A four-member team led by Bengali folk singer Debalina Bhowmick will perform in folk-festival Salföldi Dalföld in Hungary on July 7, 2018.
Bhowmick will perform folk songs including Jhumur, Bhawaiya while Shantiniketan’s Susanta Das Baul will perform on Baul songs. The other two members – Murshidabad’s Khokon Das and Bankura’s Mohan Tati – will play Dhol and flute respectively.
Bhowmick said the essence of folk songs is similar in every country and they often discover similarities in music, words, tune, melody, use of instruments in folk songs of other countries.
Earlier they have collaborated with Hungarian artists – when folk groups Sondorgo, Romengo and Muzsikas visited Kolkata in 2012, 2016 and 2017 respectively. Being the music co-ordinator of banglanatak.com, that promotes Bengal’s folk art and music, Bhowmick experiences the growing love of folk songs among the next generation. She said, “Many artists are getting recognition at the global stage, and this is encouraging the next generation to take up folk songs seriously.” Currently, the organisation trains more than 6,000 artists.
Bhowmick and her team will also perform in Germany’s Karlsruhe India Summer Days Festival on July 14 & 15 before touring Sweden’s Urkult with different team members including Sadhu and Kangal, sons of famous artist late Tarak Khapa, Dipannita Acharya and Khokon Das.