A musical 'Renaissance' on a day of equality
The underlying theme on Day 2 of Brac Hope Festival 2023 was ‘Shomotontro’ - which translates to a movement for equality
If you have been to enough of these luxury events in Dhaka city, you would know that getting a reaction out of a seated audience filled with dignitaries of different age groups and nationalities is not an easy task. They judge hard. And to get all of them excited by trying to replicate the studio sound of a song recorded without any recognisable instrument, live on stage for the first time, must have made the task all the more harder.
However, upon witnessing the vocalist Arfan Mredha Shiblu take to the stage to sing Shada Shada Kala Kala, along with accompanying 'instrumentalists' with wooden sticks and various 'thala- bashon' and 'paanir kolshi' , everybody got excited. What followed was the biggest sing along of the night when all and sundry joined in singing the chorus.
Undoubtedly, that was the best moment on the second day of Brac Hope Festival 2023.
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When it was announced that Emon Chowdhury and his team would be performing, hardly anyone expected the rock guitarist who has the dexterity to shred at the speed of light, would play a whole set of Baul and folk songs.
To that, Emon said, " I believe folk belongs to us. It's ours. It's in our blood. I have always performed rock music but when it comes to movie songs, I quite like to stick to our traditions. Bollywood and Hollywood advertise their countries' music to the world. With songs like Shada Kala, I like to uphold the folk genre because it is inherently ours."
Emon's whole set featured at least around 20 odd musicians on stage. He had his set of backing vocals and instrumentalists. Emon also kept alternating between the banjo and the acoustic guitar.
There were a lot of iconic Baul and Folk numbers, but it was more of a fusion than a generic folk set. For example, the Bhandari Baul song, 'Jhilmil jhilmil' was arranged with a blend of country and folk, and it was performed by popular vocalist Neelapagli. Similarly, 'O amar Chand er Kona', another folk song, had a long guitar intro where Emon tried to fuse a middle eastern tune.
Before Emon and his team mesmerized the audience, it was Renaissance and Feedback who performed for almost an hour. By the way, when I say Renaissance 'and' Feedback, I mean exactly that.
It was a pleasant surprise for the audience to witness two of the most iconic bands in Bangladesh music history jointly perform their famous numbers. I mean that's kind of the equivalent of James Hetfield playing the intro riff to Holy Wars, while Dave Mustaine is singing on the sides, isn't it?
There were a total of 11 Feedback and Renaissance members on stage. There were two bassists, two on the electric and one of them was the legendary Labu Rahman, two acoustics, two keyboardists and one on the drums along with the vocals.
The stalwarts played Renaissance's famous track 'Accha Keno Manushgulo'. Also it made for good humour that a cluster of mosquitoes kept on buzzing around the audience's ears when Feedback's 'Ek Jhaak Projapoti' was being performed.
After their set, I caught up with the maestro that is Labu Rahman and asked if he ever watched the Marvel Avengers movies because the collaboration of Renaissance and Feedback did not feel too far of a stretch.
He laughed and said, "It was actually a new experience. We did not really plan on this. It was done specifically for the Hope festival. It actually made logistical sense. Had we performed individual sets, there would have been a lot of time lost due to setting up and getting tuned. Since we (Feedback) know their (Renaissance) songs and they know ours, we thought 'Why not?'"
The event organizers Blues Communications made a clear effort into the output sound quality. They hired Carlos Sallaberry to look over the sound system and audio engineering. He has worked with renowned artists like Bon Jovi, the Rolling Stones and Coldplay amongst others and the quality of his work could be heard, literally. It's not easy mixing and engineering live performances where there are so many instruments and artists involved but Hope Festival sure did a great job at that.
The underlying theme on Day 2 of Brac Hope Festival 2023 was 'Shomotontro' - which translates to equality. To be more precise, a system of or a movement for equality among men and women.
Keeping with the theme, a 'Girl Power Band' consisting of individual female musicians was formed. It featured vocalists Fairooz Nazifa, Rubayat Rehman and also Tashfee. The rest of 'band' was actually members of Bangubibi - one the only rock bands going around in the circuit with a female 'frontman' vocal. They kept alternating among the vocals and performed a number of songs but the one that got the crowd all charged up was Fuad Almuqtadir and Mila's version of 'Tumi Ki Shara Dibe'. Before that, Tashfee covered Conclusion's 'Shajo Tumi' with two of their guitarists beside her on stage.
