Tahsan's fresh take on singing and acting

He has taken admission in a music programme at an institute in Los Angeles to bring something new to his songs and to learn about the commercial side of it on a larger scale.

At the same time, he has done two camps on acting as well. Tahsan said, “For quite some time I have been having this feeling that I have already made music with what I had learned many years ago. I learnt all these indeed in the process of making music. It felt like I needed a break.”

“I had taken a one and a half years off from acting also. I haven’t also released a music album in a long time. In the meantime, I had the thought that if I don’t learn something new, maybe I won’t be able to come up with something new. That’s why I took a break,” he added.

Tahsan is studying music production and music business in Los Angeles. He has completed a semester already. The next semester is supposed to begin on 15 January. He’s learning details of music and its commercial aspects well.

Tahsan said, “Those of us who has been working as professional artistes for years but don’t understand the concept of royalty are under-valued in different ways."

"However, entertainment business and intellectual property are highly valued ideas throughout the whole world. We Bangladeshi artistes actually don’t know how to protect our copyright. That’s what I went to study a bit.”

“Plus, I wanted to refresh my knowledge of music production as well. In fact, apart from writing lyrics and composing, I actually did music production as well towards the beginning."

"Later at one point, I became busy with various other projects and then I had music directors producing music for my songs. This time I myself want to produce the music of my new album,” he added.

Popularity of his songs brought Tahsan to the acting industry. And he became as busy as his contemporary actors. But he didn’t have any institutional education in acting.

He feels to achieve excellence in acting it would be better to do courses on it. And, he paid attention to acting alongside music. He took admission in Yale School of Drama in Los Angeles.

He said, “There are a many acting coaches there. And, they conduct three to four week-long courses. I had gone to two of those coaches. The way we have different genres of music, they have different genres of acting there. I studied two of those genres.”

“I have been acting for the past ten years but, I do not come from an acting background. I did it the way my directors taught me. I felt that you must learn through studies for achieving excellence in any sector.”

“I have had that chance there in the past six months. In another course studied Stanislavski’s acting method. There are numerous prominent acting coaches and each of them teaches a different method,” he added.

Tahsan wants to utilise the musical education from Los Angeles to release his new album. And that album would feature musician friends from different countries, he said.

In his words, “I have made acquaintance of musicians from many countries while doing this course. I got motivation from them and that motivation will be reflected in my new album. This time I’ll release the album with a number of songs. There will be 18 songs in Bangla, English and Spanish, as finalised for the time being.”

Tahsan himself has written the lyrics for these 18 songs. He said that his foreign friends have translated the songs of the other two languages.

As the reason for releasing an album with so many songs, Tahsan mentioned, “I want revive the excitement from earlier times. It’s different kind of pleasure to listen to a number of songs together. People might like only four or five out of so many songs.”

“I want to create the same pleasure we used to get from listening to albums in our childhood. Many might say that it’s not commercially wise to release so many songs in one go. But, I believe that doing music is my thing,” he continued.

Tahsan who haven’t released songs for a long time, wants to release more and more songs now. He had this urge very recently. He’s thinking along this line to move take Bangla songs forward on the global platform.

He said, “There are many artistes in Bangladesh. But actually you have make and release a lot of songs to move upwards on the ranking. When an artiste releases a number of songs, many people listen to them. If the numbers are high, streaming will go up.”

“Established and talented artistes in Bangladesh are in fact doing music less. I cannot go around telling everyone to do more albums and songs. I will do my part from my own understanding and responsibility.”

“I have given many hit songs. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need to make new songs and can sit idly just because I have a lot of hits. I’m actually depriving the fans by doing this. That too has affected me. I’ll make a lot of songs this year so that it changes people’s ideas,” said he.

While speaking on the topic Tahsan pointed out, “Though songs have been produced under big banners in Bangladesh, there haven’t been any new songs. The two platforms that have worked in Bangladesh have worked very well but there have been no new songs whatsoever.”

“We need too many new songs. As a Bangladeshi artiste, I have gained a lot and it won’t be good if I stop singing. The artistes themselves have to take the initiative to release more songs,” he continued.

With academic knowledge in acting, Tahsan wants to work in new mediums. He expressed this wish towards the very end of the conversation.

He said, “Now that I have studied acting, if I find any good OTT project, I’ll definitely do it. I haven’t done any acting in the last one and a half years. I’ll start rethinking about it from this year. Let’s see what happens.”