For Bogey music started as a hobby, albeit a passionate one, at the age of 14 when he began to teach himself the guitar. He publicly performed - on bass & singing covers of 60s-70s Anglo-American popular music - with his 1st band on at age 16.
For the last two decades he has been playing and recording, again as a hobby, with Renaissance, a well-accepted Bangladeshi band. Alongside a busy schedule of live performances, the band has released 3 original albums [**] and one [††] in the early 90s featuring songs from the 1971 Liberation War. Songs composed and sung by Bogey are featured in all of these recordings.
As Renaissance’s main vocalist (mainly for covers of English songs, the band’s mainstay on the live circuit) and implicit bandleader Bogey got ample opportunity to meet and influence many insiders of the country’s music industry and by default became an integral part of it. Consequently he got to write and compose a good number of songs and help put together many productions of other Artists
Renaissance’s original albums – 1. RENAISSANCE (© Sargam, 1987); 2.TRITIYO BISHWA (© World Music, 1993); 3. EKUSH SHOTOKAY (© Ektaar Music 2004).
[††] EKATTORER RENAISSANCE (© G-Series, 1991)
Bogey’s recordings Renaissance’s 3rd album EKUSH SHOTOKAY features 3 songs by Bogey. The album’s uniqueness is characterized by fabulous horn arrangements by the late Travis Jenkins from the US and Rune from Norway. Of the 3 Bogey-songs – Nonaiyya is a Blues number in the Chittagonian dialect (his mother tongue), and East of the Atoll, protesting nuclear testing in the Pacific, is a jazzy number in the English language. The 3rd song Alal o Dulal was adjudged the song of the week by a private cable channel in the week following Renaissance receiving the BEST BAND AWARD 2004 at the CITYCELL-CHANNEL i Music Awards.
The band’s most widely-known recording till date is Hridoy kadamati sung by Bogey and featured in their 2nd release TRITIYO BISHWO. The composition would be best described as a folk-funk fusion.
- - 3 original tunes, all in English, featured in Renaissance’s self-titled 1st album; these are Happy Feeling, Shubalong and Rock’n’Renaissance. Shubalong is a protest-song against the oppression of indigenous tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region.
- - He has recorded singles in different compilation albums with different producers.
- - Between 80s-90s he was involved in arrangements of different songs by artists such as Ashik Jongi, the band Feelings (1st album), Naquib Khan etc.
In March 2002, together with Akku Chowdhury and the Muktijuddho Jadughar [§§], he conceived of and coordinated a tribute to George Harrison and Pandit Ravi Shankar under the banner CONCERT IN BANGLADESH, a few months after the Harrison’s demise. The significance of this concert is manifold – 1.2. Bogey successfully brought together a disparate group of established and entirely-new musicians to collaborate and render with finesse a spirited and inspired version of the original concert in its entirety, starting with the Bangla Dhoon and ending with a hardrock version of Harrison’s Bangladesh to a packed hall of 700+ audience of wide-ranging description; 3. In his introductory address as well as announcements in-between he managed to convey t This was the 1st and possibly the only official tribute ever paid to George Harrison and Pandit Ravi Shankar in Bangladesh by Bangladeshis; he importance of this tribute as well convincingly recall the spirit of 1971 and nostalgically reminisce
OCHENA POTHIK (©EktaarMusic 2002) – an original but nonetheless folksy album; Habib’s mega sellers KRISHNO (©EktaarMusic 2003) and MAYA (©EktaarMusic 2004) – both remixes of old folk – the company has come to be regarded as a ‘folk revivalist label’.
Ektaar’s Managing Director, besides being the CEO of several other companies of the Sidko Group and a teacher of Finance at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka.
His personal involvement in the lives of many artists has led to coining the term “Ektaarfamily” – and today he feels hopeful for the future of Bangla music when he sees his leadership is beginning to sprout the seeds of musical cooperation and creativity among younger Artists affiliated to Ektaar. His future vision is the establishment and recognition of centuries-old-Bangla-music as one of the most sophisticated forms of world music today.
Other than being the main business brain behind Ektaar, Bogey’s involvement in artist selection, song selection and arrangements in many albums have become his chief activities in music today, although he continues to perform occasionally. In early 2003 when American jazz saxophonist Kate Pittard was
coming to Bangladesh to perform for the Rothmans launch, Bogey was called upon to put the backup band together –and they managed 3 highly acclaimed performances in Dhaka and Chittagong.
