Preserve Our Music

We had , and still have, many talented artistes who are true representatives of our culture. We should follow them and refrain from doing anything that goes against our cultural ethos and language.

The on-going debate started by Mahmudul Haque about local rock bands seems to be about two main topics. Firstly, the kind of music that they play, and secondly, the Bangla accent distortion by the band vocalists.

Well, on the first topic, what is the point of talking about how good or bad you think a certain type of music is in a newspaper; everyone has his own taste in music. So get over it! If local rock bands like playing their type of loud and fast music, let them do so. The s point of making music is to do what you like.

Now about the Bangla accent distortion. Mahmudul Haque and Shaukat Islam have said that the singers should sing in English rather than in their own 'distorted' form of Bangla.

Can't they just be happy that these singers are showing pride in their culture and heritage by actually singing in Bangla? They complain about accents being 'foreign and funny', well countless English music bands sing in many different accents and no one complains about it, its all about having your own individual style.

Mahmudul Haque and Shaukat Islam complain about 'distorting' Bangla; they would do well to remember that like every other modern language, Bengali originated from different ancient languages and has evolved, or like they like to say, 'distorted' from its original form. I'm sure the Bengali we speak today is very different from the Bengali that was spoken when it was in its formative years, so how does that make you any different from the modern local rock bands? In fact, since you say that language should be kept intact in its original form, by your logic we should not have changed the

original language of mankind-- the language of ancient cavemen!

Naveed Ahmed On e-mail

I don't know how much in-depth knowledge Shaukat Islam (D.S 9.5.05) has on music, or what his opinion on music actually is, but some of his comments on the present music scene of Bangladesh are absolutely irrational. For instance, he claimed that just accompanying thunder drums and high decibel guitar riffs and screaming vocals don't make one a 'metal' or 'underground' band. But the fact of the matter is if Shaukat Islam did his homework properly, he would know that high decibel guitar riffs, thunder drums and screaming vocals don't define underground bands, neither a metal band, as he so aptly put it. The other comment he made is 'can he say confidently that all these present genre bands are creating 'art and music?' referring to Arafat Kazi. Well, once again, who is to define what's art and music? For musicians, instrumental songs of Dream Theatre provide one of the pinnacles of instrumental artwork, which are so creative that even the best musicians in the world are awed by their creative finesse.

Although I am not a big fan of Dream Theatre, but rather of metal music, I can still appreciate their music since I listen to music of that end of the spectrum, but someone not so inclined on metal music might comprehend the instrumental artwork as being just noisy.

When it comes to music, there is no defining 'art and music'. And before I finish off, don't judge other young genre musicians by what the vocalist of Black has cooked up. I know his voice sounds so constipated that often you wonder whether he is trying to put an accent really badly, but his voice is not the yardstick for the Bangladeshi music scene.

One errant fellow in the music scene of the country doesn't mean all of them are like that.

Asifur Rahman Khan Ramna, Dhaka