By IANS
Dhaka : Bangladeshi singer James combined with India’s Partha Sarathi Chatterjee to stage a fusion music concert here, blending North Indian Ragas with Western classical, rock n’roll, jazz and Bengali folk tunes.
Music lovers here rocked to James’s “Bheegi Bheegi” number from the Hindi film “Gangster” and lots of songs from Bollywood and other genres at the evening organised by the Indian High Commission in association with Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.
Since Pandit Ravi Shankar’s performance of Indian classical music with renowned western musicians at the Woodstock concert in the ’60s, several Indian musicians have been fusing North Indian ragas with western genres such as rock ‘n’ roll and jazz, The Daily Star noted, applauding the first Indo-Bangladesh effort.
Six improvised pieces along with one pure rock number were performed at the concert.
Chatterjee improvised with James in three popular songs – “Dukhini dukkho koro na”, “Maa” and “Jatra”. Moreover, two improvised presentations based on ragas Jog and Bagesree were performed.
James as usual was playing lead guitar while singing “Bheegi Bheegi”. Chatterjee provided alaap. Prasun Chatterjee, Funty, Tamal and Bulbul were on tabla, drums, keyboards and bass respectively, the newspaper said.
Partha Sarathi Chatterjee’s vocals seemed to dominate the performance and no pure essence of electric guitar, drums or keyboard was found. Bulbul played hammering bass only in the raga Bagesree-based presentation. That was perhaps the best act of the evening, as it featured spontaneous performances by the musicians.
The newspaper called for more such efforts to encourage musicians in Bangladesh and India to fuse music genres on stage.