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Bhatiali or bhatiyali (Bengali: ভাটিয়ালি) is a form of folk music, sung in both Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Bhatiali is a river song mostly sung by boatmen while going down streams of the river. The word bhatiyali comes from bhata meaning "ebb" or downstream.[1]
It is mostly sung in several parts of greater riparian Bengal delta. Researchers[who?] have claimed Mymensingh District along the Brahmaputra River or the Bhati (lower region of a river) area of Bangladesh as its place of origin. Bhatiali lyrics traditionally consist of metaphorical and emotional verses about the waters and the situation of boatmen and fishermen. Among the 14 subjects of folk music in Bangladesh and West Bengal, that includes Deha-tatva (about the body) and Murshid-tatva (about the guru), Bhatiali deals with Prakriti-tatva (about nature).
Notable collectors, composers and writers in the genre are Miraz Ali, Ukil Munshi, Rashid Uddin. Jalal Khan, Jang Bahadur, Shah Abdul Karim and Umed Ali. Between the 1930s and 1950s, Bhatiali has seen its golden age, when most of these personalities were contributing to the genre. Singer Abbas Uddin made the genre popular singing "Amay bhashaili re, amay dubaili re" and other popular numbers. In the 2000s, Malay Ganguly and Bari Siddiki were two most prominent Bhatiali singers.
In the contemporary subcontinental music scene, Saurav Moni[2] is also eminently known as an international Bhatiali performer from India. He hails from Hingalganj, the southernmost part of West Bengal. He unearthed a distinct style of Bhatiali from Southern Bengal and added it to the mainstream Bhatiali, which could draw attention and expand the horizon of its exposure. Recently, Moni left the audience spellbound on the set of MTV Coke Studio (Season 1, 2011) singing a rare Bhatiali “Shara Raatro Nouka Baiya”[3][4] along with the Bollywood singer, Shaan who sang “O Majhi re”. Saurav Moni performs on both national and international stages. He has presented Bhatiali in various festivals like Celtic Connections,[5][6] Scotland Alchemy Festival, London Lok Sangeet Samoan, Delhi Shrewsbury Folk Festival, Jaypur Literature Festival,[7] United Kingdom,[8] France, and Australia[9] etc. He is also known as a collector of rare folk songs, vocal archivist and researcher of unexplored folk genres of Bengal
