Folk songs: Compositional purity  

Of the Indian private TV channels watched by the viewers in Bangladesh, Zee Bangla is considered a highly popular one. Bangladeshi audiences comprise a large segment of its total viewers. Over the last few years, an on-screen music competition --- Saregamapa, with participants from West Bengal and neighbouring Nepal has been seen to have carved out a special place among the viewers. In spite of its being a patron of Bangla music and musical culture, Bangladesh could not draw the attention of Saregamapa. Only in the last couple of years, artistes from Dhaka and other parts of the country have been seen appearing in the programme to the plaudits of the West Bengal viewers, and, of course, the competition judges. Almost all of them are musicians and music-gurus and well known to the connoisseurs in Bangladesh.

This year, with the latest Saregamapa over a month into its start, two Bangladeshi singers have created a lot of sensation among the programme's viewers. Of the two, one is male, called Noble, and another is Obonti, a female artiste marvellously deft in punching whistling tunes into her presentations. However, Noble has continuously been earning higher scores from the panel of judges. He has already started being considered among the top favourites.

The adolescent participants in a Hindi private TV channel's similar competition normally choose Hindi film songs and popular Ghazals as competition items. A few would be seen presenting pure classical pieces including 'thumris', eliciting warm response from the judges, and the TV viewers. The presentations considerably ease their way to top positions. Thanks to the India-wide respect and acceptability of the judges, there are few scopes for distorted or wrong tunes to elude their notice. Compared to this, Zee Bangla's Saregamapa emerges as a programme that overlooks distortions of well-known songs. Unfortunately, it is the centuries-old folk songs from Bangladesh which mostly fall prey to these changes in their original compositions. What appalls the knowledgeable music-lovers in Bangladesh is the praise showered on the singers who have presented wrongly tuned songs in the programme. Lesser known folk songs do run the risk of being improvised, and also distorted. The tunes of such songs vary from place to place due to their origins in mostly obscure areas. There are no authoritative entities to intervene and protect the correct tune of such a song. Songs based on wilful compositions occupy a major place in the vast domain of Bangla folk songs --- in both Bangladesh and India.

The troubling aspect of this issue lies elsewhere. It involves the apathy towards checking the genuineness of a song. Well-known folk songs are frequently being performed in the Saregamapa competition, and the exact composition of them remains missing. Incredibly, these wrongly presented songs pass muster in the programme. In a recent show of the programme, a famous song of Hason Raja, a musician from the Sylhet region, was sung in a way which was different from that followed in Bangladesh. It displeased many among the Bangladeshi viewers. Similarly, the songs of legendary Lalon Shah are also allowed to be presented in whatever way one artiste likes. This is sad.

In the realm of Bangla songs, the scourge of tune-distortions has beset almost all lyricists except Rabindranath Tagore. The purity of the great poet's songs has been under constant surveillance of Bishwa Bharati since its establishment. Kazi Nazrul Islam was moody. Many of his songs were allegedly plagiarised by his contemporaries, and the tunes distorted. Lalon and Hason Raja were also unlucky. The songs of Bangladeshi folk maestros are now veritably orphaned, with none to look after their compositional perfection. This thorny issue ought to be brought to the notice of the world intellectual property organisation.

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