London Calling

The tickets in London are flying fast. Not only people are excited about Arnob’s second tour in London but people are really excited also about the stunning line up of supporting cast in the cast.

Just take a look at the line up.

Our first press coverage

This is a good one.  So far we have focused on marketing on the web, but last week to our surprise we saw that there was a coverage of the tour in New Age.  Thanks for that.  But good old friends from New Age, made one boo boo.  With the news of Arnob, they have put in the picture of James and Friends.  OUCH!  But any coverage is good coverage.  So thanks for that Tanim.  If you scroll through to the bottom of the New Age piece, you will see the review of a concert by Sohini at Kozmo.  Sohini is one of the main attractions of the starting line up in the Arnob concert in London.  Not a single word  that Tanim has written about her is an exaggeration.  Sohini will rock the London show with her performances with Samay’s Saumik, Parapar’s Ollie and After Art’s Sajib.   But the best part is that Sohini is just one in the sizzling line up.  We haven’t even talked about Labik and Nobonita still !

Why are we doing this?

Today we went live with our London ticket selling through internet. As soon as we went public with the ticket selling site, there was a sale. We were psyched — only to find out that was actually a pending sale that I was trying out in that site. Oh well. Yesterday, Zub, Ahsan, Musfique came. Along with E and myself, we worked on the marketing strategy a bit more and got a lot done. Exciting news from Zub was that Ishtiak in Dhaka, a top ad maker, has agreed to make a 15-30 sec tv clip for this concert which we will be able to use for our TV ads. FANTASTIC NEWS! Zub immediately wrote to Andrew and Andrew swiftly got into action and is in the process of getting some tv clips from Arnob. By the time they left, it was 11. By then, I was getting ready for our conference call with the US organizers. The call was scheduled at 7 PM EST. Unfortunately for me, it meant 12 midnight. So the call went on till 1.30 am. Such is my life these days. Just barely surviving on 5 hours of sleep a day. But the conference call was a very positive one. We haven’t made any concrete headway in sponsorship yet. But everything else was looking good. Ben, Iqbal bhai, Rafiq, Sumaiya and myself encouraged each other and fed encouragement off each other to keep on going.

This concert preparation has been a very interesting experience so far. But in the end, we are hoping that this concert will not only showcase the talent of the best musician that we have in Bangaldesh, but also it will reintroduce Drishtipat to the audience. Drishtipat is a collective effort of an amazing group of passionate change makers who despite their extremely busy schedules, make time for activism. Over the past six years we have made small and sustainable differences. But most importantly we have created a platform for people to come in and do something different. We want to keep on doing that and we want to take our org to the next level. By reintroducing Bangladesh and its culture in the Western countries through Arnob and friends, we want to also change the perception of people outside Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a country in resurgence. Bangladeshis are one of the most resilient bunch in the world. In spite of the many odds that are stacked against them, it is their most fundamental right to live with dignity, hope and honour. Drishtipat works to empower them so that they can achieve it.

Those of us who are working to make this ‘Unheard Voices’ Tour by Arnob a great success despite all the headaches, trouble and stress, we are constantly driven by this singular thought that work of each of us is making a difference. Now together with Arnob, Andrew, Nazia, Dhrubo, Jibon and Nazrul we will not only work towards making that difference, we will also try to break a lot of stereotypes people make about Bangladesh and its culture. Who is a better ambassador for it than Arnob – the face of a changing Bangladesh and the new generation — completely in sync with the past but moving forward through constant reinvention.