Fête De La Musique
Abaji and bauls enchant audience
Internationally renowned French-Lebanese singer, song writer and multi-instrumentalist Abaji, along with some Bangladeshi traditional baul musicians have enchanted the audience at La Galerie, Alliance Française de
Dhaka on Saturday evening.
This year’s Fête de la Musique, which is globally observed as the World Music Day, was celebrated through a two-day musical festival that was jointly organised by Alliance Française de Dhaka and the Embassy of France in Bangladesh.
Olivier Litvine, director, Alliance Française de Dhaka inaugurated the event on Saturday. In his brief speech, he talked about his profound interest in baul songs, and said that this was one of the motivating factors for his arrival in Bangladesh. He thanked Abaji for coming to Bangladesh for the third time since 2012 and taking part in this year’s Fête de la Musique at the invitation of AFD.
The concert started amid huge applause as Abaji stepped on to the stage with a magical smile, carrying a bamboo clarinet in hand and performed his first number called For a cloud. Then he presented Traveller and Farâché playing the oud-guitar. In the following musical performance, he invited young flautist Musarrat Jabeen Rahman on stage for a duet musical piece titled Happy Dhaka with Abaji playing bouzouki (Greek long neck lute).
Next, young talented musician Philip joined him on stage with his instrument ‘gomock’ and ‘beat-box’, thus together they presented the music titled Funny Rhythm, the entertaining musical piece, where Abaji played on djembe and mouth harp. Then Abaji presented Steppes with a kemenche (Turkish three stringed traditional violin), followed by Essaouira played on the bouzouki. The masterful versatility of Abaji left the audience enthralled.
Later, baul singer Rob Fakir and Baby Dewan took the stage with their team members Shafiqul Islam on dhol, Jalal Ahmed on fluteist, Md. Nazrul Islam at the harmonium, Shamim Islam on mondira and Poran Fokir playing Khamak.
This was Abaji’s third tour in Bangladesh. His popularity amongst the country’s music-lovers soared after his first performance at the Bokul Tola yard of the Faculty of Fine Art, DU in November 2012.
-With New Age input
