Casting Tagore in a new light - Sahana Bajpaie releases her debut album

Casting Tagore in a new light - Sahana Bajpaie releases her debut album

By Faizul Khan Tanim

‘I am not originally a singer…I just sing because I love music’, said Sahana, at the launch of her début album, ‘Notun kore pabo boley’ earlier this week at the Bengal Gallery in Dhanmondi. Perhaps it was such humility that stirred the audience to listen even more avidly to her musical soirée. Her voice was pure magnetism and she blew away the audience with her live set of songs, mainly from the new album. When asked about the title of the album, she explained that it was because she sang ‘contemporary renditions of old classic songs, always discovering more and more layers to the songs as [she] worked’. Prof Firdous Azim of BRAC University, who hosted the inauguration ceremony, recalled emotionally how Sahana used to hum while wandering along the corridors of the English department and how magical it was to see the transformation from that casual singing to this beautiful album. Through her use of a variety of instruments including the guitar and esraaj, we have the impression that we, too, are rediscovering the words of Tagore. Sahana harbours a life-long love of Rabindranath Tagore. She has been singing his songs since childhood under the tutelage of her father who was a scholar of Tagore’s literature and music and she later went on to train at Santiniketan, in Indian classical singing and the songs of Tagore, under Swastika Mukherjee, Bijoy Sinha, and Chitra Roy. As a student she regularly took part in theatre and dance productions of works by Tagore. Speaking to the predominantly young members of the audience, the conclusion seemed unanimous: Sahana’s album will definitely encourage us to go back to our roots.