Ban Brothers are the two brothers, Ban and Tyson, both born and raised in Kolkata (formerly called Calcutta), India.
Gautam Banerjee (popularly known as \"Tyson\" in India) is a professional guitarist-composer-songwriter-arranger in India, and shuttles between his birth city Kolkata and the music capital Mumbai (formerly called Bombay) for his work with different artists and companies on recording projects.
Swagata Banerjee (popularly known as \"Ban\") is the founding ex-coordinator of the Athens, Georgia and Mid-Delta, Mississippi Chapters of Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) Regional Workshops. Also, he is a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia and currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Agribusiness at Alabama A&M University. 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 Brothers inherited music and talent from their family. Their late father, 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 several albums in India.
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 -- the Delta Branch Experiment Station of Mississippi State University.
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 Memphis Chapters, and now with the Nashville Chapter.
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.
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