But, ultimately, aesthetic values are just that and nothing more. The guitar melody that you find harsh, someone else finds musical. This has been true of every musical or literary movement throughout history. We find Horace complaining about the lack of sincerity in modern (for him) poetry, we find the baroque musicians criticised for not being as smoothly flowing as their predecessors; we even find Byron's open-necked collars and Italian rhyme schemes coming into scrutiny in much the same way that Mr.

Haque criticises the so-called underground bands.

As a member of one of the first bands in the underground scene, back when it was truly underground, I find such accusations unjust and ultimately. I can't defend our musical values beyond saying that we too have grown up listening to The Beatles on one hand and Azam Khan on the other, and since music is so important to us we listen to as much of it as we can.

Feedback, LRB, Renaissance, and all the rest---they are our heroes, the ideals we strive to live up to. You can compare the "underground" (a term I greatly dislike) lyric material to any of the older bands' songs favourably. To be sure, we do not have the same great social causes to uphold like, say, Azam Khan--he was a freedom fighter and a hero; we were all born after the war. But LRB's greatest hit is a love song; Black's greatest hit is a song about a rape victim. Feedback's most-remembered song is "Melaye Jaire"; everybody knows Cryptic Fate by "Sreshto", a song about our war of liberation. For every "Mon Shudhu Mon Cchuwecche" we have a "Guti" trilogy and five "Odeka Swargo"s. Where then do we fall short? I will admit that some of the new bands do pronounce Bangla in a most irritating and unmusical manner. This is the exception, however, and not the rule. I can think of two bands that do so, one of them being the biggest and the best of our kind. In their case, the singer has a speech impediment and talks like that off-stage as well; it is not an affectation. He is conscious of his problem and does his best to work on it, but when you are naturally shy and must face tens of thousands of people in a concert, that isn't the best way to confront your shortcomings. Both the bands I am thinking of, by the way, are not "buddies" from any "aristocratic society". I, and most of my bandmates, were educated in English medium schools (not that we actually care who went to which type of school), but we speak Bangla perfectly well.

So before you criticise someone for creating art that is not to your liking, Mr. Haque, try contributing something to our society yourself.