Music in all its glory

From Chittagong came a flock of teenagers such as Nakib khan from Souls, Ayyub Bachu, Kumar Biswajit, Topon Chowdhury, Nasim Ali Khan. At that everybody was singing “Mon shudhu mon chhuychhe” and “Tore putul er moto kore shajiye”.

Nowadays apart from performing with the bands they are also giving out solo performance.

At that time the band Miles comprised of artists such as Manam Ahmed and artists like Hamin Ahmed and Shafin Ahmed, who were sons of famous Nazrul Sangeet artist Feroza Begum and legendary subcontinent composer Komol Dasgupta.

Lots of bands such as these used to perform regularly in Television.

From 1964 till this date nobody can deny the importance of television in empowering and giving fame to music.

Another interesting fact is that music artist Kalim Sharafi and Sayed Abdul Hadi started their early career as a producer in television. Whenever an artist was not able to perform producer Sayed Abdul Hadi had to showcase his singing talent. This kind of incidence happened a lot.

As his songs used to be repeatedly showcased as filler, this only increased his popularity.

Thousands of children from different districts in Bangladesh used to participate in the program.

Earlier on this program was perfectly planned by television personality Mustafa Monowar. The producer Kazi Kayum and Ali Imam helped him out with the program. The reason behind mentioning this program is because through these we got lots of artists. Each of them were able to earn a name and success for themselves. 

When we remember those artists, one name that comes up is that of the then child artist gold cup winner Tarana Halim, even though she is expert in law she is also brilliant for her acting and singing. Recent year's number one television, radio and movie playback artist Kanak Chapa was also a successful participant in the Notun Kuri program.

Everybody knows about Tarin and Ishita. In the award giving ceremony of Notun Kuri Ishita's performance as “Falani”, a sad and misfortune teenage character bought tears into the eyes of the then president Hossain Muhammed Ershad who was sitting in the audience arena. Millions of television audiences were amazed to see such scene. The next day almost all of the newspapers published this incident. The character “Falani” bought Ishita lots of fame and credibility. The script for “Falani” was written by Lutfor Rahman Riton and the acting direction for that character was done by Ferdousi Mojumder. Nowadays it is beyond our imagination to expect a well-known writer like Riton and an artist like Ferdousi Majumder to give acting direction to children drama. There are lots of astounding artists whose talent bloom out from the Notun Kuri program. Through their sheer talent they spread out this beautiful fragrance into the cultural part. They had also represented our Bangladeshi culture not only in our country but also in abroad as well.

Nowadays television has added various dimensions in terms of showcasing songs. Models are either dancing or acting to the tune of the song. Now it's up to the audience to react whether the quality of the song degrades or not.

The writer is Managing Director, Channel i
Translated by Imtiaz Salim