Societal Events Report : A mind-blowing concert featuring world renowned French-Lebanese singer, song writer and multi-instrumentalist Abaji, along with some Bangladeshi traditional baul musicians was held at La Galerie of the Alliance Française de Dhaka (AFD) in the city’s Dhanmondi area on June 21. Like previous years, this year’s Fête de la Musique, which is globally observed as the World Music Day, is organised at the initiative of AFD and supported by the French Embassy in Bangladesh as part of their two-day long musical festival, which was sponsored by GETCO. The second event of this year’s music festival will feature a number of solo and group performances by the students and teachers of French courses as well as the other cultural workshops, including western classical guitar, piano and violin, to be held on June 27 from 4:00pm at the same venue. Olivier Litvine, Director of AFD, has formally inaugurated the event. The concert started amid huge applause as Abaji stepped in to the stage with a magical smile in face and carrying a bamboo clarinet in hand and performed his first number For a cloud with it. Then he presented Traveller and Farâché playing the oud-guitar. In the following musical performance, he invited a young Bansuri flute player Musarrat Jabeen Rahman on stage for a duet musical piece titled Happy Dhaka with Abaji playing on the instrument-bouzouki (Greek long neck flute). Next, young talented musician Philip joined him on stage with his instrument named 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 strings traditional violin), followed by Essaouira played on the bouzouki. Later, baul singer Rob Fakir and Baby Dewan took stage with their follow team members: Shafiqul Islam (Dhol), Jalal Ahmed (Flute), Md Nazrul Islam (Harmonium), Shamim Islam (Mondira), Poran Fokir (Khamak). Baul Rob Fakir sang the following songs Jogot muktitey bhulalen sai, Shobdor ghorey nisshbdo korey and Sadhokerai aamar sei rup chenetey. After that, baul Baby Dewan performed Kon mistiry nao banailo, kemon dekha jai and Aj radhar shuvodin. Subsequently, Abaji joined with the baul singers on a Baby Dewan’s song titled Bhandari banaichhey mela and played with his bouzouki and bamboo clarinet.
