The EMK Happy Hour hosted the group called “Music Lab” on Thursday evening. The lineup included Musarrat Jabeen Rahman (Flute), Shafkat Ahmed Dipto (lead guitar), Nahyan Imam (acoustic guitar), Imran Rabbani (Bass) and Sudipta Bardhan Shubho (drums). The group presented a different type of performance—the flute mostly sustained dhuns based on select raags and the lead guitar improvised freely based on those raag dhuns. The bass and acoustic guitars provided soothing harmonic support in the backdrop, while the percussion held everything together by imitating the style of tabla based percussion, changing the mood from rougher playing during guitar solos, to softer, more contained playing during the flute solos.
All the pieces started with flute aalaps, with lead guitar support. Two of the pieces followed melodic phrases and improvisations on moderate tempo, and then surprise switchovers to melodies on faster tempos. One of the pieces followed mostly an open ended jam pattern, with some question answer sessions among the lead guitar and flute. There was also some question answer sessions between the flute and percussion.
The chief guest audience included Olivier Litvine, Director Alliance Française de Dhaka, and Abaji, a multi-talented French Lebanese instrumentalist from Paris.
The EMK Happy Hour is an initiative to support established individuals or groups in arts, culture and entrepreneurship.