band dates back to the late '90s when Arnob was a student of Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan. Due to his interest in music, he casually formed a band with his friends in Santineketan in a motive to spread out Bengali folk songs. One day, Anusheh came to visit Shantiniketan, who was a family friend of Arnob. Anusheh, who was well trained on Indian Classical Music, subsequently accepted the invitation of Arnob and became the lead vocalist. On their visit to Lalon's shrine in Kushtia, Arnob and Anusheh met Buno, a close friend of Anusheh and a bassist. The trio performed together at a public concert in Kolkata Book Fair in 1999. Their performance received good feedback from the audience. The same year, Arnob moved to Dhaka. The band was then joined by Kartik, former guitarist of Prachayanat. and Shantanu on drums. Thus they came to be known as the band "Bangla". A year later, Nazrul, also an acquaintance of Anusheh, joined as the Dhol player.

Music of Bengal

Bengali music (Bengali: বাংলা সংগীত) comprises a long tradition of religious and secular song-writing over a period of almost a millennium. Composed with lyrics in the Bengali language, Bengali music spans a wide variety of styles.

Bengal is today split between the Indian state of West Bengal and the independent country Bangladesh.

Styles

The earliest music in Bengal was influenced by Sanskrit chants, and evolved under the influence of Vaishnav poetry such as the 13th-century Gitagovindam by Jayadeva, whose work continues to be sung in many eastern Hindu temples. The Middle Ages saw a mixture of Hindu and Islamic trends when the musical tradition was formalized under the patronage of Nawabs and the powerful landlords baro bhuiyans.

Much of the early canon is devotional, as in the Hindu devotional songs of Ramprasad Sen a bhakta who captures the Bengali ethos in his poetic, rustic, and ecstatic vision of the Hindu goddess of time and destruction in her motherly incarnation, Ma Kali. Another writer of the time was Vidyapati. Notable in this devotional poetry is an earthiness that does not distinguish between love in its carnal and devotional forms; some see connections between this and Tantra, which originated some time in the middle of the first millennium CE.