Feature
Aminul Arefin, IUB.
Metal and rock music is a new concept in Bangladesh. Though most music lovers in Bangladesh like soft and classical music; surprisingly within a few years heavy metal band groups have compelled them to accept this new craze through their extraordinary lyrics and crystal clear sounds. Our youngsters, always ready to get acquainted with new things and to take taste the flavor of head-banging music, dedicate themselves by launching band groups, known as underground bands.
Our music directors and organizers have played a great role in promoting them with several concerts and other facilities. Mysteriously though, they are doing this only in Dhaka. Chittagong, though the second most important city with a huge number of metal listeners and bands, is deprived of all the facilities that Dhaka based bands get. As a result, while band groups like Black, Artcell, The Watson Brothers, Arbovirus, Nemesis and Poizon Green from Dhaka are coming up with exceptional composition and ideas through music albums, Chittagong is facing enormous problems in arranging a single underground concert.
“Just for the lack of good organisers and sponsors, we had to change our concert date four times and we are still waiting for it to be actually held” says Mousum, one of the guitarist of Hemorrhage. Sometimes it has even transpired so that after all the tickets were sold, the organizers had to cancel the concert.
Another problem is the paucity of practice pads. There are a very few pads for practice, and even those are very expensive and do not have enough musical instruments. Furthermore, due to this shortage, most bands have to face scheduling problems.
Now do you think it is possible to continue this new genre of music here in Chittagong despite these major problems? I think the answer will be “no”. Yet surprisingly they do better than many Dhaka bands getting a lot of facilities. Silent Prayer and Hemorrhage have involved with the Augontuk series introduced by Sumon (Aurthohin). Act of Defiance, Infringe and Assassins are also doing well from nearly twenty underground bands. Chittagong has a huge number of metal listeners who are crazy about underground as well as metallic songs. “It is just choking” Tayseer says after attending an underground concert.
Though Chittagong has a good share of contribution in all forms of development the inevitable truth is that it is a very deprived city and development is slow to take root here. Underground music is facing the same problem. Our urge to the sponsors and well-wishers is to push our young musical talents out of this deprivations and promote Chittagong's underground bands. That way, our youth can regain their intentions of continuing with underground music, something that has been lost through many uncertainties.
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