Tell us about the backstory of making ‘Jonak Joley’.
If I have to talk about it, I must go back to the Covid times. The whole world had almost come to a standstill during the pandemic. I feel that everyone rediscovered themselves in their own unique way during Covid. The same happened to me as well.
While working from home at that time, I was getting the feeling of those early career days. Back then I had felt an urge to bring innovativeness in the music which has had an effect on this song. Lyricist of the song Ali Baker Zico is a good writer. I heard the lyrics of the song while we were chitchatting one day.
The lyrics have the depth of happiness, sorrow and grief in them. I had the feeling that a sort of sad-romantic music, the type of song in the voice of Nancy and me creates a mood among the audience, can be made from that. Out of that concept, I made this song collaborating with Nancy.
Then it was the time to make the music video. Taneem Rahman Angshu directed quite a few music videos including ‘Hariye Fela Bhalobasha’ in 2015. He can visualise the story of my song very well. He’s able to grasp the idea of the song. Then the video was shot after planning it with him.
What’s your expectation from this song?
Every single song I made is like a child to me. I have some expectations from all of my songs and this is no exception either. However, there’s some uniqueness to this song. My experience of making songs during Covid time has been reflected in this song.
Apart from that, the portion with female voiceover is more exceptional. The lyrics sung by Nancy hits you different. Combined with the musical arrangements that portion of the song creates a different story in the music video. The audience will realise it when they’ll be watching it.
Besides, various locations including the hill tracts of Bandarban have been featured in the music video, keeping in line with the lyrics and atmosphere of the song. The song thrives even better because of Nancy.
Nancy officially began her musical career with your music and arrangement back in 2006. The duo still has an audience demand after so many years. What’s the secret?
This seems surprising to me as well. Even now I get a lot of requests to do songs with Nancy. Sad songs featuring Nancy with me creates a whole different ambience. But, my romantic duets with her outnumber them. If you do the math, you’ll see that I have made only a few songs with Nancy.
We haven’t even made 20 songs in the past 20 years or so. Yet the audience demand we have, the two of us should have recorded 200 songs in this long period. That’s why it seems strange sometimes. Despite having such a limited number of songs, the audience still remembers our duo! But this encourages me.
I do stage shows with Nancy sometimes and we keep a duet segment there. After singing for half an hour, we can’t find that many duet songs of ours though. I feel that many from the previous generation as well as from the current generation listen to our years-old duet songs even now.
So, the songs still retain their appeal. That’s why they still demand new songs from the two of us. And that’s inspiring for me. I believe the audience will rediscover us with this song. For I always create something new and unique with Nancy. This will continue in future as well.
Film songs have been buzzing for quite a few years. But audio songs aren’t that well received. Why?
It’s not that the notion that audio songs aren’t getting popular is completely true. In the meantime, songs from several artistes including Muza, Xefer are buzzing among the audiences. Besides, the audience is listening to Coke Studio music as well.
The video has to sync perfectly with the audio song. At present there are some limitations in this field when it comes to audio songs. Audio songs were thriving from 2015 to 2020 though. Wonderful video songs from different artistes reached all the corners of the country at that time.
Then again it’s not that all the film songs are equally well received by the audience. There has to be a matter of communication for everything. Both film songs and audio songs need to have the right ingredients. In that case, it’s possible to perform well in either sector.
You used to regularly make film songs once. You have produced popular songs for a number of films including ‘Hridoyer Kotha’, ‘Akash Chowa Bhalobasha’, ‘Projapoti’ and ‘Third Person Singular Number’. Why aren’t you working like before these days?
From the time I started working, an uninterrupted wave of film song continued till a certain point. But that wave came to a halt at a time in the middle. The condition of the film went into somewhat into disarray. But now it seems like those better times are returning.
I have been noticing that trend for the last one and a half to two years. From that position, if I find any good film project I’ll do it. Film songs didn’t attract me during the period that passed in the meantime.
You must believe in the thing for it to attract you. At that time, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that I would work hard on making a song and it will reach everyone.