A boost to our traditional music

An official announcement to this effect was made at a press conference in Surma Hall of Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel yesterday. Faridur Reza Shagar, Managing Director of Channel i, Intekhab Mahmud, Senior Vice President (Sales And Marketing) of Citycell and Taslim Ahmed of Citycell were present at the press conference.

Intekhab Mahmud asserted that the main objective of this award was to promote local music, from pop to folk, mystic to classical and playback to modern songs of Bangladesh. He said, "We have taken this effort to encourage quality Bangla music and musicians. Pop musicians usually get wide recognition, whereas mystic singers or folk singers are not given adequate exposure. We are determined to change this scenario. We will also honour those people who work behind the scenes, including lyricists, composers and instrumentalists."

Musicians and behind-the-scene people will be given awards in 16 different categories, including singers of Tagore, Nazrul, folk, mystic, classical (vocal and instrumental) modern and pop. Other categories are for a lyricist, composer, film songs, music video, band, debutante singer and lifetime achievement award.

The organisers set the ball rolling for the programme by inviting recommendations from the production houses. Subsequently, the production houses sent the organisers copies of audio albums of a certain standard released in 2004. The selection has been made through three steps: primary, secondary and final. A jury board comprising popular and eminent musicians including Ferdousy Rahman, Sudhin Das, Gazi Mazharul Anwar, Ajit Roy, Ila Majumdar, Khurshid Khan, Subir Nandi, Shujeo Shyam, Khairul Anam Shakil, Mridulkanti Chakravarti, Fatema-tuz Zohra and Fakir Alamgir, has chosen the names for final selection. The winners of Citycell-Channel i Music Awards 2004 have been selected by the musicians of Jury Board.

Shagar said, "Measures have been taken to ensure an unbiased selection process."

Intekhab added, "As an important tool of popularising music, quality music videos will be awarded. In the next Citycell-Channel i Music Awards, we will consider creating different categories for other important features such as sound engineers and artists who design album covers."

Faridur Reza Shagar said, "In my view this is an award solely dedicated to music in Bangladesh. And we want to invite all the people related to music in this programme. The award giving ceremony has been organised for a sizeable TV audience; we are expecting two crore TV viewers to watch the show."

The award giving ceremony will be telecast on Channel i on August 12 at 7:50pm.