My Music My Revolution

Musical development and creativity with reference to my identity

My natural attraction to the art of music & entertainment can be traced back to just me as a little girl, singing & swaying in my dazzling dresses at my grandma’s house, giving my best performance as if I'm on a lit up stage performing to billions. This gravitation was almost automatic & undeniable; the passion was ever growing. From casually having my parents’ vinyls played incessantly in the background to now streaming songs for hours on Spotify, music has always been a constant in my life. As a newly turned teen, I would sing my heart out to any pop music I’d find for hours every day and that child-like infatuation has continued ever since. 

My younger sister and I at a Malaysian restaurant, me aspiring to be like the singer behind me.

Born and brought up in a small beautiful South Asian country called Bangladesh; The ultimate dream of every parent there was to see their child excel in academics & go on to have respectable jobs such as doctor or lawyer, a music career was nowhere included in their dream. Still, since my parents were a bigger consumer & fan of music than the typical bengali household, they realised my skill for singing was sufficient so they set me up with a music tutor for a couple years where I was trained to sing bengali classics and play the harmonium (reed organ). My first performance in front of a big crowd was at 7, at a sparkling new years event. I just felt so at home.

Harmonium (reed organ)

My dad passed away when I was just 10 years old. corners of the world & lit up every room he’d go in, a loving, extravagant yet. A big achiever who’d seen all calm personality with natural confidence & belief in himself. Some of which trickled down to me & made it’s way on to my perspective of life & how I dream. So, At 14, with not much considered & only eyes twinkling with dreams, I decided I wanted to be a pop star. 

Being a single parent, my mother took my good grades in Maths and Physics into consideration & thought I’d be fit to be an engineer. She was so sure about it I even enrolled into civil engineering, but quickly enough I realised my fantasies hadn’t faded so I decided it was high time I gave my dreams a chance, so I went against my mum’s wish and took up performing Arts and Theatre at College. 

My first solo singing performance at Southampton City college.

The music that I consumed for the entirety of my life has a huge impact on my personality, therefore the music I want to create is vastly impacted by that as well. When I was in school, I would either get picked on because of my shy nature and visible lack of confidence. Or completely dismissed for being an overweight child who seemingly had no confidence. Growing up in a third world country, English was not my first language.
I would always be intrigued and intimidated by the individuals who spoke English very fluently with a lot of confidence. I wanted to have that kind of an impact when I communicated myself. My heavy consumption of American and other western music is what lead to my American accent and my fluency in English. Now whenever I sing or speak I get praised for my confidence, articulation and diction. I also tribute my confidence to doing Performing Arts and Theatre in college and working in retail (Marks and Spencer) for the last three years. There’s a huge contrast in how I carry myself now and how as a kid I used to be extremely shy in certain social settings. A way to often demonstrate that power in a beautiful way is by delivering an incredible performance. I always craved to have a strong presence, as a kid I was pushed to the corner by a lot of my  family members, similarly in school and when I did drama in college. But now when I stand tall and sing I feel like I am doing everything I am supposed to do, everything I always wanted to do and everything I was meant to do. Music gives me power and nothing arouses me more than having power.
Wanda Landowska put it best ‘The power and magic of music lie in its intangibility and its limitlessness. It suggests images, but leaves us free to choose them and to accommodate them to our pleasure.’ (Landowska,1965)

I guess as children we are more inclined to things that aren’t  so easily accessible. So growing up in Bangladesh I definitely was more inclined towards western music and fashion.

However now that I have access to both I learned that vast number of cultures can go hand in hand and they don’t have to collide. I have a new found appreciation for my own culture. I heavily cherish Bengali music, food and traditional clothing. I also grew up listening to Indian music (Desi, Bollywood). The eastern world is very loud, colourful and chaotic. But If I had one word to describe South Asian culture I would use the word ‘rich’. Just like our traditional ice cream ‘Kulfi’. Not very different looking to a typical vanilla ice cream, but made with buttermilk, pistachio, saffron and enriched with variety of nuts. Us Asians just have a way of enriching things.

Bangladeshi/Indian traditional ice cream Kulfi

I definitely suffered an identity crisis all my life, even in Bangladesh I was shamed for being too western and after coming here there were times I faced mild racism. It’s difficult to explain but in the most difficult of times I could not relate to anyone, I felt burdened for knowing too many cultures and languages because I couldn’t relate to anyone around me except my sister who obviously had very similar experiences growing up and no one we knew had to face certain issues that we did. At the back of my mind I always knew being multi cultured and multifaceted will be my biggest weapon one day. But in the hardest of times I just wished that I was just a typical Bengali girl of a typical British girl or whatever the case maybe. I never felt a sense of tension between western and eastern culture unless I bring up some very serious issues. If we take out all the underlying issues that stem from prejudice and hate; every culture is rooted in love, oneness and celebration. So as I am growing older I am learning to appreciate all the good and bad that comes with everything, all the quirkiness and all the idiosyncrasies.

Bengali Folk music,Art and Dance.

My first introductory impact came from my parents favourites: The hearty tunes from Elvis, Tom Jones, Engelbert, Shirley Bassey etc; and my most significant influence around music came from my friends & their favourites. After much convincing & saving up, I got my first iPod and with my extremely slow broadband connection, I’d spend hours illegally downloading music. I valued & cherished these songs with all of me, whilst jamming to them and singing carelessly I realised I had some potential worth caring about and that solidified my want to be a singer. I remember being a massive lady gaga fan, it wasn’t just her music that touched me, it was her sense of freedom, style, as well as what she stood for. My other favourites to sing along to were Avril Lavingne, Rihanna, Beyonce, Drake, Maroon 5 and basically anything that would reach my part of the world. The album’s that had the biggest impact on me being fixated on wanting to be a pop star was The Fame by Lady Gaga, Loud by Rihanna and Teenage Dream by Katy Perry.

I recently took this picture at the O2 Arena/mall when my friend Sasha took me there.
This picture consists of my three major artistic influences fashion, music and Lady Gaga.

The Fame By Lady Gaga Loud By Rihanna Teenage Dream By Katy Perry

My other interests are in the makeup artistry, fashion and drag field. Most of which I’m significantly more skilled at than music, yet it’s the art of music making that I have always & still feel most drawn to. We may turn to music to escape, to feel better, to relate, whatever it might be, it’s to feel something; It’s that feeling I find myself wanting to create. Some silly & some serious, I love to create a world around my mood, something that’ll stick for certain time frames, certain memories & inevitably become a part of our lives, big or small. A big inspiration in that aspect was lana del rey, so poetic & vague with words yet so specific & articulate that you transport to her world.

After I came to UK I have been obsessed with Rupaul’s drag race and many other things related to drag culture . I have attended many drag shows and myself have participated in the art form of drag. It has had a significant impact on my artistry, my spiritual growth and on my view of pop culture. But through watching Drag race in itself I have been introduced to many new songs (aka lip sync songs) many guest judges who are pop icons etc. Lot of it I wouldn’t know if it weren’t through drag. Ballroom culture, drag culture and the dance form voguing has offered important musical outlets for drag performers.
'Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness, but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself— its way of life— as the only meaningful life there is ’.

Some photographs of me with Drag artists after the shows and a few of my own images of me participating in the art form of drag.

I came to this country against my will, leaving all my loved ones behind except my mom and sister who lived with me in Southampton. The first few years of living here was extremely depressing I was extremely lonely and had lost all meaning of life, I was suicidal. When I discovered the art form of it was a whole new world for me. I had never heard of anything like it back home in Bangladesh. The reason It was extremely easy for me to slide it to the culture because my parents despite being South Asian were quite open minded, my dad even took my mom to a gay parade in Amsterdam. I am pansexual myself, one of the things that drew me to drag is the way it provides a space to experiment with expressing different ways of being as well as exploring the question of sexuality. My deep gravitation towards the art form of drag is not only because of the bling and drama but it is for the stories of the people behind the drag. It often a very hard breaking yet triumphant story. I fell in love with certain queens and their stories. The things they overcame and how in their darkest moments they didn’t let go of their dreams.
Even the world’s most famous drag queen RuPaul, always talks about following his/her intuition, taking the queues from the universe and how he/she never took life too seriously and always just had fun with it. ‘Look I’m fun, I can have a sense of humour about life because I’m in drag. I acknowledge black rage, but we’re going to have some fun’. (Rupaul 2018, The Guardian).
Stories like these are what kept me going. That for an artist no matter how difficult it is to hold on to their dreams it is definitely worth it. And drag queens/kings and other queer artists definitely prove that like no other.

RuPaul

Despite of being a long time consumer of music. I feel like my musicianship is still in it’s beginning stages. The amount of time I got to dedicate to my music is minuscule. My training mainly consists of listening and bopping to pop tunes. But from everyone that has heard me sing has said I have an extensive vocal range and a great singing ability. As mentioned before I was thrown into different walks of life all the time . Some of which took me far away away from music yet shaped me in to the person I am today and the music I intend to create. In 2017 I had the worst case of clinical depression all I did was sleep wakeup and sleep. I had shaved my head off my skin was ruined. I was unrecognisable. Once in a while I would go up to see my music teacher in Southampton. He would encourage me to make my own songs instead of covering other peoples work. But I used to struggle a lot with lyric writing. He told me that I could pay others or buy songs off of other people. That rubbed me the wrong way. Because I knew I had a message but just didn’t know how to say it in a poetic way. At the time, to help with my depression I would keep watching spiritual and motivational videos; one of which said ‘Beyoncè wrote a hundred songs before Halo‘ (Evan Carmichael, 2015).I randomly thought of writing a hundred songs . I did not end up writing hundred but I did write 67 songs, more like poetry in a basic song structure. And yes I became a much much better writer from where I had started. I released a lot of my emotions in my writing. Yes a lot of my writing was not good but some of it were good, unique and original. Now at UEL, I noticed that I am being able to come up with lyrics really quickly for my individual projects and well as group ones. And in some cases I could also use material that I had already written. Recently we had our first solo performance in front of the whole class. After watching everyone else’s performance and doing my own; what I realised is I am truly a musical theatre girl. Only my performance had elements of theatre in it. And that was a delightful discovery. It added to my identity as a musician. I only thought I could create pop songs but I can feel my theatre training definitely coming through. In that module we needed to change a very popular song whilst still keeping the original identity intact; I chose favourite things / 7 rings; both of the songs were about things the artists fancied be it expensive or inexpensive. I kept some of it’s melody similar added my own melodies and fully rewrote the lyrics. I wrote a story which was about rain, murder, jealousy and love. It had levels of voice acting in it and I experimented with my vocal range and dynamics of the volume. I included some props as well.

Props I used for my solo a cappella performance for my music theory module

I am not good at any playing any instruments yet nor am I a digital musician. But I am definitely trying to balance all aspects of my course work and learn all these new skills.
But I feel like I am at a solid place with my singing, lyric writing and with my confidence as a performer. Definitely still a lot of room for improvement. But a good place to start. I cannot wait to dedicate more time into developing myself into a multifaceted performer.

Me singing for UEL open day and at the live music event at then underground bar.

UEL already has had a significant impact on my music even though it’s only been ten weeks. Being around so many music nerds I already learned so many new terminologies and so much about genres. Most importantly I hadn’t performed in the last 3 years as I was working a retail job; but I already have performed on three occasions, which is rebuilding my confidence as a performer. To start off I would like to make pop songs and maybe r&b or pop rock. But eventually I would like to incorporate all aspects of myself in to my music. By that I mean incorporating other languages such as bangla or even hindi. Do spoken words , voice acting. As mentioned before I want to explore my theatrical side in relation to music. I would want to create a lot of fusions as well.

Me wearing Bengali traditional apparel 'saree'

Me singing at the Bengali New Year Festival 'Pohela Boishakh' in Southampton.

My musical identity is something I discover more and more everyday and with interest in so many genres and sounds of music I’d love to create and experiment with different genres, different languages, different visual aspects, fashion, makeup, art, photography, filmography, and various other elements that I love and combine them all to form an image, resulting in music that feels like an extension of my being. I want to become a rich artist not in terms of money only but in terms of the content I create, the knowledge I possess and the experiences I undergo.

Me dressed up as a cat for a Persian play 'Moosh o Gorbeh' (Cat and Mouse) for University of Cambridge.

References:

Evan Carmichael, 2015. Beyoncè playlist: