Coke Studio Bangla’s latest song of season 2, “Shondhatara” was released on 8th July featuring Shayan Chowdhury Arnob & Sunidhi Nayak. The song is a fusion of Bandish and Pop with a modern EDM twist by Arnob himself. Bandish is usually written in Hindi and Urdu and this is the first time the platform is doing a Bandish in Bangla language.
“Shondhatara” is a Bangladeshi rendition of a Bandish which means ‘Binding Together’. The song has been transcribed into a Bengali version of ‘Main Waari Waari Janugi’, keeping the original singing style of Agra Gharana, set in Raag Emon (Raga Yamana). Shondhatara is written by Divash Krishna Biswas which is adapted from ‘Main Waari Waari Janugi’; Composed by Ustad Vilayat Hussain Khan. The song’s composition is a magical blend of classical, rooted instruments and modern instruments. This beautiful fusion was composed, arranged & produced by prominent musician Adit Rahman while Shayan Chowdhury Arnob composed the “Bela Haray” portion of the song.
The song is about the deep feeling of love and the state of romantic mind echoing unification with their partner. Audiences get the chance to experience the polarized viewpoint of love in the dueling verses of the song where Sunidhi beautifully expresses her view through the classical Bandish and Arnob brings in his own signature style of Pop, giving the opposite point of view of love. “Shondhatar”, unifies the polar opposites with the real magic in us all.
The contrasting viewpoint was beautifully presented to the audience through two different zones, where Arnob belongs to the rock and western zone, on the other hand Sunidhi was in raga and eastern zone. With eastern architecture, paintings and golden light in Sunidhi’s zone represented the purity of classical Bandish. On the other side, Arnob’s zone is filled with pop culture elements. The Real Magic happened when these two extraordinary artists brought the whole performance together and gave the audiences a refreshing taste of classical music with modern pop touch.