Strand Three Profiles and Interviews - Ms. Suzana Ansar

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Ms. Suzana Ansar

Interview date: 17 _ May _ 06

Interviewed by: Jamil Iqbal

Ms. Ansar is a British-born Bengali singer. She started singing at the age five and started learning classical music at the age of eleven, by which time she had won many singing competitions. She is well known for singing Nazrul Geeti. She has her own music school where she trains young British Bengali children.

Ms Suzana Ansar

Q: How did you get involved in the music?
My mother used to sing, and since a very young age, my mother realised that I was very interested in music; especially in the traditional Bangla gaan. She used to listen to Nazrul Geeti and kheyal-Thumri. From my maternal grandfather side of family, we are very musical, we have many Ustads; from Brahmanbaria, where they are from. They had an organisation called “Bengali International”. My mother was one of the founders of the organisation, which is still going very strong. I used to perform there from a very young age. So from the age of about five, I had a music teacher who taught me harmonium. Then it basically continued until I started learning Uchango Sangeet and kheyal from the age of 10-11. I performed in so many programmes; by the age of 11 I won many competitions here at Toynbee Hall. All the competitions were happening in the Toynbee Hall. Then it just carried on and after the age of 15-16, I started to do other types of singing besides just kheyal, which were Nazrul Geeti and folks and everything. Now I do a lot of traditional programmes as well as the fusion work that I am involved with as well.

Q: Is there anyone else apart from your mum, who has influenced you?
It is just my mother and also the natural instinct to me. I think my mother realised that I had a good tal and good sur, and I was very small, all the artist you can think of today like Himangshu Goswami, they used to see that instead of playing with the children at the back of the hall, I had been watching the whole of the programme and I was three or four and these artists put me on their lap and said, she will be a singer one day. So that’s how it happened. My mother was the influence and she made it easy for me, and she encouraged me.

Q: What type of song do you prefer?
I am a mixed person. I am a British born Bengali. I have mixed identity. I like Nazrul Geeti, I like kheyal, classical music. That’s where my training came from. Similarly I like traditional Baul music or folk music, because I can find similarities in the two. I also like Western music. I like hip-hop and R&B and so it’s very broad.

Q: What do you think of this fusion, does it change the essence of the music?
It is very true, if you do it badly, if you don’t know what you are mixing. It is not just a case of picking a very good song from an old song and putting some terrible bits and marketing them, it’s not the way to go about it. If you understand well, what you are mixing, then it is fine. If you are mixing something that is ragas based, you are taking a ragas and a specific tal and if you are mixing that, you have to keep the essence of that ragas, you have to keep the feeling and the emotion of the song. You have to maintain that and mix it correctly then you will have something very good. I think, to continue the music and the art, you need to mix good music of all sorts of people and it can be done well and it can be done badly.

Q: Did you have any trainer?
Yes, my first teacher was my mother, then Golak Mahan Choudhury, he taught me harmonium, and my first fifteen songs. Then when I went to Bangladesh in 1988-89, I learnt from Ustad Zakir Hossain and some other teachers. Then from 1989, I started learning from Pandit Horidash Ganguli, who started me on tanpura. I did 80 ragas from Ektal Bilombit, Tin tal and Jumra and all the classical tals and basically a kheyal of 40 minutes duration. That took ten years. It is still incomplete, you can carry on learning.

Q: What did you think of music around London, at the time of 1980s?
I was born in the 1980s. I had a very young mother, she was a very active member of the community. She was the pioneer of many organisations. So I had good exposure to cultural events. But then it was also very balanced because my dad was very religious businessman and he was a chartered accountant and was not very musical. The two were very different characters, so I had a very good blend and I think I was more exposed to traditional Bengali music, what you hear in the home as well. She would be listening to Top of the Pops and Nazrul Geeti, Manobendro and Hemanto, or Ustad Golam Ali Khan. These were artists I used to listen to. But she liked what I liked and what I learned as well.

Q: What do you think of the music now? What sort of music the Bengali youths listen to?
The situation of UK is very different from Bangladesh. In Bangladesh the young generation listen to the band music, and there is no trend here for band music. The trend here is for Baul music and very folk and that is got to do with your roots. Majority of the people who are Bengali here in this part, particularly from Sylhet or more rural parts back home, their music taste is just similarly as my taste. The same thing is for the folk and the Baul music. So there is a trend here for Baul music, more then anything else. They don’t really listen to Nazrul Geeti or Rabindra Sangeet because they don’t listen to these in the home. That’s something is dying, which I am trying to preserve with my music school. There is a lot that we have that isn’t being learned.

Q: Tell us something about your Music School.
I have a music school and I teach in different centres but mainly in ‘Bengali International’. I started teaching from the age of 15 or 16, where I used to lead. I used to teach the chorus songs during children’s programmes. I even led a chorus at the age of 8 or 9. My mother got it on the video and I was very interested even at that age.

In my school I use to teach talas, which is the beginning of the classical music, if anyone learns classical music; he starts with talas which has ten branches, then ragas comes from this talas. I teach basic sa-re-ga-ma and harmonium playing, using the right fingers. My children are from the age of 3 to 18.Correct fingers, how to sing and then if they are ready to perform after 6 or 7 months, which they do perform in various places. I teach Nazrul Geeti, I make sure I teach them the actual core like the Nazrul Geeti and the Rabindra Sangeet and ragas and folks, so they have everything.

Q: Do you have any role model?
I have got lots of role model. I have Girza Devi, my teacher Pandit H. Das Ganguly, my mother. I do like Runa Laila a lot, she is classically trained and she speaks very good Urdu and she can pronounce the gazals and she understands. Similarly she is a good ambassador of Bangladesh. I saw her in many international programmes representing Bangladesh and I think there should be more people like her from Bangladesh, eloquent in English and Urdu and be able to represent our country. There are many whom I like very much, like Farida Parvin, Parvin Sultana, Abida Sultana, I also like Sufi artists.

Q: Do you perform in melas and festivals?
Yes, I do. I performed in the Baishakhi mela for the last five years. Once I presented in ETV. I think, the melas have an environment that the music should be a very fast folk song which I do as well.

Q: Do you have any memorable mela or event?
They are all very good, I enjoy all of them. I don’t have anyone special in particular. I get a lot more personally out of a smaller jalsha type of event, where there is more serious appreciation for music, which usually happen in smaller crowds which is more intimate and you can express those jalshas that we attend happen until 3, 4 or 5 in the morning depending on the ragas, because ragas have different times of the day. Melas are fun, that’s very different.

Q: When was the last time you went out of UK, for a performance?
Three weeks ago, we went to Switzerland. It was a Baishakhi mela. They don’t have much of a Bengali community but they arranged 3 or 4 coaches to bring people from all over Switzerland and Austria. There were about 600 people there, and they did a little book fare and panta-Ilish, sari stalls and it was very good. It was in Luasanne, so people from Geneva came and few of us went from London.

Q: What sort of instruments do you like?
I love harmonium, more than anybody, that’s my core instrument, I think I play it very well as well. I play tanpura, tanpura is a necessary, it is like a sitar but with four strings. That’s the basic droning instrument so you could perfect your vocal. If you are singing a classical music, the harmonium restricts you to the notes you play, where if you play a tanpura you can get more abundance of that. I play a bit of sitar. I did grade one in piano that was in school but I didn’t go very far with Western music, because of Bengali music.

Q: Do you sing Baul?
Yes I do but not that much. I sing some mystical music, which are Bengali Sufi, there are few of them. But not heard much because my training comes from kheyal, which isn’t Sufi, that’s another side, but some Qawali songs come from that. But it is not my actual field. I do listen to a lot of Sufi music.

Q: Have you produced any album?
I am producing my album now, which is to come out at the end of July, that’s three quarters complete. I worked for different albums. I have been very late with the album, doing more programmes and study and other commitments. But I am doing album now, I have worked with ‘State of Bengal’, I have written with Hasan Zaman. I wrote the vocal track of his first album and worked together which was quite a hit song that I did.

Q: Do you write your own songs?
Yes I do but the album is going to be mixed. It is re-mixed, it is going to be interesting. I remixed three or four Nazrul Geeti, with a very modern music. That is fusion. I have kept the vocal and the lyrics intact, exactly how it is sang. But the track is completely apart. It’s a very western track, but it is treated very carefully. Because the producer is my younger brother and he understands the ragas, he understands the essence and the feeling of the Nazrul Geeti. But he is a very westernize boy, plays the guitar. So I got folk songs and Nazrul Geeti.

Q: What sort of instruments have you used?
We have used instruments like guitar, its quite jazzy form of track, poppy, he has mix it and he has got a studio; there is drums and guitars and tabla, and the computer programmes. I got some harmonium, I got some bashi (flute). Most of it is live. Ustad Kutubuddin plays the bashi.

Q: Have you performed in Bangladesh?
Yes I have performed in BTV, when I was twelve after wining a few contests here, they contacted me to do a programme in BTV. That was my first TV experience. I toured with Hasan Zaman and we did it in Osmani Memorial Hall, which was covered by ETV. We did that in 2001, which was arranged by the British Council. Then I did jalsha and more traditional programmes.

Q: Do you have any future plan?
My album is coming out, which has taken quite a long time to do. I have quite a few products at hand at the moment, just carrying with that. I really want to present my school, many of them have performed in the melas, and also in the Toynbee Hall. Some of them are very small, 3-4 and they can sing by heart. Bengali songs, they can’t read but can sing in Bengali. So I want them to come forward.

Q: What is the name of the school?
'Suzana Ansar Music School'. There was a programme recently on Channel S called Suzana and Kids. That was my production, my concept and I did the scripting and I presented them in 35 minutes. The kids sang classical and music with emphasis on ragas, straight to folks. And that was …..TV for the experience, and also I wanted people to see that, such small kids understand classical music and there were a lot of Bangla songs. Its not just folk and Bhangra and Hindi music, we have great Nazrul Geeti and great Rabindra Sangeet. It is dying because no one is teaching it. One of my aims is to make these kids more aware.

Q: Do you think, they have done well?
Yes, especially in the last five years. It’s amazing and touchy how they have improved in the last five years.

Q: What do you think of the Bangladeshi community and the young generation now?
It disappoints me that they can’t speak Bengali as well as they should be able to. They are very different to the youths back home. They really don’t know our heritage.

Q: How are you going to distribute the album, is it in CD format?
My brother is doing that and he is also British born second generation and his friend Imran, who is a Pakistani boy learning Bengali. They are looking into it. I am not looking to it.

Q: You only sing, you don’t dance?
I used to dance when I was ten or eleven.

Q: Do you think your music reflects multiculturalism?
Yes, it does. Many people find me very much multicultural. Some of them saw me wearing sari and reading my Bengali song in English. They didn’t first realise that I am a Bangladeshi from here because I am traditional. Depending on the programme, I present myself that way and they can’t quite make out. Especially in Bangladesh, where I am wearing fotua and jeans, they think I am Western and when I sing something very classical, they can’t make it. That’s how we are, we are the second generation. We are going to have the mix.

Q: When was the last time you visited Bangladesh?
The end of 2004. I was very busy. I went on a natok (drama). I had to learn the Sylheti accent.

Q: Have you done adverts in channel S?
Yes I have done two. One was about a car crash. The Other one was about fish.

Q: What is your ambition?
I have so many things I like; I have done two natoks (drama) and two movies. They are very different from each other. One is called Mayer Tane, it was done half in Bangladesh and half in the UK, Manchester. That was released in the last Baishakhi mela. The other one is called the Pohela Baishaki, which was done with local people and I am doing one in Dhaka. I did a stage show with Amzad Hossain. That’s the first I have ever performed in front of Sharmila Tagore, Babita, Shabana, Abul Hayat and everybody were there. I really enjoyed that. I do natok as a hobby, I like anything artistic. Singing is very important to me, I want to create and write and make something new. I have got few businesses like, restaurants and teaching. My dad is a chartered accountant and he has a firm, I help him. I prefer teaching, I am doing teacher training, and my ambition is to be a deputy headmistress. I would love to be a headmistress and to do singing.