Day 2
The special in depth coverage by Dhaka Tribune of the three-day long Jazz Blues Festival is coming up soon to quench the thirst of music lovers. But in the mean time, as the festival goes on, we present the biographies of the performers that appeared on the second day of the fest.
The Blues brothers
The Dhaka based five piece band have been generating quite a buzz recently. It was only expected that they will be invited to play at the festival.
The Blues Brothers play by a winning formula. They play tunes that are impossible to not instantly like. Their regular set features the music of John Lenon, Tracy Chapman, Santana, BB King, Fleetwood Mac, Norah Jones, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, and many more.
The “4 soul brothers and 1 soul sister,” as described by the band itself, have Tashfia Fatima Tashfee on vocals, Shafkat Ahmed Dipto on lead guitar, Nahyan Imam on rhythm guitar, Pantha Kanai on drums and percussion, and Imran Rabbani on the bass guitar and harmonica.
Razef Khan & Florian Antier
Razef Khan is a Bangladesh based classically trained cellist who has been playing Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Bangladeshi audience. Shakib Lahoni of PEN International, Bangladesh Centre remarked that music of Khan as “multifaceted” and “shuns categorisation.”
Razef Khan teamed up with cellist Florian Antier from France to perform at the Jazz Blues Fest in Dhaka.
Louis Banks
Louiz is widely considered one of the foundational figures in Indian Jazz music. He is one of the most important, if not the most important, Jazz pianist from India. Banks is also an accomplished composer of music sound tracks for theater, stage and feature films.
“Despite his tremendous commercial success, his first love remains Jazz related music,” bio from his website reads. It’s only fitting that he would play in the first big Jazz festival in Bangladesh.