Humans by nature are prone to consider all kinds of theories as inviolable truths. Isaac Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation or Einstein's Theory of Relativity has been stuck in the human brain in such a way that they are non-erasable. Only over a week back, the Nobel Prize winning Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo accomplished a revolutionary feat. His reconstruction of a complete Neanderthal genome from 40,000-year-old bones of the extinct human species has turned the long undisturbed domain of anthropology upside down. It might take decades for the 21st century man to accept the new find on man's evolution. Man doesn't want to believe any change made to the traditional order of beliefs. They are seen chiefly in different branches of science. Similarly, the social and economic situations in countries also keep changing. These changes are prompted by changes in elected governments and their policies. Preferences to certain social and economic systems have a lot to do with these leanings. Moreover, changes also occur on the demand of time.
The greater arts world and cultural practices aren't free of global developments where the older trends are replaced by the newer ones. In ten to fifteen years, the discipline of the greater arts has been shaken by myriad experiments, which rejected the earlier contents and forms. Though it's a mid-twentieth century term, the avant-garde has always guided the artists, writers, and their connoisseurs. The younger generations are normally attracted by the trends upholding youthfulness, as this stage is considered the most vital in one's life. That's why the golden age of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley could smoothly hand over their musical legacy to the Beatles. The latter comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The European art scene in the 19th - 20th centuries and the vocal music up to the 1980s witnessed a smooth transition from the earlier to the later stages. The listeners were drawn into a confused state with the start of Rock N Roll in the USA. Purists among the Western music lovers didn't fail to express their reservations about the loud music --- both vocal and instrumental. Many find today's Heavy Metal a veritable torture. Few can today remember the distant, faint echoes of the American country music.
Science has few scopes to reject completely a long accepted tradition. In accomplishing this painful task, it has to wait for years and decades. The inquisitive people must be prepared to fully accept a new discovery. But the different branches of the arts, especially music and literature, have thrived on rejections of the earlier forms and messages. To rationalise their new-age creativity and fresh thoughts, the young are prone to call the art forms preceding them dated and moribund. However, the new-generation products of the arts are not spared the initial volley of harsh criticism as they try to conquer a field. In the later times, they are commonly dubbed schlock.
Full-scale experiments in modern painting began with the surrealist artistes. They hugely drew on the dreams that remain coiled in the human subconscious. What's surprising, the artworks were received with spontaneous welcome from the European, especially the French and Spanish, art lovers. Worldwide, the surrealist paintings were received as a breakthrough event in the world of the arts. And it stayed with its special dignity. What's worth noting is the movement of surrealism didn't confine itself to just painting. As decades wore on, it crept into all branches of literature, especially that of global poetry, and also into experimental theatre and movies.
Coming to the South Asian cultural landscape, literature comes first. It is followed by music including that of Bangladesh. In this continent, literature and music, the two most vital genres of the arts, are considered sacrosanct. At times, they command the value of veritable fetishes among vast numbers of admirers. This trend has been in the vogue since the period of the early Sanskrit poetry like 'Meghdoot' by Kalidasa or the ancient Bangla lyrics of Charyapada poetry composed by Luipada, Vusukapada or Kanhapada. Up to the poetry written in the 1970s, few could command the courage to bring a modernised Bangla version of this ancient corpus of South Asian poetry. The early Bangla poetry thus still remains hidden in a nearly esoteric expression.
From the late 20th century onwards, there have been initiatives to restore musical tunes to the Charyapada poems. These attempts sparked a lot of disapproval and outcry among the scholars. To them putting musical tunes to these treasures from ancient Bangla poetry was like desecrating the compositions of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Tchaikovsky --- adding salsa or 'lambada' beats to them. Thus, the poetry, drama and other literary forms remained off-limits to music for a considerably long time. In fact, the continent's music and classical dances developed in their distinctive, unique styles. Thus the classical singers and instrumentalists like Barhe Gulam Ali, Alauddin Kha(n), Abdul Karim Kha(n), today's Bhimsen Joshi et al raised their own following and admirers. At the same time the dance gurus Kelucharan Mahapatra or Birju Maharaj saw their genius flourish in a way purely born of the sub-continental tradition of the classical dance.
It is in the 20th century again that literature, the most vital of the arts alongside painting, emerged vulnerable to the younger writers' experiments. In Bengal, it began in the 1930s. The flooding of the Bangla literary scene, notably poetry, with the youthful new wave creativity visibly shook the positions of the time's stalwarts. It needs not be elaborated that the firebrand youths' target was Rabindranath Tagore. Unfortunately, the poetic rebels of the Thirties' couldn't fathom the depth of Tagore's creative talent. It became clear to them when the poet's novel 'Shesher Kabita' hit the book world.
Few could realise that a tradition-bound poet like Tagore had the capability of telling the story of a group of happy-go-lucky youths in such a mesmeric style. Unlike the poet's other novels, 'Shesher Kabita' had exhaustively proved the enormous power of expression and flexibility of the Bangla language. Tagore had also proved that unlike the other major languages of the modern world, Bangla was not prepared to welcome the writers keen on mindless experimenting with the language. However, it was also true that experiments with subjects and diction bring life to the different branches of literature. Kolkata's Samaresh Basu, Kamol Kumar Majumdar and, to some extent, Dhaka's Syed Shamsul Huq made attempts to present their readers samplings of experimental Bangla. Maybe finding the task gruelling, all of them finally returned to their age-old conventional style. The Bangla language continued to develop in accordance with the time-honoured rules.
The arts feel gagged upon being burdened with external pressure. A language has its own style of development or evolution. Thus the Bangla language has never felt comfortable with experiments. Whatever the new expressions it has adopted had been latent in it. The most amazing phenomenon in Bangla culture, or, for that matter in the others, is the flexibility found in its music. Thus the Bangla songs continue to absorb in them the elements from world music. Days do not seem too far when a century-old Bangla folk song will reach connoisseurs through the Persian, Uzbek or Spanish shades of tune. Though these pieces are feared to be a potpourri of musical notes, they'll finally remain essentially Bangla songs. The Dhaka music, nowadays, is filled with these 'remakes'. Time will decide their permanence.
