Dhaka 2

The evening of January15th I played at the Dhaka Art Centre, with Arup Sengupta on tabla. The center just opened at the beginning of January and ours was one of the first performances held there. It’s really a gallery space, not an auditorium, so they set up a stage area in the largest and most soundproof room and then set up feeds to speakers in other galleries. We were told over 200 people came, although we only saw 50-60 of them. There were a number of TV cameras there from Bangladesh television stations.

I wanted to see if I could find any video clips taken that night, but when I tried to go to the web site for Desh TV in Bangladesh I was warned that the web site was infected with malware and should not be accessed. Oh well… A reporter for one of the English language dailies (Dhaka has dozens of daily papers in Bengali and English) did send me a link to the article he posted for his paper, the New Age:

http://www.newagebd.com/2010/jan/17/time.html

For me the important thing was that I got a chance to go to the country of Khansahib’s birth and present a program in his honor. This has been my motivation for making this trip all along, and what I have tried to convey wherever I have been. I was very happy that the program was attended by Shahadat Hossain Khan, who I believe is the senior relative of Khansahib’s family in Bangladesh now. Shahadat is the grandson on Ayet Ali Khan, the younger brother of Khansahib’s father Alauddin Khan. Ayet Ali built the prototype sarode that Khansahib played all his music on, the basis for the incredible sound he achieved.