Baul Shah Abdul Karim Festival 2010

The two-day Shah Abdul Karim Festival organised by Shah Abdul Karim Committee ended on Saturday at Ujandhol village under the Upazila of Dirai in Sunamganj.
The programme began on Friday with a discussion on the life of Shah Abdul Karim. Local member of the parliament Matiur Rahman, Shah Abdul Karim Festival committee president Mosharraf Hossain and Shah Noor Jalal, son of the baul samrat, among others, addressed the audience at the opening session.

A good number of local artistes thronged the venue side by side with eminent artistes from Sylhet and Dhaka.

Beginning with the chorus ‘Ar kichhu chay na mon gaan chhara’ which is also the slogan of the festival, the stage saw the raw performances of the local artistes in the afternoon, who hailed from nearby villages.

As night fell, the crowd began to swell. Before the performances began in the evening, the artistes joined hands to urge the music-lovers all over the country to maintain the accuracy of Shah Abdul Karim’s songs. They also insisted that local instruments like dhol, ektara, tabla and violin should be used instead of electrical instruments.

The enthusiasm of the audience was manifest as they started to sing in chorus and clap their hands with the rhythmic beats of the songs ‘Basanta batase, basante batase’, ‘Age ki sundor din kataitam’, ‘Bandhu aila na’, ‘Keno piriti baraila re bandhu’, ‘Ami phul bandhu phuler bhromora’ and ‘Amar biroher agune anga pure holo chai’.

Noted folk singers Fakir Sahabuddin, Bashir Ahmed, Birohi Kala Mia, Abdur Rahman and Pratik Sabuz, among others, performed on the opening day.

On the concluding day, the audience was delighted most by the riveting performance of Close up 1 singer Shazu who rendered a number of songs.

Child artistes Tanjida and Mubin also took the audience by surprise with their delicate voice on the day. But a number of artistes not only rendered songs poorly distorting tunes and pronunciations of different words in the lyrics, but also presented the same songs repeatedly.

Besides, use of metallic instruments like drum-pad and keyboard in the evening failed to create the original feel of Abdul Karim’s songs.

Shah Noor Jalal said, ‘My father believed that baul songs are about the essence of human life. So we must avoid metallic instruments. But as the young generation prefers these instruments, we have to consider both the types.’

This is the third yearly festival sponsored by Banglalink and the first since Shah Abdul Karim’s death on September 12, 2009.

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