Shayan Chowdhury Arnob

Arnob (born Shayan Chowdhury Arnob; January 27, 1978) is a Bangladeshi singer-songwriter, musician, and artist who has been a major figure in the popular culture of Bangladesh. Most of his famous work comes from his early albums, when songs such as "She Je Boshe Ache" (2005) and "Tomar Jonno" (2006) became anthems in the whole country.

Born in January 1978 in Dhaka, Arnob attended Willes Little Flower School, and for better art education was sent to Santiniketan, where he met his future wife Sahana Bajpaie. He attended Kolkata University, where he formed the folk band Bangla in 1998. After leaving the band, he came back from Kolkata and started working on his solo albums. In 2005, he got his breakthrough with his debut album, Chaina Bhabish, which featured some of the best songs composed by him: "Hariye Giyechi" and "She Je Boshe Ache", the Daily Star commented: "She Je Boshe Ache is undoubtedly the catchiest track of all. The tune itself, in the simplest of words, is beautiful!". His second album Hok Kolorob also matched the success of his debut album and after releasing the album he became one of the most successful musicians of the decade. By 2008, he explored rock music, as that time many alternative rock bands earned huge popularity. His third album, Doob featured many electrically amplified rock songs like: "Shopno Debe Doob", "Adhkana", "Akash Kalo" and "Rastai".

In October 2008, he went on touring few cities of US, UK, Canada and Australia. It was arranged by Drishtipat and sponsored by HSBC. He released his first live album in November 2009, Arnob & Friends Live, which contained songs from the tour. He also worked in few Bangladeshi and West Bengal films, Monpura, Aha!, Dip Nevar Aage and Kolkata Calling. His song, "Shonar Moyna Pakhi", for the film Monpura, is considered to be one of the greatest film-score in the country. The works of his later career includes: Rod Boleche Hobe (2010), Adheko Ghume (2012), Khub Doob (2015) and Ondho Shohor (2017).

He has sold more than a million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists of Bangladesh. He is considered to be one of the greatest singer-songwriter, composer and esraj player in Bangladesh and West Bengal. He has received numerous awards, including two Channel i Music Awards, for the artwork of his second album Hok Kolorob and for Bujhcho as a member of Prayer Hall. He married Indian-Bangladeshi musician Sahana Bajpaie in 2000, but their marriage ended in a divorce in 2008.

1978–1995: Early years

Arnob was born Shayan Chowdhury Arnob (Bengali: শায়ান চৌধুরী অর্ণব) on 27 January 1978 in his hometown Chittagong and raised in Malibug, Dhaka. Arnob was born in an eminent family of artists. Arnob's father, Swapan Chowdhury was a renowned music director and a film director. Swapan Chowdhury, was a member of the team which sang songs for the freedom fighters of Bangladesh in 1971. It was shown in the documentary Muktir Gaan. He had an elder sister—Milita Chowdhury. Tapan Chowdhury—his uncle, was a member of the pioneer Bangladeshi rock band Souls.

His parents lived in Chittagong before his birth, but moved to Dhaka permanently when he was being appointed to Willes Little Flower School in 1983. He was only a student in there for two years. He started playing tabla, when he was only two years old. As his mother wanted to study in Visva Bharati University, she took Arnob and his elder sister Milita to West Bengal and got the two of them appointed in Patha Bhavana (which is an ashram school inside Visva Bharati) in 1985. He met Indian-Bangladeshi musician and his future wife Sahana Bajpaie in Santiniketan. As their mother finished her studies in two years, both of them had to stay to finish theirs. He learned to play the esraj in Santiniketan around this time. After finishing his studies in Patha Bhavana, he got appointed in Kala Bhavana, from where he completed his MFA. It was around this time, when he started to share views with the Bauls in Santiniketan. According to him, his "sense of fusion music started developing back then". He also became acquainted with most of the Tagore songs around this time. But he said to a Bangladeshi magazine in 2014 that:

I never thought I would take music as a profession! Even at school, I was the worst in music.

1990s

1995–1999: Visva Bharati University and the formation of Bangla

After completing his high school education, Arnob enrolled in the Visva Bharati University to study at the Fine Arts Academy in 1995. Since his childhood he was only acquainted with classical Bengali and Indian music, "but when Suman Chattarjee burst on to the scene with modern Bangla songs, he wondered if he could dare to compose like him." In the university hostel, his roommate was Taufiqe Riaz, who used to write songs. Arnob was asked to sing a song of Taufiqe on his guitar. As Taufiqe was amazed to see how beautifully Arnob tuned his song, he gave all of his lyrics to Arnob (He didn't release any song of Taufiqe with his band, he released those as a solo artist). Arnob said, "he found his musical taste, a little different from his friends in Dhaka." He also said, "whenever he came to visit his family in Dhaka, he saw his friends were more interested in pop, rock and metal." When at that time he was only listening to classical music. In late 1998, when he was a fourth-year student, he formed a folk band named Bangla, because of his interests in the Bauls and Lalon. He stated that "the freedom that he found in the baul music mainly inspired him to form a band." In the same year, his cousin Anusheh Anadil, came to visit him in Santiniketan. As she was also interested in the Bengali traditional folk music, she became the vocalist of the band. In early 1999, Arnob along with Anusheh, went to visit the Shrine of Lalon in Kushtia and met Buno. He was a friend of Anusheh and also played bass guitars, so he joined Bangla. The trio had their first show in Kolkata Book Fair in 1999.

2000s

2000–2007: Relocation to Dhaka, debut album of Bangla and going solo

After living in Santiniketan for almost seventeen years he came back to Dhaka and met Kartik, who played guitars and Shantunu, who played drums. Arnob invited them to join his band and they did. A year later they were joined by Nazrul (dhol). In 2000, Arnob married his childhood friend and Indian-Bangladeshi musician Sahana Bajpaie. Bangla took part in "the Benson and Hedges Star Search" competition and Arnob received the Award for Best Instrumentalist, for playing esraj. The same year, Bangla released its debut album, Kingkortobbobimurho in 2002 and it had sold over 100,000 copies in Bangladesh in the first two weeks of its release. A few years after the release of Bangla's debut album, Arnob was thinking of going solo as he had enough songs. In 2004, Arnob wrote his first song "She Je Boshe Ache", which was performed by the alternative rock band Black. The song was released as a soundtrack for the telefilm Off Beat and also was included in the mixed album Shopnochura the same year. It was very controversial because many people consider it to be Black's song.

In the fall of 2004, Arnob signed a contract with Ektaar for one year. He started the recording of his debut album in March 2005 in the EML studio in Gulshan, Dhaka. It ended in May and the album was released in 1 June 2005. It also included "She Je Boshe Ache", and Arnob got the credit for the song, as his version got much more popular than the Black version. It didn't feature any electric instrument, just Arnob with an acoustic guitar. The album featured some of his finest work, "Amar Hariye Jawa" and "Hariye Giyechi". The song "Bibek Bebagi" is considered to be one of the finest political songs, as in the lyrics it questioned the on-going political situation in the country. It also has a very famous rhythm which is considered to be very important for rap and hip hop music of Bangladesh. Only two songs in the album was written by Arnob, "She Je Boshe Ache" and "Chuya Chuyi"

Arnob began 2006 by signing with a new label, Bengal Music Company after his contract with Ektaar Music Limited expired. His next album, Hok Kolorob, was recorded in the fall of 2005 in BMC studio, which mostly contained songs by Taufiqe Riaz. Taufiqe wrote those songs in the mid-1990s, when he and Arnob was roommates in the University hostel. The most popular track on this album, "Tomar Jonno" was written by Sahana Bajpaie and composed by Arnob. The self-titled song, "Hok Kolorob" was called by many a protest song. It was used as a slogan in the 2014 Jadavpur University Students movement. About that he said to Indian Express: "My politics is a gut reaction, guided by practicality rather than an ideology. I don’t consider myself to be a political person, I couldn’t say if I am right-wing or left-wing. Things have to make sense for me to throw my weight behind it". The poetic love songs in this album established Arnob as one of the greatest artist of Bangladesh. In this album, Arnob also developed his song writing, as he as co-written four songs alongside Taufiqe, Sahana and Milita and wrote only one full song, "Chalak Tumi". The same year, Arnob won two Channel i Music Awards: "Best Album Artwork" award for the artwork of Hok Kolorob and "Best Rock Album" award for his participation in Prayer Hall's album Bujhcho. He also composed many songs in Sahana's debut album Notun Kore Pabo Bole, which was released in 2007.

2008–2009: Doob and world tour

Arnob's early April 2008 album, Doob was another leap in his career as he explored rock music in this album. It contained mostly new songs and more electrically amplified rock songs than his previous albums. Recorded from the late 2007 to early 2008 in the BMC studio, this was his longest album, with fourteen songs. The album featured many contemporary artists like, Sahana Bajpaie, Zohad Reza Chowdhury (Nemesis), the Mak, Idris Rahman, Saad and Andrew Morris. This album also marks as his first to feature a rabindra sangeet, "Noyon Tomare", which was a whole new leap in the Bangladeshi popular music scene. "Shopno Debe Doob", a song written by Sahana was included in the Poems Collection of Shonkho Ghosh. Many critics said that "it didn't match the success and popularity of his previous albums".

In the mid-2008, Arnob backed up by Nazia Islam (vocals), Resalat Dhrubo (bass guitars), Jibon (drums) and Nazrul (dhol) took part in a world tour, organised by Drishtipat and sponsored by HSBC. The tour only contained five concerts in Washington, New York, Texas, Toronto and London. The concert was arranged to raise money for Drishtipat's project "Child Domestic Workers Education" and some other developement projects in Bangladesh. In November 2009, Arnob released a live album named Arnob & Friends Live: Songs from the World Tour '08 from BMC. In 2009, Arnob's contract with BMC expired and he didn't sign any further contracts with any label. He established his own record label named Adhkana Records. The reason he formed his own record label was that most of the record label's at that time made lots of money from an album, while the artist were given only a few amount of money.

2010s

2010–present: Rod Boleche Hobe to Ondho Sohor

Recorded and released from his own studio and label, his fourth studio album, Rod Boleche Hobe was neither as successful as the previous albums or nor as well received by fans. It was released in October 2010 and the original CD booklet featured artworks and poems by Arnob. Only selling 50,000 copies and didn't feature any hit song.

For the first time in Bangladesh, Arnob recorded a whole rabindra sangeet album in the popular music scene, Adheko Ghume. It was released by BMC in June 2012 and was recorded in Adhkhana studio. It was a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore and a homage to his 17 years life at Santiniketan. Arnob had been in Santiniketan from the age of seven and during his school years he picked up many Tagore songs. He also had the opportunity to learn the piano in Uttarayan where Tagore used to live. He was finally able to recognize patterns in his structures and immediately identify Tagore. He claims that this album was an attempt to connect to the young Tagore's own practice of creating songs based on piano structures.

His sixth studio album Khub Doob was released in May 2015 from Adhkhana. Most of the songs on these album were composed by him and Sahana Bajpaie. All the money he made from the album was given to some students in Bandarban who's school was destroyed by a storm. Arnob draw the album art along with the students of that school. After the release of this album, Arnob was asked to perform in the Joy Bangla Concert 2015.

Arnob's first documentary film, Introspection, was on his father Swapan Chowdhury for one of his exhibitions on his water color series hosted by Bengal foundation.

Relationship

Sahana Bajpaie

Arnob travelled to Santiniketan with his mother and sister–Mithila, when he was only seven years old, and was enrolled to Patha Bhavana in 1985. There he met Sahana Bajpaie who was also a student there. Since second grade, he and Sahana were friends, but he was always in love with her. When they were in ninth grade in 1994, he proposed to Sahana. After being in a relationship for almost seven years, he married her in 2000. Sahana has written many songs for Arnob. "Hariye Giyechi" and "Tomar Jonno" among those songs are considered to be the greatest works of Arnob. She also sang backup in many songs of Arnob, from 2005 to 2008. All the songs in her debut album, Notun Kore Pabo Bole were composed by Arnob. In the fall of 2008, the couple were divorced, though both of them said that "they never had a big fight, rather than feeling like a married couple they always felt that they were friends". After their divorce, Arnob married with Sunidhi Nayak and Sahana also remarried.

Religious beliefs

Arnob was born in a Hindu family, but was raised as a Muslim. His father Swapan Chowdhury was a follower of Hinduism, but after his marriage he converted to Islam. But, Arnob thinks that, he is both a Hindu and a Muslim. He's also a great follower of sufism. When he was living in Santiniketan, he was always listening to the songs the Bauls were singing. Around this time, he felt the need of sufism in his life, because he thought of making music of freedom like the Bauls. In the late 1990s, Arnob along with his band, Bangla visited the shrine of Lalon.

• Chaina Bhabish (2005)
• Hok Kolorob (2006)
• Doob (2008)
• Rod Boleche Hobe (2010)
• Adheko Ghume (2012)
• Khub Doob (2015)
• Ondho Shohor (2017)