A SHORT BIO OF BAN

Swagata Banerjee (popularly known as "Ban") is the founding ex-coordinator of the Athens, Georgia Chapter of Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) Regional Workshops and currently starting up the mid-Delta area, Mississippi Chapter. Also, he is a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia. Currently he is a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Delta Research and Extension Center, the Delta Branch Experiment Station of Mississippi State University, working under the supervision of Dr. Steve Martin on Bt/non-Bt (refuge) cotton. He founded and ran for ten years (1986-1996) a school of music, dance, and art called "Punnag" in India before moving to the United States in September 1996.

Ban inherited music and talent from his family. His father, late Sukumar Banerjee, a versatile musician and fine artist, and a long-time friend of sitar maestro late Nikhil Banerjee, was a big influence on Ban and his brother, instilling in them a deep love of music.

The two brothers collaborated on more than 80 distinct cuts in India. They both are published songwriters in that country. Together, they have also worked on various projects for sitcoms, commercials, movies, and many albums in India.
The two brothers still collaborate overseas. Ban has written in three different languages.

Ban started writing songs for the commercial market in 1982 at the age of 18, and got his first cut in 1985 in India. He moved to the US for further study in the fall of 1996.

Soon after moving to Athens, GA, from the western US (on getting his second Master's degree, in Resource and Applied Economics from the University of Nevada, Reno -- his first Master's being in Economics from India) in the fall of 1999, Ban formed a world-influenced folk-rock/pop band called Global Horse. Since then he had been a frequent performer in that town, both with his band and as a solo performer (singer-songwriter), before moving to Stoneville, Mississippi, with a research position as Post-Doctoral Associate at the Delta Research and Extension Center.

Ban was assigned in the spring of 2000 to compose music for a short movie, a claymation version of Maurice Sendak's famous picture storybook entitled "Where The Wild Things Are," which he did very successfully. This student project for the College of Journalism at the University of Georgia sparked an interest in music theory in Ban and led him to take a course in music theory at the University of Georgia.

Other than being a singer-songwriter and composer, Ban is a guitarist, sitarist, and percussionist as well. He is affiliated with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), also known as the Recording Academy, previously with its Atlanta Chapter and now with the Memphis Chapter. This is the organization that is responsible for awarding the Grammy Awards each year.

Recently Ban and his brother (Ban Brothers) compiled and released some of their original songs on a set of two CDs titled “Moonlit Sky” and “Hello Hello.” They are available online at http://www.cdbaby.com/banbrothers, and at http://www.towerrecords.com and http://www.athensmusic.net under world music.

Moonlit Sky and Hello Hello featuring various artists (Madhumati, Subroto Mitra, Usha Uthup, and Anupama Deshpande) are a two-album set of compilation of some of the songs that Ban Brothers have written, recorded and produced in Bengali (or Bangla, as the natives call it), the language spoken by Bengalees, the inhabitants of the state of West Bengal in India and the national language of the neighboring nation Bangladesh. It is currently one of the most spoken languages in the world.

CD 1 - Moonlit Sky (P) 2003 Ban Brothers Publishing (ASCAP) - is in lines with pop/disco/funk (e.g., track 1) and electronic/experimental styles, with some Middle Eastern (as in track 3) and continental European influences.

CD 2 - Hello Hello (P) 2003 Ban Brothers Publishing (ASCAP) - is more Indian, with some semi-classical and raga-based compositions (tracks 1 and 8, in particular) and a modern folk tune on track 5.

This CD compilation has been categorized as "Rock" by All Music Guide:- http://www.allmusic.com.

ABOUT BAN’S MUSIC

It is folk, it is pop, it is rock, it is world (mainly Latin, Mid-Eastern and Indian), it is sometimes blues and jazz, it is diverse and alternative, focused and striving for its place in the mainstream. The eclecticism in his music is best described as a combo of the East and the West, or somewhere in between; a combo of traditional and contemporary music, or somewhere in between. In the US, his music has been compared with the likes of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Judy Collins, Neil Young, and Paul Simon. But he himself owes his style to almost all that he has ever heard everywhere, including the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Def Leppard, and a whole generation of the newer acts like Matchbox Twenty, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Coldplay. He has a penchant for ballads and listens to a wide variety of music. Any great song can turn him on. There is nothing in the world that excites him more than a well-performed great song. Ban is a poet-turned-lyricist-turned-songwriter and performer.

Country music (modern Nashville style “new country”) has taught him the song structure and discipline in songwriting. But his compositions and singing style cover mostly other grounds. He does not like being pigeon-holed to a specific existing genre, but even aspires to be the harbinger of a new one that combines a whole lot of genres! “It’s a small world and, like everything else, music styles from different genres and different parts of the world are bound to come together and blend in a melting pot of non-discriminatory listening pleasure with an identity of its own,” he says.

A couple of testimonials:

1. A professional songwriter in Nashville, in evaluating one of his songs, in 2000 said that his music did have a place in the Nashville scene, but was also applicable to the other (NY, LA) markets.

2. An independent record company owner from Atlanta, GA heard one of his songs in AthFest 2002 (an annual music and arts festival in downtown Athens, Georgia) and said that he could see Ban making a lot (of fortune) from music for commercials and movies.

Listen to Ban’s music to know how it is! Currently he is working on a solo project and on an assignment with Zee TV!