 |
| view from my house, dhaka monday am, feb 2012 |
they were standing on the rooftop. two guys, brushing their teeth. hindi pop is floating all over dhaka.
the music was loud, really loud. it was 8 am.
the eve and the night before there was a wedding pre- or afterparty. not sure. just know there was music, some lights, on a rooftop, somewhere close by dhanmondi, street 7 maybe. the music was a mix between electronic and western pop. the whole night. but not in the morning. the music in teh morning came from the guys building. they were using the moment of time, i thought.
in dhaka you don't have public music, please no clubs. they have to hid in 5 star hotels. otherwice no way or the police will arrive. dhaka is a muslimic country. music is not allowed.
weddings after- and preparties are huge. they last long and people just wait for them. one reason is fun the other is music. in dhaka music is officially not really accepted.
1 comment:
It is a nice photo. This photo reminds me about a photo that I got suddenly. I like to show you the photo later.
I differ what you mentioned here about music culture in Dhaka or Bangladesh. Bangladesh is Islamic or Muslimic country but we are liberal to music culture. I remember the concerts that I attended in my school and college life. Those concerts were huge; many famous musical bands like Souls, LRB, Miles, Prometheus, Feedback, Arch, Warfaze, Winning, Nagarbaul, Renaissance, Obscure etc (I can remember these names right now; I still listen few of them. I don’t know the new bands in this time) had concerts in open places like big playgrounds, stadiums. We became truant to go to these concerts. And, local small bands had their concerts in the roads; they usually started their music after 11:00 PM at night when it was easy to make a stage on the road as traffic was light in the night. I remember, local boys collect money from shops to hire local bands to do concert in December, usually in any Thursday night. Those local concerts ran for 2 hours generally. I am talking about the time 15/16 years ago. Later, this culture (concerts on road) faded away. I don’t know the exact reason behind this.
The famous bands that I mentioned before started to break and the vocalists started making solo albums but those albums could not gain popularity. On that time, Bangladeshi people got access to satellite channels like MTV, Channel V, Star Movies etc and became addicted in those entertaining channels. For the first time, I saw Pink Floyd, Abba, Pet Shop Boys, Guns n Roses, Meatloaf, Modern Talking, Ace of Base, Metallica, Rainbow etc bands in those music channels.
I am from Chittagong which was/is more conservative than Dhaka. I did not see any bar on music in 90’s; and this decade is more liberal than 90’s. On that time, we had two or three big concerts of famous big bands in a year. Here, I disagree with what you say ‘Music is not allowed’. Yes, there are some formalities to be done before any concert. You need to get permission from Police which is easy to get. It is about just letting them know that you are going to play music. And, in any residential area like Dhanmondi, one must have permission to play music or sing because this permission is a safe-guard for your event (wedding, pre or post) when your sleepy neighbour may complain against your ‘sound-pollution’ at night.
Post a Comment