Ifti Chowdhury is a Bangladeshi musicians who currently resides in Queens and plays the Bengali flute.
I sat down with Mr. Chowdhury to learn more about cultural programming and Bangladeshi music. Here is a transcript of our interview.
SN: Where in New York City do you live?
IC: I live in Queens, Jamaica Queens.
SN: Did you move there or were you born and raised there?
IC: I moved there.
SN: At what age?
IC: 18.
SN: Where are you from originally?
IC: Bangladesh. From a region called Sylhet, which is in the Northeast.
SN: When did you become interested in Bangladeshi music?
IC: Music was more when I moved to the US in college. It was a bit of nostalgia for home.
SN: What instruments do you play?
IC: I play the Bengali flute, I sing, and I also play the piano.
SN: Did you grow up in a musical family or is this something you developed on your own?
IC: It was something I developed on my own. Of course, there was support from the family where if there were an event or competition, they would encourage me to go and participate.
SN: Do you have any important teachers or mentors that you would point to as significant influences on you?
IC: I never really had an organized, institutionalized education in music. It was mostly teachers that I came across along the way. My flute teacher was a street musician in Dhaka, who was playing in the streets and who would give lessons whenever he was in the neighborhood. In the US, I was going to college in Buffalo New York so I had a lot of friends who were musicians so we would teach each other new techniques, talk about lyrics, style, and we would jam out together. So it was kind of like a community-oriented learning opportunity.
SN: In what ways do you think that the promotion of music and dance can help unite the Bangla arts community?
IC: There are a handful of neighborhoods in New York City where there are high populations of Bengali and Bangladeshis from South Asia, primarily in Jackson Heights, Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Kensington in Brooklyn, and in the Bronx as well. So, I think music is such an integral part of Bengali culture. Whenever there is music, people are drawn to it. If you look at the political history of Bengal in South Asia, Bangladesh, music has played a very vital role when it comes to protests, or expressions of political freedom. But also music is embedded in every part of daily life–there’s a specific kind of music for prayer, there’s a specific kind of music for certain kinds of work– like the sailors have a certain kind of music or song they would sing, the cowboys had a different kind of music they would sing. So depending on what kind of location you’re into, you has a different genre or sub-genre of Bengali folk music. I think, with that in mind, bringing the diaspora community together, music can play a very vital role, however it has to be presented in the right place. If it’s not presented in the right place, it will backfire. Basically, the motive or intention should be good. When you are bringing diaspora communities together, it should be presented with tasteful music that can strike a chord.
SN: In what ways do you think that Bangladeshi music can be under-represented or maybe conflated with other south Asian art forms, like Indian Bollywood music and dance?
IC: I mean, Bangladeshi music is not pop music. Bollywood–the more commercial form of music that’s more popular, sometimes overshadows Bangladeshi music. Bollywood music does not necessarily have much depth to it, there’s not much story to it. Whereas Bengali folk music (music from the people of Bangladesh) is very deep. All the genres and subgenres of music have a tremendous amount of thought process that goes into writing those songs and composing them which kind of gets lost in the wave of Bollywood pop culture. So that’s something to be cognizant about. I think encouraging the new generation about the beauty of Bengali folk music (which separates it from music from other parts of South Asia, especially Bollywood music or pop music) is very important. Sending the message to the newer generation is very important because only through that education they will learn to appreciate the beauty of folk music in Bangladesh.
SN: What sorts of venues do you like to play at and where?
IC: It’s mostly community-based organizations like BMHC, sometimes the mayor’s office has cultural events. So it’s mostly community-based organizations based in Queens. But it’s also outside of New York, there are plenty of Bengali cultural organizations that like to host us in Washington DC, Rhode Island, Connecticut, even Toronto, Buffalo, Cleveland. There are quite a lot of Bengali cultural organizations that invite us to perform at usually smaller gatherings.
SN: Could you describe some of the different genres of Bengali folk music? Are there any kinds that are more popular and that have a wider audience?
IC: Primarily there is Polli-Gitee, which literally translates to ‘village music’. But it’s basically music about life in the village. A huge diaspora community who live in the greater NYC area came from the rural parts of Bangladesh. Because of that, they can associate with that kind of music. There is also Baul Gaan, which is a more of a spiritual form of folk music. It circulates around the concepts of devotion, philosophy taken from both Sufism and Hinduism.
SN: Is there an overlap?
IC: There is an overlap but then again, with Bengali folk music there are a lot of elements, which are taken from the rural culture of Bengal.
SN: How do you think that cultural programming or free public arts programming can help minority communities the city? What would you like to see from city governments in terms of a way to promote these programs, whether it is through grants, funding, or publicity?
IC: All of the above. The reason being, when you have a diaspora immigrant community who are new to a different country, this is foreign land to them, cultural events like this help them connect with other people from the same background. It helps them be motivated and feel at home in a foreign country. And I think this really helps new immigrants settle in and to become a part of the society. Once that happens, in the long run, they start contributing to the improvement of that society. When anybody in a community feels at home, then and only then, they will take care of their new home.
So when I say all of the above, I think the government needs to reach out to more of these diaspora communities and to help them feel at home to organize more of these cultural events.
