1971, 25th march, late night... Pakistani soldiers, mostly from the Western Part of the country, were waiting for orders from the West Pakistan at the barracks in Dacca, East Pakistan. And after receiving their expected orders, “Shoot To Kill,” they methodically raped and murdered innocent East Pakistanis - men, women, children, old -young, learned or not.
They tried to execute what we clearly understand today as “Ethnic Cleansing.” Their plan, perhaps was to change the course of a nation and its people overnight… to erase the Bengals from the face of earth.
However, the almighty God had other plans. He changed the course of history through the revolutionary young artists and intellectuals. Based on their natural instincts and intellects, a courageous group of artists and technicians protested against this dirty holocaust through radio waves.
In Kalurghat, Chittagong, a group of young men and women, with the help of East Pakistani military set up a radio station called “Shadheen Bangla Betar Kendro,” (means: Independent Radio Center of Bangla).
They'd protested through their songs, poetry, news and parodies... they'd inspired the Bengali race to fight back effectively through their words of wisdom. SBBK provided the freedom fighters with the moral support they needed…information they strived for… as they sang songs of inspiration to free East Pakistan from the temporary Radio center.
East Pakistanis (now Bangladesh) eventually won the war... with the help of their previous motherland & neighbor, India. Indira Gandhi was then the Prime minister of India.
Uma Khan is an artist, a young singer of that time – who later received National Award from Bangladesh for her contribution to Bengali Music a few years ago. It is sad but true, she is now in the United States, and has been living there since 1984. When asked,"Why don't you choose to live in Bangladesh?" She replies, “My children are here in the US…,” she pauses for a moment and adds, “What is there for me to go back for? All betrayers and liars… ”
During the late 70’s Uma became popular in all over Bangladesh as a playback singer for movies. Back then, it was considered the golden era for Bengali movies. She was the playback singer for famous Bengali Films such as "Badshah"," Hason Raja", and "Sagarika." She received many awards, including a few from the State & City Legislature of New York, and also from the United Kingdom.
Bangladesh as a young nation is perhaps taking its time to be stable. It is still a country that is cross stitched with bloody fights between rival rulers, a power hungry military, and corrupt businessmen. Rather nasty events occurred in the years that came soon after its birth. People became more and more scared…of their own people.
Around this time when the fear has some what shifted to other variables, the artistic cultural essence and euthenics of Bengali Music has not been preserved very gently. The country men and women acted, and still acts with tolerance to fight the corruption within its own self.
Generations that were born after the war suffered from identity crisis and low self esteem. Even though they were the champions of truth and humanity once. Certainly this simply hints to one of the many reasons behind the departure of an artist – a freedom fighter…
Why did she leave her country, for which, she once took the oath to save from all evil? She and many others like her had not been provided the respect and nurturing they required as artists...
Life became more and more difficult in Bangladesh as days are passed. Fortunately, she still sings today, her voice still frozen in her youth...when she sings every thing that moves loses the ability to move...they stand still mesmerized by the presence of her soul...
She is my mother. I love her the most, and I wish her all the best...here in this world, and also in the Hereafter, God Willing.
Don't know which is what... but I'm back to the United States of America. After almost 2 years in Bangladesh. It was not as pleasurable towards the end due to my ill economic situation. Its tough I tell ya. Money...it's a crime.
Anyhow, I survived it seems so far. Some one said, "Back to the pavilion?"
It has been about six to seven months that I came back to Bangladesh and decided to stay in Dhaka for a few years. Honesty claims that after the first two months, due to my nature, behavioral patterns, and emotional dilemmas that follow me around, the following months were heavily laden with altered states of the natural mind. Hence, unable to define, or is not prepared to accept the distinction between the good and evil made.
As of now, it wouldn’t be prudent to say that the mind is back to its original state; rather, it’s perhaps the opposite. Since, the tools are not available to dissect the claims… have to drop the issue here.
Conversely, I’ve not lost my focus after all. My lifelong dream, hopeful project plans, and my inner peace all fell into their designated places. I’ve found, and am almost done in the process of purchasing the whole of, the land… for the inspired artists’ orphanage.
I know this is just a beginning, but the joy of this simple achievement is so broad that even I cannot escape its passionate caress! Pardon me… I am just a dark soul who simply met the other side.
Every time I begin to write about the visions I have had, or had been having regarding an ancient tradition present in various cultures & era, a naturally evolving enterprise… Something unexplainable pulls me back… and or attempts to change the courses of my thought processes; as if the dark & imperceptible laws of physics, biology, chemistry, & cosmology were expertly instructed to create such illusive obstacles.
Please acknowledge that the visions did not come to me in my dreams or in a form of revelation tablets; nor did it come from any trespassers… this may be, in my understandings, the concurrent results of the constant unrest and unfairness (both due to finite variables) in the totality of the human conscience.
Messages do have their ways to reach their designated mediums.
From the dawn of the earliest civilizations to today’s age of Technological wonders many naïve and chance seeking souls have evolved, and is still evolving in big numbers to a specific community of human race, called the “Artists.”A simple survey based on the available social networks would surely enforce this fact with fullest statistical support.
On the contrary, before we could go forward with our visions and claims, it is extremely important for us to identify, comprehend, and acknowledge the aura of an artist, and how we define it in general languages and through cultural connotations throughout history, in different civilizations.
A simple definition of Artist from Princeton.edu: creative person (a person whose creative work shows sensitivity and imagination).
“The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only. The term is often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (less often for actors). "Artiste" (the French for artist) is a variant used in English only in this context. Use of the term to describe writers, for example, is certainly valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like criticism.” (Wiki)
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist," as –
A learned person or Master of Arts (now rather obsolete)
One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry (also obsolete)
A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice - the opposite of a theorist
A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic - partly obsolete
One who makes their craft a fine art
One who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses - now the dominant usage
Artists, thence, could be envisioned as the inventors-designers-educationists-developers-philosophers-entertainers-leaders of the worldly variables, and themselves are the mediums of the art seen unseen – in other words, inspired.
Question remains if artists are so easily considered inspired, are all artistsinspired?
If we delve in to the history of the term artist, perhaps we would be able to connect a few dotsthere.Although the Greek word "techně" is often mistranslated as "art," it actually implies mastery of any sort of craft. The Latin-derived form of the word is "tecnicus", from which the English words technique, technology, technical are derived.
The word art is derived from the Latin "ars", which, although literally defined means, "skill method" or "technique", holds a connotation of beauty.
In Greek culture each of the nine Muses oversaw a different field of human creation:
Calliope (the 'beautiful of speech'): chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry
Clio (the 'glorious one'): muse of history
Erato (the 'amorous one'): muse of love or erotic poetry, lyrics, and marriage songs
Euterpe (the 'well-pleasing'): muse of music and lyric poetry
Melpomene (the 'chanting one'): muse of tragedy
Polyhymnia or Polymnia (the '[singer] of many hymns'): muse of sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing and rhetoric
Terpsichore (the '[one who] delights in dance'): muse of choral song and dance
Thalia (the 'blossoming one'): muse of comedy and bucolic poetry
Urania (the 'celestial one'): muse of astronomy
It is noticeable that no muse was identified with the visual arts of painting and sculpture.In a Radio BBC 4 show: In Our Time: The Artist, on March 28th 2002, it was mentioned that in ancient Greece sculptors and painters were held in low regard, somewhere between freemen and slaves, their work regarded as mere manual labor.On the contrary, we might assert that since poet-singer-musicians were affiliated with the Muses, thus, were probably considered a higher mass.We’ll hunt for evidence for this claim throughout our research.
The word artist already existed in some nations such as Italy during the middle Ages.Conversely, the meaning was something resembling craftsman, while the word artesan was still unknown.An artist was considered to be someone capable of doing a work noticeably better than others, so that the skilled excellence was underlined, rather than the activity field – or profession. In this period some "artisanal" products (such as textiles) were much more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures.
P Galloni, in “Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani medievali,” Laterza, Bari, 1998, proclaimed that the first division into major and minor arts dates back to Leon Battista Alberti's works (De re aedificatoria, De statua, De pictura), focusing the importance of intellectual skills of the artist rather than the manual skills.
“Many fashionable and modern definitions of "artist" and "art" are highly contingent on culture, resisting aesthetic prescription, in much the same way that the features constituting beauty and the beautiful, cannot be standardized easily without corruption into tastelessness.” (Wiki)
So then what would be a simple present day concept of an artist, even though it might be undoubtedly corrupted?
According to the Wikipedia writers, “Artist is a descriptive term applied to a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art. An artist also may be defined unofficially, as, ‘a person who expresses themselves through a medium’. The word also is used in a qualitative sense of, a person creative in, innovative in, or adept at, an artistic practice.”
A hierarchical consensus of the term most often describes those who create within a context of the fine arts or 'high culture', activities such as drawing, painting, sculpture, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking, photography, and music.Artists use imaginations, inspirations from the unseen; they use talents, or skills to create works that may be judged to have an aesthetic value.
Art historians and critics define artists as those who produce art within a recognized or recognizable discipline, which pretty much means one could go to an authorized academy, complete the disciplined courses - graduate and become a Master of Arts. Contrasting terms for highly-skilled workers in media in the applied arts or decorative arts include artisan, craftsman, and specialized terms such as potter, goldsmith or glassblower. In other words, if you are a holder of a fine certificate that says that you are a Master of Arts, graduated from some authoritative University, you are promptly qualified as a better and efficient artist, hence well-paid, even though the average Joe handyman may be able to do your works ten thousand times better, finer, and faster.Evidently, the only object that unfairly differentiates the artists from the handyman is that priceless certificate, a piece of paper with a huge burden of socio-cultural disease of manipulation.
Fine arts artists such as painters succeeded in the Renaissance in raising their status, formerly similar to these workers, to a decisively higher level, but in the 20th century the distinction became rather less relevant.In today’s world, through the apparent & constant influence of the private media, it is very arguably portrayed, perhaps for identifiable commercial reasons, that an artist (preferably a musician, singer, dancer, comedian, or entertainer) is a star of a Glamorous World, a Dev or Diva, an Avatar, a Role Model.Depending on his or her personal & professional life’s graphs of achievements… success, against failures & scandals – one is considered either a superstar or a dwarf star.Have you noticed a rise of TV shows such as “American Idols”…?
Do not forget that we initiated this conversation by focusing on a simple concept, “If artists are inspired, are all artists inspired?”As far as I am concerned so far we have simply stated and briefly discussed on a few generally accepted definitions of the word artist(s), predominantly in the Euro-Western cultures.So then, what about the Indo-Chinese culture, Russian, African, and Australian Aboriginal culture…what about the Islamic culture?And don’t forget the history!
In the next chapters we shall try to provide some historical facts as it is, and identify the artists’ in different times and their roles in shaping history.
