Renaissance

The 21st century Renaissance

Early in 1985 Naquib and Pilu of the band 'Souls' came from Chittagong, tagged along with Bogey from his band 'Abnormal 3+2', and then Motto along with Mamun from 'Windy Side of Care' joined the group. They performed gigs at Sonargaon hotel with a view to reviving musical values in the country. When they were asked to perform on a TV programme Jhalak in '85, they emerged as 'Renaissance'--aiming to produce sensuous words with tasteful tunes.

Renaissance call their genre of music as 'mellow pop' fused with lot of jazz, blues and black western influences. They also follow a lot of Caribbean style of music. Their inspirations however ranges from Stevie Wonder to Sting, old jazz by Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Harvey Hancock and particular composer Steely Dan, whose music has great influence in their work.

They compose melody based songs with more of a 'Jibon-mukhi'-theme to pass a message through their creation. Starting from portraying child rights with Aaj je Shishu to the very sophisticated love song Ridoy kada mati--they speak about the various aspects of life. This does strike listeners with a lot of maturity and new proportion.

Speaking on the recording facility in Bangladesh, Naquib says, the country lacks in the sector. The recordists should possess good technical skills along with sound knowledge of music. He points out the absence of proper music institutes as a barrier of our present scenario.

Commenting on a statement made by the older generation of parents about the 'current music as more of visual entertainment with heavy music replacing soothing songs and lyrics from the past', Naquib agrees to the present scenario as being sub-standard with lack of good musical performers and their compositions. He, however, feels that seniors often form a biased view based on only one or two groups. He believes, satellite media play the biggest role in promoting such features.

Their present 7-man line-up comprises Bogey with electric rhythm and vocals, Motto as the bassist, Imran in acoustic rhythm and vocals, Reza on lead guitars, Munna with harmonica and percussion, Pilu as the drummer cum vocalist, and finally Naquib as the vocalist and keyboardist. This line-up has almost finished working with their upcoming album roughly decided to be named, Ekush Shotok-e Renaissance. The 14-track compilation has an assortment of 11 Bangla songs with 1 English and 2 Santali songs.

Recorded at Art of Noise and Sound Garden studios, the compilation has mostly jazz and melody influenced songs fused with our classical instruments--flute, tabla, tanpura, khanjani and the use of live saxophone by Rune and Travis, harmonica by Alex, trumpet by Stig and trombone by Effie.

Naquib conveys message to the new musicians, 'Try to concentrate on original music. Whatever pieces are done, there should be lot of devotion, and finally musical values of a musician should always prevail.'

Referring to the future plan of the band, he smiles and replies, 'With all our responsibilities and other commitments of professional career, to continue with the group and crusade for a longer time would be a dream come true.'