Music in all its glory

[Continued from last issue]

Incidents such as students driving around their car listening to music, practicing math while listening to music, and housewives are doing their chores while listening to music was not quite rare at that time. But these were not happened denying the celestial tone of voice.

Many experimental programs on music have been telecasted in television. Once upon a time Abdullah Al Mamun made a program where five songs have been sung and those five songs were based on five musical instruments.

Eva Rahman for one of her songs went to lots of countries. It is heard that this song which is aired in ATN Bangla approximately took 8 months to be shot.

It is now basically ancient history but when Bangladesh Television first started doing music video, they only had access to one camera for shooting and had limited editing facilities but even so with such disadvantage they always gave various songs to their audience. The producers hold the major credit for being able to produce experimental music programs with just 3-4 cameras in the studio. When thinking about these kinds of producers, one of the first name to come to mind is Firoz Mahmud.

Sometimes during the shooting of the song he would put a big iceberg into the studio. Everybody in the studio would be surprised as to how this huge iceberg would be off use. But when the program would start they would be able to realize the artistic charisma of Firoz Mahmud. During the recording of the song instead of acting as a producer Firoz Mahmud acted like an artist who would throw various colors onto the icebergs. The gradual melting of the ice and variation of colors reflecting on the camera made the scene that much memorable, this scene simply mesmerized away the audience.

Firoz Mahmud did many things like that in the studio. Along wih Firoz Mahmud, Golam Mostofa Bachchu is now a famous cameraman in our package drama world. In terms of dramas Bachu is quite famous as a cameraman. Even so Bachchu used to help out Firoz Mahmud by doing a shot or give various ideas of shooting in this show. Not only that, it can also be said that Golam Mostafa Bachchu was the first one to use VHS camera to shot a music video. He shot a popular song with 2 artists dancing on it. For this song he was not able to bring any popular face for it. He shot this song with 2 completely unknown faces.  But nowadays the models in the music videos are mostly famous celebrities. The audience choice and preference regarding music that was brought forward in the television screen was only because of the hard work and dedication of Bangladesh Television producers. When it came to shooting they experimented out with the song, which is why we are able to see a huge bundle of songs in front of us. Not only new songs, the producers were also able to showcase yester year's songs in a new avatar in television media.

Nowajish Ali Khan, Musa Ahmed, Kamrunessa Hasan played a big role in regarding this. Afzal Hossain hosted a yester year's music program like these. Standing in front of an old manor, he would beautifully talk about of the recent days and older day's songs, and would simply delight his audience.

Thanks to the wonderful programs in television we were able to get such wonderful and unforgettable songs that still hold its place deep inside our heart.

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