Joe Shearer
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2009
- Messages
- 27,493
- Reaction score
- 162
- Country
- Location
@Joe Shearer
My father is a big fan of SD Burman and we used to have an old HMV cassette of movie Bandini. That was my first introduction of rural bangla music and whilst the songs aren't baul music in true sense, they were influenced heavily.
To this day i still wonder how you can create a magical piece of music from so little instruments.
Baul music and Bengali folk? They are overlapping sets. Lalon is Baul; he's also folk. Besides Baul, another category, with the oarsman's swing built in, is Bhatiali. If you want to listen to a really wide selection of folk, listen to Nirmalendu Chaudhuri. He was kind of one of my father's 'discoveries', back in the day. Nasal voice, had a reasonable range, to start with, but his terrible insecurity made him sing three to four times more than he should have. By the time he died, at a very young age, his voice had fallen off very sadly.
When he was singing in his glory days, particularly to a small group in someone's home, it was sheer magic. He was Sylheti, and sang a lot of Hasan Roja and Eklim Roja; I don't know anybody else who did. Probably Bangladeshi connoisseurs might be able to tell us.