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World Music Day celebration continues in Dhaka
Cultural Correspondent
Marking World Music Day, a two-week music festival titled Fete de la Musique began on June 21 amid festivity and enthusiasm at the Alliance Francaise in the city.
Dhaka University vice chancellor SMA Faiz inaugurated the festival as chief guest, jointly organised by the Alliance Francaise de Dacca and the Teacher-Student Centre of Dhaka University.
In the evening, Nilufar Banu Lily and Mesbah Ahmed captivated the audience rendering their popular numbers.
The festival, completely different from any other regular concerts, will end on July 2 with a concert at TSC, said the organisers.
Besides Alliance Francaise, concerts will also be held at different places including at TSC, Russian Cultural Centre, Hotel Regency and Jahangirnagar University, said the organisers.
Today, the organisers will arrange a music programme at the compound of Alliance Française. Afsana Runa, Debashish Bepary, Swastika Podder, Afsana Sarwar and Nazmul Ahsan will perform at the function, which will begin at 6:00pm.
On June 28, members of the Dhaka University Cultural Team will perform at Hotel Regency, Niketan in the city. It will begin at 6:00pm.
Programme of 29 June will be held at 5:00pm at the campus of Jahangirnagar University in Savar. Members of Dhaka University Cultural Team will perform at the function.
On June 30, members of Dhaka University Cultural Team will perform at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture. The function will begin at 6:00pm.
On July 1, members of Dhaka University Cultural Team will perform at Teacher-Student Centre of Dhaka University at 6:00pm.
On the concluding day of the festival, July 2, baul song will be presented at TSC of Dhaka University.
All the concerts of the festival are totally free and open to all, irrespective of age and education, the organisers said.
Launched in 1982 by the French ministry for culture, the Fete de la Musique has long been organising in more than hundred countries across the globe.
The main objective of organising such an event all over the world is not only to popularise the musical practices among the people of the global village, but also to uphold their respective cultural and social norms and values, said the organisers.
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Oriental Art Exhibition by Abdul Aziz
Sharmin Chowdhury
Artist Abdul Aziz holds his 4th solo art exhibition titled 'Oriental Art Exhibition' in Gallery Zoom at Alliance Française in Dhanmondi.
Seventeen of his paintings reflecting the oriental life are being exhibited in the gallery. The exhibition began in June 19 will continue to July 2. It will remain open to all from 9:00am to 12:00pm and 5:00pm to 8:00pm.
Abdul Aziz has chosen women, nature and birds as subjects of his paintings to open up the orient psyche and culture because he believes that women tells the story of the orient best. He also mentions that women have always played a role in upholding the true culture of particular societies; their dresses, ornaments, gestures and postures, all are very distinguished and unique.
In the paintings the artist has portrayed the harmonious relationship among women, birds and nature. He tries to give an insight to the orient by revealing the moments of solitude in women's life and their connection with the nature. Some of his paintings are titled, 'Mirror with lady', 'Nature with woman', 'Lady with bird', 'Fallen' etc. In the paintings one will find how a woman nurtures the beauty of nature within herself or how she wears nature as an ornament and also, how she shares her solitude with a bird or how the nature tells the story of the beauty of orient and so on.
Abdul Aziz explains that oriental art is realistic and very detailed and it takes time and patience to create them. All the paintings of this exhibition are made using watercolour in 'wash' method. The artist says, 'There is not many quality artists for oriental art in the country, I have arranged this exhibition in order to uphold and enhance the level of appreciation for this particular form of art'. Though oriental art emphasises on detailed drawing, Abdul Aziz has experimentally used some semi-abstract forms in some of his paintings which add a new dimension to his works.
Abdul Aziz is going to exhibit more of his paintings later this year in his fifth solo exhibition which will be based on the same theme. The venue for his next exhibition will be Zainul Gallery of Institute of Fine Art of the University of Dhaka.
The artist also participated in several group exhibitions in and outside the country including India and UK. At present he is working as the Assistant Professor in the Institute of Fine Art, University of Dhaka.
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A PRISONER OF NORMALCY FINDS WAYS TO ESCAPE
Gavron's film on Monica Ali's Brick Lane released in US
Reviewed by A.O. Scott
At the center of the Brick Lane, a modest new film directed by Sarah Gavron, is a woman for whom modesty is not just a defining character trait but also a moral principle. Nazneen (played by Tannishtha Chatterjee) who came to England from Bangladesh as a teenager for an arranged marriage, moves through her east London neighbourhood as if determined to attract as little attention as possible. Pulling her saree tightly around her small frame and delicate face, she hurries home with her groceries; once inside her cramped apartment she ministers quietly to the needs of husband Chanu ( Satish Kaushik ) and their two daughters. Nazneen takes in a lot. Ms Chatterjee's ever widening eyes may be her most noteable feature but gives away very little. If she mourns the death, many years earlier, of her infant son, or experience boredom or frustration with her daily routines, these feelings stay far below the sureface. Nazneen quotes a saying of her mother's: Life is to endured. Her uncomplaining passage from one day to the next bears out the truth of this fatalistic wisdom. But the dramatic crisis in Brick Lane arises, when quietly and by accident, she discovers the limits of her endurance. Like Emma Bovary (Flaubert's Madam Bovary) literature's most famous prisoner of normalcy, Nazneen uses reading as a means of escape. Rather than novels, she pores over letters from her sister, who stayed in their native country and whose life seems to be full of incidents, intrigue and romance.
Even after years in Britain, Nazneen whose English is sometimes halting, does not regard it as home. When she has sex with Chanu she lies back and thinks of Bangladesh.
Early in Brick Lane which is based on a subtle and exacting novel by Monica Ali it seems unlikely that anything will change for Nazneen. She seems indeed to be the fixed point in the midst of a series of small, predictable fluxes. Her husband will only grow fatter and more pompous as his grandiose dreams falter. Their daughters, in particular the older one, Shahana (Naeema Begum )will struggle through an adolescence made more akward by by the tension between Bengali Muslim traditions and secular, permissive British mores.
But Ms Ali's novel chronicles a series of potentially cataclysmic alterations in Nazneen' life and her perception on it. One change begets another: Chanu passed over for a promotion, leaves his low level bureaucratic job, and Nazneen desperate to save enough money to return to Bangladesh, starts working as a seamstress at home. Karim (Christopher Simpson), the young man who delivers clothe for her to sew, introduces her to a politicized sense of racial and religious identity and also to adultery.
In a perceptive essay on Brick Lane, the literary critic James Wood noted that Ms Ali's novel brings some canonical concerns of the 19th century European fiction into a modern multicultural social setting. This fusion of an old style with a new reality gives the book its freshness and solidity, but it possess some problems for the film. The movie feels familiar rather than revelatory-a collection of ideas about the experience of Muslim immigrant woman rather a series of observations grounded in the experience of a particular woman.. Brick Lane is certainly touching, even heart rending at times, and it mostly steers clear of the didacticism and sentimentality its subject often invites. But it never takes the full measure of its modest heroine, and makes her world a bit too small.
Brick Lane is rated PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned. It has some strong language and sexual situations. The names in the brackets are the names of the character. These characters have been played by actors named before the brackets. Naeema Begum (Sahana), Lana Rahman (Bibi) Harvey Virdi (Razia) Lalita Ahmed (Mrs. Islam) and Zafreen (Hasina).
Courtesy: New York Times
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Poems of classic elegance and intensity
Reviewed by A.U.M. Fakhruddin
An evocative melodious song in the vast and bejewelled treasury of lyrics by the National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam is about a river: the Padma. "Oh the flowing waves of the Padma, take along with you my dejected heart." Rivers have at all times charmed and fascinated poets and lyricists of diverse climes and cultures. All rivers, says Schwarz-Bart, go down to the ocean and drown; life awaits man as the sea awaits the river.
Resentful of the degradation of a stream dirtied by human actions that littered it with tar and oil, an unhappy Eliot discovered its 'sweating' wretched state. When philosopher Heraclitus affirms that it is impossible to step into the same river twice he indicated its ever-changing flow. An haunting verse on our Liberation War -- Jessore Road -- was written by Ginsberg. The Beat poet sees real holy laughter in the river; while Paul Robeson sings, "Ol' man river, dat ol' man river / ... An' skeered of dyin'/ But ol' man river jes' keeps rollin' along!"
Let us see what Jorge Luis Borges says about river: "Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." Honestly, it is not intelligible to me. But the fifth collection of poems by eminent Bangladeshi poet Syed Khwaja Moinul Hassan, North of the Old Ganges, allusive of the Buriganga river, is a bouquet of classic elegance and intensity. An attempt to churn out a thousand words or so as a critical appreciation of these contemplative poems rich in introspection will be puerile. Refraining from doing so, here I make an attempt to introduce North of the Old Ganges.
Five decades ago Dhaka's waterfront, the Buriganga river, with its sparkling wavelets on the limpid surface, was a delightful sight when summer breeze rippled the water. Decades back the Old Ganges [this is the literal meaning of 'Buriganga'] was the lifeline of sorts for many who depended on it for their livelihood and sustenance. Like many great rivers of the world the Buriganga helped the growth and evolution of Dhaka city when waterway was the mode of transportation from here to other parts of the country.
The ageless Old Ganges with its timelessness stands silent witness to the rise and fall of dynasties that ruled and reigned on her north bank spanning from the Lalbagh Fort in the west, built during the Mughal rule, and the Ahsan Manjil, the palace of the great Nawabs, in the middle, to the eastern extremity near Postagola. Today's Dhaka, which has a fairly long history, is not recognisable from its size in the seventies. It has undergone astounding changes over the past three decades. The city now has many more high-rise towers and buildings than there are in Kolkata or Chennai.
Poets and writers have lived in Dhaka city, enjoyed their stay here and must have derived delight from the river's beauty but none wrote a poem in praise of her. And that task has been admirably accomplished by eminent poet, teacher and scholar Syed Khwaja Moinul Hassan, who was born and brought up in this city, loved the Old Ganges, and has offered a lasting tribute to the city in verse entitled "North of the Old Ganges. " Published in 2005 by Stanford University Press, Dhaka, it is priced at Taka 50. A painting in ochre and dark brown shade of Bara Katara area in older part of Dhaka city by Asem Ansari embellishes the cover of this large-format book.
This is a real work of "emotion recollected in tranquillity" because all the poems in it were written far away from the poet's home, in America, where he is Professor of English at Claflin University, South Carolina.
Hassan published several volumes of poetry in English since the seventies: Between Barbed Wires (Provincial Books, Dhaka), 1977; Inner Edge (Writers Workshop, Calcutta), 1987; Ashes and Sparks (Writers Workshop, Calcutta & Provincial Books, Dhaka), 1989; Rhymes for Muslim Children, Iqra International Educational Foundation, 1992; and Burning the Olive Branch, (Ankur Prakashani), 1995. Hassan was mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Volume 2) published by Routledge in 1996. He is a recipient of the Governor's Distinguished Professor Award, selected by the governor of South Carolina in 1996.
"North of the Old Ganges" contains Dacca 1971, Dhaka is the Big Mango, The Dhaka Paradox, Letting Imperialists In, We Sin For Not Sinning, Lessons I Learnt At My Father's Knee, A Prayer for My Daughters, Grand Design, In this World of Contrasts, Kolkata and Dhaka, Memory Stings, A Pakistan That Never Was, To Faiz Ahmed Faiz, As Creatures Helpless We Are, Let the Name of Ahmed be the Key, Voices of the People, Raindrops on the Krishnachuras, Dhaka: A Pearl of the Asian South, Rubaiyats and some others.
Hassan's Dhaka poems are impassioned tribute to the city of his birth. In America they liken New York city to a Big Apple; by the same token Dhaka too can be called a 'Big Mango' - hence the poem "Dhaka is the Big Mango." Dhaka city saw the ravages of the genocide in the year of the vultures in 1971 that left an indelible agonising imprint on Hassan when he was a teenager as is evident in the poem Dhaka 1971.
I recommend this latest volume of poems North of the Old Ganges by Hassan to all lovers of refreshing, reflective poetry.
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