“Hero Alom”, as he calls himself, has almost two million followers on Facebook and around 1.5 million on YouTube, where he has been uploading his wacky music videos for years.
A Bangladeshi singer with a large online audience was brought to the police station at dawn today where he was summoned to stop painful renditions of classical songswhich caused an uproar on social media.
“Hero Alom”, as he calls himself, has almost two million followers on Facebook and around 1.5 million on YouTube, where he has been uploading his wacky music videos for years.
One of them is the video of her performing “Arabian Song”, in which she appears in traditional Arabian dress on a sand dune with camels in the background, which has garnered 17 million views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PQoxNexD9Y
However, Alom has also drawn a lot of criticism mainly for his failed renditions of two beloved classic national songs–by the Nobel laureate Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore and the national poet of Bangladesh, Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Alom told AFP yesterday that last week he was “mentally tortured” by police who asked him to stop performing classical songs, told him he was too ugly to be a singer and that he would have to sign an “apology contract”.
“The police took me at 6am and held me for eight hours. (The police) asked me why I was singing Rabindra and Nazrul songs,” he says.
Dhaka Police Chief Haroon ur Rashid told reporters that Alom apologized for singing popular songs and because in his videos he wore a police uniform without obtaining permission.
“We received many complaints against him. He completely changed the traditional style of the songs…He assured us that he will not do it again,” said Haroon.
Farooq Hussain, Dhaka’s police commissioner, dismissed claims by 37-year-old Alom that he was pressured to change his name.
“He is making these allegations only to go viral on social media,” he told AFP.
Following his ordeal Alom released a new video showing him behind prison bars in a prisoner’s uniform saying he was going to be hanged.
His treatment by police sparked outrage on social media, with commentators and activists calling it an attack on civil rights — even if Alom is a bad singer.
“I am not a fan of your songs or your performance. But if there is an attempt to suppress your voice, I am against it,” wrote journalist Aditya Arafat.
“Don’t be sad. You are a hero, no matter what others say you are a true hero,” Sadiya Hatun Rakhi wrote on Alom’s Facebook page.
Alom says he has appeared in several films and has also participated as an independent candidate in his country’s parliamentary elections in 2018 where he garnered 638 votes.
He started using the nickname “hero” when he became popular in his hometown of Bogra, 150 kilometers north of Dhaka, he told AFP from his studio in Dhaka.
“I felt like a hero. And so I adopted the nickname ‘Hero Alom’. I’m not going to change it. At the moment it seems you can’t even sing freely in Bangladesh,” he says.
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