A Man of Many Trades

Photo: Courtesy

My school was in Will's Little Flower. As a student I was notorious! I always tried to bunk my studies whenever I got the chance. There were some teachers of mine who hated my guts.  After a couple of years I switched from Bengali medium to English medium and gave my O’levels and A’levels in private. As I said, I was really bad when it came to my studies. I remember one time I got a four on my math exam and turned it into a forty so that my parents wouldn't punish me. But eventually they found out and I got punished real badly.

After my A’levels, I took a break for two years for music. After the break, I got into LSC University for my BBA. And then I went to SEGi University in Malaysia for a diploma in music.

My journey towards the world of music started when I was a child. I used to like the guitar but after six months of learning it, I got bored and shifted to tablas. And eventually after eight months I got bored again. After that I started playing drums and finally I found something which lasted!

The name of my first band was Kalponik. I played with that band for one year. After Kalponik I joined a band named Soothsayer. We did tonnes of concerts. I played with Soothsayer for two years and in 2009 I joined Retake. During this time I fell in love with the piano and started taking lessons from the famous Romel Ali. I also worked for my own compositions in those times. In 2010 one of my songs, named “Tomar Opekhay” was released in Radio ABC. In the meantime I got really interested in different sorts of instruments and started to learn how to play them. I play almost thirty five instruments which include guitar, flute, violin, bongo, piccolo, cello, piano, drums, tabla etc. In late 2011, I left Retake and went to Malaysia for my diploma.

The Bangali Talking Tom has a really funny story behind it. It was 3:00 am in Malaysia. I had a piano exam the next day. For some reason I felt the need to talk to someone. But I knew it was an odd time back in Dhaka.  So I opened the talking tom app and started talking about random stuff. I found it really funny, so I shared it with Maya Al Muqtadir and then shared it in my own Facebook profile and went to sleep. The next morning I opened my Facebook profile and saw that it was shared by 1700 people. And then Maya had the idea to open a fan page about it and we both sort of came up with the name The Bangali Talking Tom. Fuad Al Muqtadir and I also had a couple of projects lined up surrounding this.  After a couple of months when Bangali Talking Tom got really popular through Facebook and Youtube, Anis Ahmed, M D of Radio Foorti approached me with an idea to get the Bangali Talking Tom in a show at Radio Foorti. So eventually I started this radio show with them.  I even worked as an executive producer and sound engineer for Radio Foorti for a couple of days.

I am working with Fuad Al Muqtadir on a lot of projects. He is one of the few people who was beside me in good and bad times. And apart from that I also want to start a piano school. To all the upcoming composers and musicians I just have to say one thing. Let's all unite for the betterment of the music industry!