Legend Singer Rezwana Choudhury Bannya

Rezwana Choudhury Bannya is a Bangladeshi singer and academic. She is an exponent of Rabindra Sangeet, the songs written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore. She is regarded as a legendary Tagore singer by Tagore music aficionados all around the world. She has won numerous awards including Bangladesh’s highest civilian award, the Independence Day Award (2016)
Rezwana was born in Rangpur, Bangladesh to her parents Mazharuddin Khan and Ismat Ara Khan. Her early singing lessons began with her uncle Abdul Ali that continued later under the tutelage of Sanjida Khatun and Atiqul Islam at Chhayanaut and Bulbul Academy of Fine Arts (BAFA) in Dhaka. As she continued taking lessons in music and singing, she also joined the Economics Program at the university of Dhaka after completion of her schooling.However, soon her inner self came to the realization that music was her destiny. She received a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) to study in Sangit Bhavana at Santiniketan, the university that was founded by Tagore himself. She took lessons from artistes including Kanika Bandyopadhyay, Nilima Sen, Sailajaranjan Majumdar, Santidev Ghosh, Gora Sarbadhikary, Manju Bandyopadhyay and Asesh Bandyopadhyay. Years after receiving her Master’s degree from Visva-Bharati, she trained under Kanika Banerjee (Mohor Di) in private sessions for an extended period of time, as she recalled in the Musiana episode, “Meeting Mohar Di”, hosted by Srikanto Acharya.

Awards
Ananda Sangeet Puroshkar for being the best female Rabindra Sangeet artist (2002)
Gaane Gaane Gunijon Shongbardhona (2011)
Sangeet Samman Puroshkar from the Ministry of Culture, India in 2013
Independence Day Award (2016)
Banga Bhushan (2017)
Firoza Begum Memorial Gold Medal (2017)
Sangeet Maha Samman (2017) by the Government of West Bengal
Doctorate of Arts honoris causa from Asian University for Women (2019)
Lifetime Achievement Award conferred by Oikko.com.bd Channel I (2022)