A South Asian musical medley of qawali "dama dum mast kalandar", a famous song of Rabindranath Tagore and a 14th-century number "Chap Tilak" written by Amir Khasru reverberated the auditorium in the Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
The bands -- Strings (Pakistan), Love Runs Blind (Bangladesh) and Advaita (India) -- performed in front of President Pranab Mukherjee last evening ahead of the South Asian band festival that began today.
All the three bands performed solo for sometime after which some members from every band presented the three songs.
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"Dama dum mast kalandar", a sufi song Baba Buleh Shah praising the Shahbaz Qalandar of Sehwan Sharif was followed by Tagore's song "jodi tor daak shuney ke naa aashey, tobey ekla chalo rey" and "Chap Tilak de mose" writen by mystic poet Amir Khusru in Braj bhasha.
"The songs were chosen because they represented every region, though we feel music in all the three countries is same," said Mohit Lal, a member of Advaita.
Pakistani bang Strings, which shot to fame "Duur", sung numbers from this album as well as from Sanjay Dutt-starrer movie "Zinda".
LRB, a legend in Bangladeshi band music, was founded in 1991 by Bachchu, who is the band's lead vocal and guitarist, and has performed in many concerts across the world. Its first concert abroad was in India in 1997 at Kolkata's Jadavpur University.
Strings, also famous for the album 'Dhani', started with four college-goers Bilal Maqsood, Faisal Kapadia, Rafiq Wazir Ali and Kareem Bashir Bhoy 23-years ago.
The group broke up in 1992 but made a comeback with two of its members Bilal and Faisal eight years later.
