Music of Bangladesh
The music of Bangladesh spans a wide variety of styles. Bangladesh claims some of the most renowned singers, composers and producers in Asia. Music has served the purpose of documenting the lives of the people and was widely patronized by the rulers. It comprises a long tradition of religious and regular song-writing over a period of almost a millennium.
Pop music[edit]
Western style popular music began to influence strongly the music of Bangladesh in the early 1970's. And then several recording studios were established in Dhaka, which produced many pop style songs about national heroes.[12] Ferdous Wahid, who started out as a singer in the early 1970s, said "I wanted to introduce western music in Bangladesh, so after the Liberation War I decided to do pop music for our country’s people".[13]
Azam Khan, Fakir Alamgir, Ferdous Wahid, Pilu Momtaz, Najma Zaman, and Firoz Shai are considered the pioneer who brought the glory to Bangladesh pop music. In particular, Azam Khan is known as the pop-guru or pop-samrat of Bangladesh.[14]
In the genre of film music, well-known are such singers as Sabina Yasmin, Runa Laila, Andrew Kishore and so on. Sabina Yasmin has won Bangladesh National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer 14 times, and Runa Laila has won the award 7 times. On the other hand, Andrew Kishore has won Bangladesh National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer 8 times.
Common instruments are: