RadhaRaman Folk Festival, a three-day long prodigious presentation of Bengali folk music and dance along with other global folk art forms, is returning to Leeds for eleventh year from Friday 5 November to Sunday 7 November. The highlights of the festival include the whole day and whole night performances of Bengali folk music, Dhamail dance, Moroccan/ North African Folk Music through Oud, Nye and Lute, Irish and Flamenco dance, early european music, multicultural poetry, a panel discussion along with the ancient music from other cultures of the globe.
With a number of indoor venues, the festival extends to the outdoors at Roundhay Park for poetry in the woods with barbecue, to boost the lyrical landscapes of the North to the audience coming from different cities of the country and abroad.
Organised by Leeds-based art organisation RadhaRaman Society, approximately 28 prominent performers from the country and abroad will perform throughout the course of the festival. The performers include one an award-winning British-South Asian singer in the UK Gouri Choudhury, the finest Indian classical violinist Kamalbir Singh, a leading interpreter of Moroccan and North African music in the UK, a critically acclaimed Oud, Nye and lute player Hassan Erraji, Troubadour singer Schubert vocalist Eric Schelander, a prominent Tagore singer Sanjoy Dey, a talented semi-classical singer and musician Amith Dey and Laboni Barua, folk dancers Sonia Sultana,Sohel Ahmed, folk singer Juber Akhtar Suhel, Roji Sarker, Sobuj Ahmed, award-winning singers Anasua Paul, Jessy Barua, Flamenco dancer Vanessa Matthews as well as poet david Lee Morgan, John Farndon, Siobhan Mac Mahon and many others.
The inaugurating performance will kick off at Seven Arts Centre Leeds on Friday 5 November and then the whole night session will start at 11pm at the Scammonden Centre.
The festival will start again on Saturday at St Agnes Church in Leeds at 1pm with panel discussion, multicultural poetry session,vocal music as well as Dhamial dance.
An early evening session of dance and poetry on Saturday will be run at the Roundhay park bandstand from 4pm to 6pm before the next session begins at Moortown Methodist Church at 7pm. This lasts until the whole night session of networking, dance and music starts at the Scammonden centre at 11pm.
The finale of the festival will feature music, dance, and talks at the Bangladeshi community centre in Roundhay Road from 1pm to 5pm.
One of the key organisers of the festival Amal Podder said, “This became an international festival for the celebration of Bengali folk music and its philosophy. A large number of audiences around the remote cities of the country attend here as the festival offers endless fun along with the opportunity of networking, profound music and dazzling dance.
Amar Baidya, a board member of RadhaRaman Society said “The festival has been shaped as one of the prominent international festivals in the city in terms of the audiences who come from other countries of Europe and the artists come from both Bangladesh and India”.
A key organiser of the festival Sujith Chowdhury said “This music was extremely popular among all different faiths in South East Asia because it promotes wider humanism, love, devotion and it always preaches to make the most of the living moment.”
