Renowned lyricist, journalist and Bangla Tribune editor Zulfiqer Russell has received the award for Best Modern Bangla song at the 7th Mirchi Music Awards (Bangla) 2017 at Kolkata on Thursday (March 22).
It is first that a Bangladeshi lyricist has won at the Mirchi Music Awards (Bangla). He received the award for the song, titled ‘Shabuj Chilo’ sung by Nachiketa.
The award show was held at Kolkata’s Nazrul Mancha on March 7 this year but both the singer Nachiketa and the songwriter Russell was not present at the event. On behalf of them, another musical maestro Anjan Dutta received the award that night.
The songwriter received the trophy in person at Kolkata on Thursday, March 22. In a recent Facebook post from his official profile, Russell wrote: “I felt wonderful when I received the award on Thursday night from Asha Audio Founder Mahua Lahiri with the track’s composer Tunai Debasish Ganguly alongside me. This is the first achievement of mine abroad. It would have been more meaningful if I could receive the award from the stage but that was not possible for various reasons. I express my gratitude to everyone who worked on this track.”
Mirchi Music Awards are presented annually by Radio Mirchi to honour both artistic and technical excellence of professionals in the Indian film music industry. The awards, given in seventeen different categories, were introduced in 2008 for Hindi language songs. In 2010 it started awarding Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam songs, and in 2012, the Bangla edition of the awards was launched.
Mirchi authorities said that the award was given to the lyricist Zulfiqer, the musician and artist Nachiketa, composer Tunai Debasish Ganguly and producer Asha Audio as the song was selected the best in the Bangla Adhunik (modern) category.