NETROKONA  – President M Abdul Hamid today urged all concerned to promote the country’s traditional culture by collecting its different scattered elements from different corners and expand it at home and abroad.

“Avoid bad elements of satellite culture….but accept good things of it,” he said while inaugurating the ‘First International Folklore Festival-2018’ at Mukterpara ground here this afternoon.

The President hoped that different institutions and personalities, including poets, litterateurs, dramatists, builders, collectors and researchers, would come forward to help flourish country’s own traditional culture across the world.

Noting that the whole world has now become a global village due to free flow of information, which is now changing the lifestyle of both rural and urban people, President Hamid said rapid expansion of satellite culture is influencing the cultures of different countries and nations as well.

Stressed the need for establishing a ‘Folk Culture Research Centre’ in the country to carry out research on age-old folk literature of Bangla, modern ballads and folk culture, he said all scattered ballads or gitikas of the vast Bengali literature should be preserved for the greater interest of the nation.

“Songs of vawya, vatiali, murshidi, baul and palagan are still available across the country like its flowing rivers,” Abdul Hamid observed.

“The culture is the mirror of life as it contains the real identity of individuals, a nation and a country,” the President said, adding that such this international event would strengthen ties among the folklore researchers and artists as a whole.

Abdul Hamid said different learned and scholars of Bangla and other areas of Europe, America and Middle East highly appreciated the Maimansingha Gitika, a collection of folk ballads including Mahua, Malua, Dewan Madina and Birangana Sakhina.

The President said he believed that this international folklore festival would help develop “quality of our history, customs and lifestyle in the days to come”.

He said Bangladesh is advancing towards tremendous development under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the development trend is also visible in the fields of art-literature-culture right now.

The ‘Greater Mymensingh Cultural Forum’ (GMCF) organised the festival with the participation of noted folklore researchers and scholars of different countries.

Chaired by Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Mustafa Jabbar, the function was attended, among others, by Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports Arif Khan Joy, chief coordinator for SDG Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Abdul Kalam Azad, PMO secretary Md Sazzadul Hasan, Visva-Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Prof Sabuj Koli Sen and secretaries concerned to Bangabhaban.

Eminent folk researcher Prof Jatin Sarker read out a keynote at the function. Later, the President laid the foundation stone of Sheikh Kamal IT Park on Old Hospital Road in the town.